the new cover

contexts is sporting a new cover design this winter, thanks in large part to the fine students in seth werner's marketing research class.

we all learned a ton when contexts served as a client for these marketing undergrads. the students were split into groups, each tackling an area like blogs, podcasts, distribution, photography, or art. the most dramatic presentation involved our cover art, as a group set up a display to show us how our existing contexts covers actually appeared from their perch in row 5 at barnes & noble and row 3 at borders. brilliant! all you could see was white space, with a stray "s" for distraction. i laughed a li'l how could we have missed something so basic laugh and, later, beamed when i saw our design team's full-page mock-ups.

as professors, we tend to think of ourselves as experts on everything. but, of course, most of us just know the insane minutiae within a carefully circumscribed area of expertise. those marketing undergrads knew a whole bunch of stuff that our contexts team had scarcely considered. and when our underlying assumptions were laid bare and verbalized -- we sort of thought, you know, that like if we made a really cool sociology magazine that everyone would, like, find it and, you know, totally get into it and buy it -- we realized how much they had to teach us.

but enough about the style. the cover story is a fine piece from katherine mccoy, a wisconsin ph.d. student, writing on the sociology of private military contractors. here's the lead:

Throughout most of the 20th century, warring nation-states generally had two options to increase their military strength. They could create a coalition—as the United States did in World War II—or institute a draft—as it did in Vietnam.

Today, though, countries have a third option. Rent.