Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)
Finn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our attention for the purposes of exploiting it. From pranks on early computer networks in the 1970s to commercial nuisances in the 1990s to the global criminal infrastructure of today driven by botnets and algorithms, spam’s history surfaces and shifts with the Internet itself. Spam is a lively book packed with tales of the people responsible for sharing and stopping spam’s myriad of forms in email, web sites and social networks. This includes everyone from programmers and security professionals, marketers and lawyers, and con artists and thieves to name a few. Each person has personal experiences with spam and opinions about when they’re being spammed, but Brunton, a professor at New York University, reminds us about the critical role that communities, organizations, and governments have played in regulating spam. Ultimately, the governance agreed to by these groups defines spam in the contemporaneous moment, but more importantly, shapes spam’s future forms. As long as open communication platforms exist, so will spam. It is more useful to treat spam as signal about the quality of our digital interactions. The more our attention is captured and exploited the worse our digital communities are functioning. Like the mysterious meat in a can (and with full appreciation for all the spam lovers out there), a digital diet heavy on spam isn’t just unappetizing, it’s unhealthy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
16 Feb 201659min
David Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), David Wright, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, explores the theories and practices framing cultural taste in contemporary society in order to account for the social role of cultural taste. The book explains how taste is made knowable, through quantification and measurement, moves through an explanation of differing cultural taste patterns, including the all important figure of the omnivore, and narrates the impact of technology on cultural taste. The book accounts for the governing and globalisation of cultural taste, thinking through the rise of cosmopolitan tastes, as well as engaging with ideas about taste and expertise. The book uses a range of examples, including detailed discussions of contemporary art works such as Greyson Perry’s The lovely consensus. Although grounded in sociology, the book speaks to debates, and thus to readers, from across arts and cultural subjects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
3 Feb 201638min
Leigh Claire La Berge, “Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s” (Oxford UP, 2014)
What stories do we tell about finance? How does financial print culture shape our lives? Our guest today explores the narratives we have been told, and tell, about finance. A literary scholar, Leigh Claire La Berge writes about the representations of finance in years after 1979 and how many of the stories we tell about finance–that it is abstract and exceedingly complicated–took hold in this era. Leigh Claire La Berge is Assistant Professor of English in the Department of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. Her book, Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s, was recently published by Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
27 Jan 201650min
Oli Mould, “Urban Subversion and the Creative City” (Routledge, 2015)
Every city seems to be ‘creative’, whether because it has a creative brand, a creative quarter or is home to creative industries. In his new book Urban Subversion and the Creative City Routledge, 2015), Oli Mould shows how this is an essential, but mistaken, aspect of the neo-liberal city. Creativity in the governance of the neo-liberal city erases and obscures inequalities and prohibits social justice. The book demonstrates a very different way of thinking about the creative city through a variety of subversive practices, from skateboarding and parkour, to urban explorations. Filled with images and global examples, the book will attract readers in geography, urban studies, sociology, cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in alternative forms of urban life. Mould also works across multiple media forms, and you can see more about the visual elements of Urban Subversion here, and read his blog and twitter feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
21 Jan 201640min
Neil Roberts, “Freedom as Marronage” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
What does it mean to be free? How can paying attention to the relationship between freedom and slavery help construct a concept and practice of freedom that is “perpetual, unfinished, and rooted in acts of flight” (181)? In his book Freedom as Marronage University of Chicago Press, 2015), Neil Roberts (Africana Studies, Religion, and Political Science, Williams College) explores this and many other questions. Proceeding from and working with the concept and practice of marronage – modes of escape from slavery emerging from the Caribbean – Roberts articulates a theory of freedom that is historically specific while having trans-historical reverberations, and that is attentive to lived experiences of freedom and slavery. In doing so, he engages histories of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, diaspora, the Haitian Revolution, and American slavery. Arguing for the need to creolize political theory and philosophy, Roberts also takes up the thought and practice of W.E.B. DuBois, Hannah Arendt, Philip Petit, Frederick Douglass, Angela Davis, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Edouard Glissant, Rastafari, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
18 Dec 20151h 20min
Jason W. Moore, “Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital” (Verso, 2015)
In Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), author Jason W. Moore seeks to undermine popular understandings of the relationship among society, environment, and capitalism. Rather, than seeing society and environment as acting on an external, nonhuman nature, Moore wants us to recognize capitalism-in-nature. For Moore, seeing society and environment as separate has hampered clear thinking on the problems we face, such as climate change or the end of cheap nature, as well as political solutions to these issues. His book is an analysis of the interrelationship of capitalism and nature over the past few centuries as well as a critique of important environmental concepts such as the Anthropocene. Moore is assistant professor of sociology at SUNY-Binghamton and coordinator of the World Ecology Research Network. This book is a product of over a decade of research and writings on world ecology and evidence of his wide-ranging scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
3 Dec 201551min
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban Revolution” (PM Press, 2015)
What are the alternatives to the current neo-liberal cultural settlement prevailing in much of the global north? In To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban Revolution (PM Press, 2015), Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, from The Centre for Cultural Change, argues that this question can be addressed by learning from the cultural policy of the Cuban revolution. The book draws on a wealth of archival material, coupled with the theoretical framework of Marxist Humanism, to give a detailed picture of the revolutionary period on the island and chart the lessons from that era. The book introduces the key policy documents and events, along with examples from a variety of cultural forms, including a detailed engagement with the role of film and cinema in the revolutionary era. The book will be essential reading for cultural studies and cultural policy scholars, alongside anyone seeking an alternative vision of culture’s social role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
1 Dec 201541min
Philip Roscoe, “A Richer Life: How Economics Can Change the Way We Think and Feel” (Penguin, 2015)
So many of our social questions are now the subject of analysis from economics. In A Richer Life: How Economics can Change the Way We Think and Feel (Penguin, 2015), Phillip Roscoe, a reader at the University of St Andrew’s School of Management, offers a critique of the long march of economics into social life. The book covers a vast range of social examples, including dating, organ transplantation, and education, alongside accessible engagements with historical and contemporary economic theory. Using personal examples as well as academic expertise, Roscoe’s book offers a primer in the social cost of economics, as well as what we can do to resit and challenge economistic modes of thought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
19 Nov 201538min
