Dieter Vandebroeck, “Distinctions in the Flesh: Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality” (Routledge, 2017)
How is class inequality intertwined with the body? In Distinctions in the Flesh: Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality (Routledge, 2017), Dieter Vandebroeck, an assistant professor in sociology at the Free University of Brussels, explores this question by a deep engagement with contemporary theory and detailed empirical evidence. The book takes on sociology’s turn to the body in the context of Pierre Bourdieu’s work, in particular the sense of bodies in (unequal) social relations with each other and the distinctions flowing from those relations. Using a huge range of examples, including food and eating practices, sport, and body image, the book moves to position the body as a most crucial site for understanding contemporary inequality. Although the book speaks primarily to sociological debates, the engagement with theory and the empirical analysis is an essential read for anyone interested in how bodies are social, as well as individual. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
22 Maj 201843min
Mark Rifkin, “Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination” (Duke UP, 2017)
Mark Rifkin’s Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination (Duke University Press, 2017) engages fields including physics, phenomenology, native storytelling, and queer temporality. He describes the organization of Beyond Settler Time as “a series of meditations on particular kinds of temporal tensions—ways that Indigenous forms of time push against the imperatives of settler sovereignty” (ix). Exploring a range of sources including film, government documents, fiction, histories, and autobiography, Rifkin considers how time is defined by non-native ideologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
11 Maj 201851min
Sarah Schulman, “Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair” (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016)
Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) examines how accusations of harm are appropriated and deployed by powerful people, groups, and political entities in order to justify extreme punitive measures against marginalized “others.” The book exposes how the powerful capitalize on the language of abuse and misrepresent normative conflict, expressions of difference, and resistance to abuse, in order to avoid accountability and self-reflexivity. Linking a wide range of contexts, from intimate relationships to rapports between nation-states, Schulman highlights how negative in-group dynamics—organized around practices of group shunning, refusal of self-examination, and false loyalty that rejects accountability to others—become the “centerpiece of most social injustice”. Conflict is Not Abuse calls for us to interrupt and seek alternatives to escalation and violence by embracing mutual accountability and a sense of community responsibility for conflict resolution, rather than allowing the punitive state to act as the exclusive arbiter of conflict. Sarah Schulman is a Distinguished Professor of English at the College of Staten Island where she teaches courses on fiction writing, and is a prolific novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and non-fiction writer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
4 Maj 20181h 2min
Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu, “Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain” (Policy Press, 2017)
What is the impact of austerity on minority women? How has this impacted on already long standing forms of social inequality across England, France and Scotland? These questions are the subject of Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain (Policy Press, 2017), the new book from Dr. Leah Bassel, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester, and Professor Akwugo Emejulu, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick. The book foregrounds the narratives and understandings of minority women activists with regard to the current political moment. It challenges contemporary social policy analysis by using an intersectional approach to the impact of both state and third sector actions, as well as the political mobilizations associated with resistance. Drawing on a wealth of interview fieldwork, detailed policy analysis, and a deep but accessible theoretical framework, the book offers an important intervention on the failures of both right and left wing politics in response to the ongoing marginalization and poverty experienced by women of color. The book is an essential and important read for social policy, sociology, and politics scholars, as well as for anyone who seeks to understand the reality of the racialized and patriarchal contemporary state. 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 Apr 201841min
Aimi Hamraie, “Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability” (U Minnesota Press, 2017)
The Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990, but it was just one moment in ongoing efforts to craft the meaning and practice of “good design” that put people with disabilities at the center. In their new book, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Aimi Hamraie takes a “sledgehammer to history” in the spirit of one guerrilla activist group that they track in the archives—among many other people, objects, and historical contexts. Hamraie focuses on work around “access-knowledge”—that is, the forms of expertise that were considered legitimate ways of knowing and responding to disability through design. What has counted as legitimate access-knowledge, Hamraie argues, indicates designers’ goals: Was the aim of design to make productive workers, liberal consumers, or structures that materialized a commitment to spacial belonging? Who were the imagined users and how could new political priorities materialize in worlds already built? Answers to these questions made—and continue to remake—our material world and its frictions. Hamraie brings their training in feminist epistemology to never-before-accessed archival materials, along with an array of historical images and documents. The result is a persuasive, beautiful, and intrepidly researched book. Building Access torques received wisdom in disability studies, history of science, and architectural design, and models how to attend to research, writing, and publishing as a material practice. Hamraie is Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health & Society, and Director of Vanderbilt’s Critical Design Lab. This interview was a collective effort among Vanderbilt faculty and graduate students in the course New Approaches to STS. For more information about using NBN interviews as part of pedagogical practice, please email Laura Stark or see the essay “Can New Media Save the Book?” in Contexts (2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
25 Apr 201844min
Sigrid Schmalzer, et. al., “Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists (UMass Press, 2018)
“What is needed now is not liberal reform or withdrawal, but a radical attack, a strategy of opposition. Scientific workers must develop ways to put their skills at the service of the people and against the oppressors.” (Zimmerman, et al. 1972). Following the 2014 conference, “Science for the People: The 1970s and Today,” Sigrid Schmalzer, Daniel Chard, and Alyssa Botelho, edited a volume of the Science for the People (SftP) movement, curating numerous documents from the group that are as relevant today as when they were published several decades ago. Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) encapsulates the diverse themes, research, and actions of the movement, which included chapters across the US at one time. Emerging from the radical political culture of the 1960s, and predecessor group, Scientists for Social and Political Action, SftP challenged the value-neutrality of science and technology, and instead sought to democratize science by engaging with other political movements and conducting research with non-experts. While much scientific research continues to be funded by the state or by corporations, SftP provided grassroots scientific and technological assistance and education in a multitude of settings. Just to take a few examples from the volume, these efforts included research for social movements, providing electrical power for a Black Panther free medical clinic, promoting the farming technique of intercropping, as well as distributing resources, literature and education to countries such as Vietnam and Nicaragua. The direction of assistance between SftP and other groups was rarely one-sided, as SftP members absorbed knowledge from other movements and places, as documented in the China: Science Walks on Two Legs selection, wherein several SftP members visited China and learned about some of the traditional science and peasant research conducted in the nation. In addition, through working groups and publications, SftP critiqued racist and sexist science, reductionist biology, nuclear power, weapons research, commercial agriculture, US imperialism, and much more. As their many articles and actions show, SftP did more than just critique mainstream science, they attempted to provide alternatives. Finally, SftP had a formative and lasting effect on Science and Technology Studies through its various studies on the social embeddedness of science and its political uses. Since the 2014 conference, Science for the People has been revitalized through new efforts. Check out https://scienceforthepeople.org/ to see continued and original projects. Chad J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests includes the history of the human sciences, the influence of the behavioral sciences on medical practice and health policy, and political activism around science and the arts. Follow him on Twitter @chadjvalasek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
23 Apr 201859min
Anamik Saha, “Race and the Cultural Industries” (Polity, 2018)
How do the media make race? This question is at the heart of Race and the Cultural Industries (Polity, 2018), the new book by Anamik Saha, Lecturer in Media, Communications and Promotion at Goldsmiths, University of London. The book sits between critical race theory and the political economy of culture, proving to be an astute and valuable contribution to a field that, as yet, has yet to find a definitive take on the question of race and the cultural industries. The book is filled with examples from media, including news rooms, publishing, music, theatre and film, as well as rich and detailed theoretical engagements with scholarship accounting for the often hidden structures that give us a culture dominated by the norms of whiteness. It is not only essential reading for media studies scholars, but also is important for anyone interested in contemporary culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
9 Apr 201848min
Stephen Monteiro, “The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender” (MIT Press, 2017)
Sewing, knitting, quilting, the crafts related to fabric making, are usually not what we think about when we consider our digital communications devices. Yet, many of the activities that we find ourselves doing with our devices touching the screen, scrolling, swiping, etc. and some of the language that we use to describe our actions, draw from textile culture. In his book The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender (MIT Press, 2017), Stephen Montiero, at Concordia University, explores the connection between the fabric arts and computing. In it he investigates the relationship between gender and the construction of media technologies. A particular focus of his is an examination of how, as in former years sewing was dismissed as women’s work, social aspects of digital technologies are gendered and dismissed as inconsequential. Montiero also details the eraser of the contributions of many women to the evolution of the technology that is now ubiquitous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
6 Apr 201827min
