A few data points encountered in last few months:

• Ken Roth and Colin Powell argue that the U.S. shouldn’t torture detainees because then others will torture U.S. soliders.
• In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan argues that women should not be deprived of their freedom because they will live vicariously through their sons, doting on them, and turning them into sissies.
• A summer Bollywood movie stars Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World, as a victim of domestic violence who eventually shoots dead her battering spouse. Based on a true story.

Ultimately, the arguments put forth that the abuses are not bad because they cause pain or suffering to others, but because they harm the more powerful party (with the exception of the movie which is apparently pretty grizzly). The otherness of the victims is essentially unchallenged. It’s not just that the victims are less human, but that the more powerful figure is recognized as the more valuable.

Five years ago, during the week of October 22-28, 2001, a conference on social design was held at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. The text below came out of a joint workshop there and still makes a nice manifesto that deserves wider publication.

A statement by Tony Credland, Brian Holmes, Sandy Kaltenborn on the occasion of the Decalarations Conference.

What happens to graphic design when it leaves the professional discourse behind, to do political work in activist groups and social movements? That’s the question we wanted to explore with the students and community members at Concordia University.

The answers have been different for us, and they’ll be different for everyone involved. But we know that the experience of political engagement takes design practice away from the forms in which it usually appears in society today: as advertising, art, information or propaganda.

The water puppet form was invented around 1,000 years ago in the rice paddies of north Viet Nam. Once a tradition in the flooded fields, the form is now firmly folkloric, performed in the captial on a contemporary stage flooded with water. Wooden puppets are held up on bamboo poles hidden under the water and controlled from behind a curtain at the back of the stage. Our show in Hanoi consists of 12 short vignettes along with a musical prelude.

Many of the stories take place in and around the water: fantastic tales of magical fish, swimming and spitting dragons and other animal deities, moments of legendary history, and — most interesting to me — scenes mundane, every day life. Why would people living and working in the fields need to tell a story consisting of people living and working in the fields? Is it a celebration? A means of education or identification? That this is who we are, and these are our stories? Planting rice and catching fish takes place in the same narrative space, on the same stage as the emperor who returns his sword to the giant turtle in the lake, within the same frame as the dancing dragons, mating phoenix birds and other gods of nature who tease us and manipulate the world.

After the climactic, splashing dance of the four holy animals is the curtain call. The curtain rises, the players and bamboo mechanisms are revealed — it is the puppeteers who manipulate the gods.

“A study reported in Science by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that women exposed to bogus scientific theories linking their gender to poor math skills performed more poorly on subsequent math tests.” More. (via)

My 2005 research An Introduction to Activism on the Internet was featured in the November 27 “Recommended Reading” column of the Wall Street Journal. Katrin Verclas, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, picked thirteen on- and offline resources for leveraging technology for social change. About my document, she says:

“John Emerson’s guide covers strategies and techniques of electronic advocacy using email, the Web and other new media to bring about social change. It provides a great overview and analysis of campaigning methods.”

See for yourself at http://backspace.com/action. Thanks, Katrin!