Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer's Web Site

Welcome to my web site.  I am a social anthropologist and scholar of religion at Uppsala University.  Previously I held the Torgny Segerstedt Guest Professorship at the University of Gothenburg.  This web site provides information about my teaching, writing and public lecturing.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Here is a list of upcoming lectures, most of which are open to the general public.  Please see the host institution's web site or e-mail me if you would like further details about a particular event.

August 13 -- Operasjon Dagsverk, Vestoppland Folkehögskole, Norway.

September-January -- Courses at Uppsala University: "Writing to Attract Interest," as well as distance-learning courses in the master's degree program in Religion, Peace and Conflict.

September 2 -- ABF, Uppsala

September 23 -- Göteborgs arbetares folkhögskola (GAF), Göteborg.

October 20 -- Luleå kommun, Luleå.

November 15-16 -- MR-dagarna, Örebro.

November 16 -- Stadsbiblioteket, Örebro.

January-June 2011 -- Courses at Uppsala University: "Happiness," as well as distance-learning courses in the master's degree program in Religion, Peace and Conflict.

NEWS

I joined Facebook, so if you would like to receive occasional updates about my activities, feel free to add me as a Facebook friend.  My address is www.facebook.com/briancwpalmer.

Göteborgs-Posten has published two of my essays: "Karl-Bertil kom lindrigt undan" (now available at ETC) and an earlier piece, "På drift allt längre åt höger."  Per-Anders Forstorp and I wrote an article for Aftonbladet, "Med nyspråk mot 2010."

Here is a short biographical introduction, in Swedish and in English:

Socialantropologen Brian Palmer är gästlektor vid Teologiska institutionen, Uppsala Universitet, och var tidigare innehavare av gästprofessuren till Torgny Segerstedts minne, Göteborgs universitet.  2002 fick han pris som Harvarduniversitetets bästa lärare.  Han har skrivit doktorsavhandlingen Wolves at the Door: Existential Solidarity in a Globalizing Sweden, varit medförfattare till boken George W. Reinfeldt: konsten att göra en politisk extreme makeover, och varit redaktör för Global Values 101, en bok baserad på hans Harvardkurser.  Brian Palmer var sommarpratare i Sveriges Radio 2004.

CONTACT

To get in touch, please write me at brian.palmer@teol.uu.se.  You can also reach me by phone at 073-831 7236 (from outside Sweden, +46 73 831 7236), but e-mail often works better.  On Facebook, I am at www.facebook.com/briancwpalmer.  Paper mail can be sent to me at Teologiska inst., Box 511, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden.

WRITING AND TEACHING

My courses deal with questions of social engagement, democracy, civic courage (civilkurage), global ethics, and responses to suffering.  Recent courses -- given in Swedish -- include "Global distress and personal responsibility: Living amidst others' suffering" and "Make your voice heard! Citizen participation in the public conversation."  I often have the privilege of giving public lectures on these and other topics, in Swedish and in English.

I co-edited a book based on my Harvard University courses, entitled Global Values 101: A Short Course (Beacon Press, 2006). My introductory chapter can be read here.  The book is available from bookstores in Sweden and the USA, and a Korean translation was published in South Korea.

The Harvard courses were the subject of an essay I wrote for GU Journalen.  Other writings available online include my article about Sweden in Countries and Their Cultures (MacMillan, 2001), an abstract of my Ph.D. dissertation (2000), and a debate article about American politics published in Svenska Dagbladet (2003).

My Ph.D. dissertation explored ideas and practices of solidarity in Sweden.  If you would like a free copy in .pdf format, send me an e-mail message (brian.palmer@teol.uu.se) and I will send the thesis to you as an attachment.

Per-Anders Forstorp and I wrote a book entitled George W. Reinfeldt: Konsten att göra en politisk extreme makeover (2006). It is available from the Karneval publishing house and from bookstores.

My essay, "'Ryck ut jacken!' Andlighet som paus i livsstressen" ("'Pull Out the Plug!' Spirituality as a Pause from Pressured Living") was published as part of the book Guds närmaste stad? En studie om religionernas betydelse i ett svenskt samhälle i början av 2000-talet (2008).

Göteborgs-Posten published my book review of Susanne Dodillet's dissertation, Är sex arbete?, for which I served as examiner.  In my own dissertation nine years ago, I celebrated Sweden's policy on prostitution (criminalizing the buyer but not the seller) as contributing to the "ethos of a sheltering society."  I still think so.  What Dodillet achieves is the anthropological endeavor of exoticizing the familiar and familiarizing the exotic, as she shows that the differing Swedish and German policies each make moral sense within particular cultural logics and as products of particular histories.  (An interesting comparison can be made with Faye Ginsburg's book, Contested Lives, which explores the symbolic worlds of activists on both sides of the abortion debate in the USA.)  The review is here.

INTERVIEWS 

Here are links to interviews with me and related materials, in Swedish:

Segerstedtprofessur

Henry

Göteborgs universitet

Sveriges Radio P1 documentary

ST Press

Utbildningsradio Samtal Med

Sveriges Radio P1 Sommar as well as responses from listeners

Norrbottens Kuriren

Svenska Dagbladet

Dagens Nyheter

Dagen

Utbildningsradio Living Room

Democracy Now as well as Amy Goodman's column (also available in Spanish)

GU Journalen

Christian Science Monitor as well as a recent piece

Harvard Gazette

Harvard Crimson

Artwala Road

BOOK REVIEWS

Here are links to pieces about the George W. Reinfeldt book:

Expressen, Forstorp & Palmer

Aftonbladet, Åsa Linderborg

Göteborgs Posten, Lisa Ahlqvist

Flamman, Aron Etzler

Kristianstadsbladet, Lennart Hallengren

Dagens Nyheter, Lars Linder

Dala-demokraten, Sofie Wiklund

Karlskoga Kuriren, Peter Franke 

Helsingborgs Dagblad, Johan Malmberg

Kungsholmens Folkblad

Botkyrka Tidning (page 11)

Per-Anders Forstorp's web site

QUOTATIONS

When I give public lectures, I am sometimes asked for further information about material I have quoted. Here are some of the passages that I like to draw upon:

Susan Sontag (from "The Truth of Fiction Evokes Our Common Humanity," Newsday, 041229, excerpted from a speech at the Los Angeles Public Library):

"Why does evil exist? Why do people betray and kill one another? Why do the innocent suffer?
But perhaps the problem ought to be rephrased: Why is evil not everywhere? More precisely, why is it somewhere but not everywhere? And what are we to do when it doesn't befall us? When the pain that is endured is the pain of others?
Hearing the news of the earthquake that leveled Lisbon on Nov. 1, 1755 . . . the great Voltaire was struck by our inveterate inability to take in what happened elsewhere. 'Lisbon lies in ruins,' Voltaire wrote, 'and here in Paris we dance.'
We are just as capable of being surprised by, and frustrated by the inadequacy of our response to, the simultaneity of wildly contrasting human fates as was Voltaire two and a half centuries ago. Perhaps it is our perennial fate to be surprised by the simultaneity of events, by the sheer extension of the world in time and space. That we are here, prosperous, safe, unlikely to go to bed hungry or be blown to pieces this evening, while elsewhere in the world, right now in Grozny, in Najaf, in the Sudan, in the Congo, in Gaza, in the favelas of Rio...."

Elaine Scarry (from her essay, "The Difficulty of Imagining Other Persons," published in The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, ed. Eugene Weiner, New York: Continuum, 1998, pp. 43-45):

"...the act of injury occurs precisely because we have trouble believing in the reality of other persons.... Our injuring of others, therefore, results from our failure to know them.... the human capacity to injure other people is very great precisely because our capacity to imagine other people is very small."

Noam Chomsky (from the essay, “Writers and Intellectual Responsibility,” in his book, Powers and Prospects, London: Pluto Press, 1996, pp. 55-56):

“…it is a moral imperative to find out and tell the truth as best one can, about things that matter, to the right audience…. The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them.”


Judith Herman (from her book, Trauma and Recovery, New York: Basic Books, 1997, p. 7):

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering."


Peter Singer (from his book, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest, Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 1993, p. 233):

"In comparison with the needs of people starving in Somalia, the desire to sample the wines of the leading French vineyards pales into insignificance. Judged against the sufferings of immobilized rabbits having shampoos dripped into their eyes, a better shampoo becomes an unworthy goal. . . . An ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine, but it changes our sense of priorities."


Gregg Levoy (from his essay, “Sacrifice: The Shadow in the Calling,” in Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, New York: Harmony Books/Crown Publishers, 1997, p. 142):

"Faith will eventually ask of the faithful, 'What are you willing to give up in order to follow your call?' Sacrifice, says Thomas Moore, is 'the shadow in the calling.' It reminds us that we pay a price for every choice and that life doesn't hold still."


Barbara Ehrenreich (from her article, "All Together Now," The New York Times, 040715):

"As Fred Alford, a political scientist who studies the fate of whistle-blowers, puts it: ‘We need to understand in this `land of the free and home of the brave' that most people are scared to death. About 50 percent of all whistle-blowers lose their jobs, about half of those lose their homes, and half of those people lose their families.’"


C. Fred Alford (from his book, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 125 and p. 138):

"It is far from wrong to state that the whistleblower is sacrificed as a lesson to others in the group, so that they will see the price of acting as an ethical individual who remembers that he or she belongs to the world."

“To be a whistleblower is to set one way of thinking about the sacred, the conscience collective, against another, sacred power."


John R. MacArthur (from "Timid Kerry Stopped Counting Too Soon," The Providence Journal, 041207):

"In politics, the only thing worse than a bully is someone who won't stand up to one."

Lisa Langseth (quoted by Betty Skawonius in "Från Marabou till kultureliten Lisa Langseth skildrar samhällets sociala skiktning i sina pjäser," Dagens Nyheter, 031024):

"De första sex åren gick hon i skolan i Hjorthagen. I sjuan fick eleverna gå över till Ahlströmska skolan på Östermalm. ’Jag förstod absolut ingenting. Folk var rika och snygga med ett självförtroende som jag inte hade susningen av och en självklar tillgång till resor, pengar, kläder. Och de gjorde förmågan att ta sig fram i samhället till en koppling mellan intelligens och pengar. Jag var tolv tretton och måste fråga mig varför jag inte hade det som de hade. Jag var livrädd.'"


David Brooks (in his article, "Clash of Titans," The New York Times, 040306):

"It's a tremendous advantage to have been instilled with the habit of self-assertion since infancy. If you can project a physiological comfort with power, others around you will begin to accept your sense of self-worth. There aren't too many people waking up in normal suburban split-levels assuming they should rule the world. But God bless the upper class. They've lost their legitimacy, but they haven't lost their self-confidence."


Erik Erikson (from his book, Young Man Luther, New York: Norton, 1958, p. 198 and p. 220):

"To Luther, the inspired voice, the voice that means it, became a new kind of sacrament.... He obviously felt himself to be the evangelical giver of a substance which years of suffering had made his to give; an all-embracing verbal generosity developed in him, so that he did not wish to compete with professional talkers, but to speak to the people so that the least could understand him...."

"As far as Luther's attitude toward his own work is concerned, only when he was able to make speaking his main occupation could he learn to know his thoughts and to trust them -- and also trust God. He took on the lectures, not with pious eagerness, but with a sense of tragic conflict; but as he prepared and delivered them, he became affectively and intellectually alive. This is not works; it is work, in the best sense."

Dag Hammarskjöld (from his book, Vägmärken, Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1963, p. 73):

"Gud har användning för Dig också om det icke tycks passa Dig för ögonblicket."


Søren Kierkegaard (from the book, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, edited by Charles E. Moore, Rifton, New York: Bruderhof Foundation, 2002):

"True individuality is measured by this: how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of others. The person who can endure being alone is poles apart from the social mixer. He is miles apart from the man-pleaser, the one who manages successfully with everyone - he who possesses no sharp edges. God never uses such people. The true individual, anyone who is going to be directly involved with God, will not and cannot avoid the human bite. He will be thoroughly misunderstood. God is no friend of cozy human gathering."


Doris Lessing (from her book, The Golden Notebook, New York: Ballantine Books, 1962):

"Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. ... What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture.... Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself.... Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.'"


James Stockinger (quoted in Robert Bellah et al., The Good Society, New York: Knopf, 1991, p. 104):

". . . each of us lives in and through an immense movement of the hands of other people. The hands of other people lift us from the womb. The hands of other people grow the food we eat, weave the clothes we wear and build the shelters we inhabit. The hands of other people give pleasure to our bodies in moments of passion and aid and comfort in times of affliction and distress. . . . and, at the end, it is the hands of other people that lower us into the earth."


Garrison Keillor (from "A Democrat Knows That the Leaf Turns," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 040720):

"The gains in life come slowly and the losses come on suddenly. You work for years to get your life the way you want it and buy the big house and the time share on Antigua and one afternoon you're run down by a garbage truck and lie in the intersection, dazed, bloodied, your leg unnaturally bent, and suddenly life becomes terribly challenging .... The fear of catastrophe could chill the soul but the social compact assures you that if the wasps come after you, if gruesome disease strikes down your child, if you find yourself hopelessly lost, incapable, drowning in despair, running through the rye toward the cliff, then the rest of us will catch you and tend to you and not only your friends but We the People in the form of public servants. ... Without that assurance, we may as well go live in the woods and take our chances."


Jonathan Kozol, after his final goodbye to his friend and mentor Paulo Freire (from The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home, New York: Bantam Books, 1975, pp. 221-222):

"I do not feel awkward, though I did for years, to speak of my affection for some of those older people whom I trust and love. The faces and words along the walls of my apartment became more real and more like mandates for me in those hours [after Freire's departure]. I think the reverence that we feel for men and women who have been our true teachers, and the way that love can change our lives, our vision, our perception of all things we know, and open up new areas of freedom and imagination we have never felt, after certain periods of loneliness that we have never undergone -- that this is, in the long run, what education is, and nothing else but this.”

"Many young people do not like to think that they will need the borrowed strength of older men and women. In part, this is because they may not know the kinds of people I now have in mind. If they do, they have often been afraid to open up their hearts for fear of being disappointed. Yet there have been many who, in struggle with themselves, were not reluctant to take strength and courage from those who have gone before. When Cesar Chavez started to fast, in very great pain he looked up to the photograph of Gandhi. When Gandhi went to prison in South Africa in 1908, he read the words of Thoreau and Saint Francis. When Dr. King began his lonely hours in Montgomery Jail, he turned for strength to writings left by Gandhi. . . . It may be that discipleship like this is, in the last event, the only thing that can empower a person to live by his beliefs. If there is not the reassurance of this love, I do not know if we will ever find the will to overcome the dangers and the admonitions that are placed before us."