Rough Theory

I’m always interested in the search terms that lead visitors to this site. Most people reach the site from other sites that link here, or following fairly conventional searches to titles of books, authors or issues I’ve discussed. I can also always count on a steady stream of folks misdirected here when trying to find out the meaning of the term “elephant in the room” – I suspect my discussion of Lakoff wasn’t what they were hoping to find. The regular traffic from folks searching for information on capitalism and the public/private sphere distinction is probably closer to the mark – unfortunately, I’ve only written an off-hand comment on the issue, and haven’t gotten around to developing the point sufficiently to be particularly useful, so I assume they generally also leave disappointed…

Occasionally, search terms suggest a… mild frustration with critical theory – like the one tonight from Google Australia, where someone searched: “Habermas, explain”.

There are also very ambitious searchers – like the one who reached the site after inquiring: “which theory of social change is used when times are rough”. I love the image of theory this search implies – that there might be fair weather theories that are fine when things are going well but, when the going gets rough – well, then you need rough theory… ;-P

And then you have the search terms where you can’t really imagine how the search engine came to direct the person to this specific site – I struggle to imagine, for example, why the person who went searching for “anthromorphic cow” was pointed here, or why I repeatedly get traffic from people searching for the “cultural dimension of swatch”. I imagine these people arriving here, going “Uck! What’s this have to do with my search?!”, and trudging back to Google…