Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)
Context: Courses were offered in such fields as nineteenth-century black history and Hispanic-American folk art. The activists made a peculiar claim for these classes. They insisted that the courses would alleviate the cultural anxiety of nonwhite students by permitting them to stay in touch with their home culture. The perspective gained in the classroom or the library does indeed permit an academic to draw nearer to and understand better the culture of the alien poor. But the academic is brought closer to lower-class culture because of his very distance from it. Leisured, and skilled at abstracting from immediate experience, the scholar is able to see how aspects of individual experience constitute a culture. By contrast, the poor have neither the inclination nor the skill to imagine their lives so abstractly.
“Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals.”
Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 26 quoted in: Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations - Volume 1 (1999). p. 159
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Kenneth E. Boulding 163
British-American economist 1910–1993Related quotes
“Man, in his animal capacity, is qualified to subsist in every climate.”
PART III, SECTION I.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 15.
"Creative aspect of language use"
Quotes 2000s, 2007-09, (3rd ed., 2009)
Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 252.