New Books In Critical Theory

How can detective fiction explain the social world? In Detecting the Social: Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Mary Evans and Hazel Johnstone, both from the London School of Economics' Department of Gender Studies,  and Sarah Moore, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath's Department of Social and Policy Sciences, set out a radical agenda for contemporary social theory grounded in an analysis of detective fiction since the 1970s. The book uses a range of examples from the genre, as well as comparative discussions with previous eras of detective fiction. In doing so, the book demonstrates how questions of modernity, globalisation, trust in institutions, blame and responsibility, gender and gender relations, along with the rise of neoliberalism and the transformation of the social state since the 1970s can be understood through key works such as Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. By showing an alternative to 'unpeopled' social theories, the book will be key readi

Robin Marie Averbeck is a writer, activist and teacher at California State University, Chico. Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought (The University of North Carolina Press, 2018) is a historical examination of postwar liberalism that powerfully shows how racist capitalism is at the heart of liberal thought. Through ideological laden invocation of pluralism, the “culture of poverty,” and faith in the workings of democratic institutions, liberals shared with conservatives support for an individualistic and racist social order. Demonstrating concern for poverty embodied in the vision of the Great Society, liberals attempted to effectively deny the issue of race for African Americans. Attention to poverty turned to finding an explanation in the pathological makeup of poor blacks and in the overarching “culture of poverty” that became identified with urban environments. After supporting Civil Rights legislation and Community Action Programs funded by the federal government, libera

Almost a decade in the making, Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland(Cambridge University Press, 2018) draws on collaboratively collected oral histories of two social movements in western Madhya Pradesh, the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) and the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS). This longue-durée approach allows Alf Gunvald Nilsen to unravel the Indian state's everyday tyranny against its adivasi citizens. The deep tentacles of caste and class power embodied as the state reach into the Bhil everyday, not tethered to single issues of "development" induced displacement or the disappearing commons, but as an all-encompassing structural violence manifested in the realities of malnutrition, agricultural debt and seasonal migration.Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria.Madhuri Karak holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She tweets @madhurikarak and more of her work can be found h

If you want to read just one book to properly understand capitalism, let it be Tania Li’s award-winning 2014 book Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, 2014). This might seem like a strange choice: how can a study of a faraway and possibly exotic indigenous place shed light on “our” own global realities of jobless growth and rising inequality? But it can, and it does. The book is a masterpiece of social scientific scholarship and critical political praxis. Through a longitudinal ethnography conducted over twenty years, the book follows the consequences of Indonesian highlanders’ fateful decision to plant the booming cash crop of the 1990s, cacao. That decision, Li shows, was the reason that capitalism took root and developed apace in the highlands over the coming decades. All the telltale signs of capitalist relations emerged: land was privatized, commons eroded, classes differentiated, and wealth and poverty co-created. Instead of coming as an imposition from the

Today I spoke with Flavia di Mario, a young scholar of political economy and industrial relations. She coauthored a very provocative book with Andrea Micocci, The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2017). Flavia is doctoral student at London Middlesex University, Andrea Micocci was professor of Economics at Link University, Rome, Italy. In their words, they claim that capitalism is based on a false logic in which all facts and ideas are reduced to a consideration of their ‘feasibility’ within the capitalist system. Thus, all mainstream economic and political theories, including those such as Marxism which are supposed to offer an alternative vision, have been stunted and utopian ideas are completely side-lined. "In order to constantly work out the feasible, you have to hang on to pseudo-factual concepts: nationalism; a constant drive for efficiency; the idea of nation/state; corporatism; managed markets; business ethics; governance etc. Capitalism is reduced to the management of the economy by states

How has European culture changed since the 1960s? In Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010 (Routledge, 2018), Dr. Irmak Karademir Hazir and her co-authors, explore this important question by looking at newspaper coverage of culture across Europe over the last 50 years. The book has an incredibly rich and detailed dataset of newspaper articles from Spain, UK, France, Turkey, Sweden and Finland, and covers a range of cultural forms. The book grapples with the classic tensions in the study of culture, between aesthetics and commercialisation, hierarchies, and globalisation, along with changes in the format, style, and production conditions for cultural journalism. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in culture in Europe, and you can find out more about the project and read some of the papers here.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does cultural taste regulate our lives? In Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Dr. Victoria Cann, a lecturer in humanities at the University of East Anglia, explores the regulatory role of taste in the reproduction of gender. The book draws on detailed fieldwork with schools in Norfolk, England, using a range of methods including digital approaches to understand young people's experiences of taste and gender. The rich and detailed narratives of the young people are placed into dialogue with broader social and media theories, with crucial contributions to how we understand youth, gender, and taste. By showing how particular forms of cultural consumption and knowledge are valued, how others are given subordinate status, and the difficulty of transgressing boundaries, the book will be of interest to both social science and humanities readers, as well as anyone interested in the role of culture in contemporary society.

None of the climate news that we’re getting is good right now, especially now that a number of governments are reversing or failing to meet commitments they made as part of the Paris Climate Accord. One of the challenges facing human societies and the planet is the issue of aridification. As freshwater is depleted and unsustainable agricultural practices place more stress on soil than can be supported, an increasing amount of land is being lost to erosion, a process that will only become worsen as the planet heats up in the coming decades. Despite plentiful information and awareness, most of the solutions that have been offered up have failed to meaningfully stop the damage being done to the planet.In Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of "Green" Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2018), Hannah Holleman  looks at the Dust Bowl as one of the first manmade global environmental catastrophes. She begins by noting its manmade dimensions and the underlying forces that

What is the relationship between popular misogyny and popular feminism? In Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny(Duke University Press, 2018), Sarah Banet-Weiser, Professor of Media and Communications and Head of Department at the LSE's Department of Media and Communications, explores these two interrelated ideas in order to analyse a range of examples including the body positivity movement, confidence, #gamergate, seduction communities, and women in tech. These examples, along with extensive discussion of media examples including advertising, and a theorisation of the 'economy of visibility', demonstrate the important work of popular feminism, its limits, and the misogynist backlash aimed at arresting feminism's progress. The book engages and explains our current politics, with important lessons for both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a media analysis with global implications. As a result the book is an important read across the social sciences, politics, and beyond.Learn more about your ad cho

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should we value culture? In What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (Monash University Press, 2018), Professors Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, from Flinders University's Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture project, explore the troublesome question at the core of much contemporary cultural policy. The book charts the struggles over cultural data collection, both in the Australian setting and with implications for many more global debates. It draws on a wealth of examples from across humanities and literature, as well as cultural events. Setting out the importance of narratives, critiquing both the rise of digital platforms and the reductiveness of economic approaches, the book offers a radical alternative for those seeking to defend the value of culture in contemporary politics and society.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few who have visited India in the past two decades will have failed to noticed the sudden and spectacular urban transformation that has taken place in many of its cities. Gated residential complexes with tennis courts and indoor gyms, glitzy office buildings, gleaming five-star hotels, and of course air-conditioned malls have become ubiquitous as the new face of a “new” India, often understood as symbols of a long-awaited global modernity. Getting behind the glittery facade, Llerena Searle’s new book Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India (University of Chicago Press, 2015) shows that these buildings are not built to service consumer India; they are built for real estate developers and international investors for whom Indian real estate has become a profitable speculative gamble. Indian land and buildings are no longer local resources for production or use; they are turning, or more accurately being turned, into internationally tradeable financial assets.

In her book Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (Duke University Press, 2018), Catherine Russell defines "archiveology" as “the reuse, recycling, appropriation and borrowing of archival sounds and images by filmmakers”. In her book, she reviews specific film examples. She also discusses the related work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin and how his ideas coincide with the examples she presents.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can every aspect of society be 'creative'? In Against Creativity (Verso, 2018), Oli Mould, a lecturer in geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, explains the need to resist and recast the ideology of enforced creativity sweeping through societies all over the world. The book offers a wide range of critical engagements, from the idea of creative work, through the reform of public services, to engagements with space and place, with numerous examples of alternatives to the current 'creative' settlement, and how they reflect bodies, organisations, practices, and places. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary social world. You can also read more on Oli's TaCity blog.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we are joined by Grant Farred, Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University.  Farred is the author of The Burden of Over-Representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy(Temple University Press, 2018), which explores three sporting ‘events’: an uncharacteristic outburst from Jackie Robinson’s at a spring training game in New Orleans, Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela’s celebration after the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and the ethereal presence of Derrida in the stands of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.  He concentrates on these three happenings in order to raise questions about (over)representation in sports, the event, reconciliation and conciliation, the curse of service, the interplay between love and suffering, and coloniality and post-coloniality.In The Burden of Over-Representation, Farred re-interprets these moments using the work of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and most consistently Jacques Derrida.  He also interweaves his analy

According to most experts, boys have more trouble in schools than girls. Further, African-American boys have even more trouble than, say, white boys. What to do? According to some, one possible solution to the latter problem is all-Black male schools, or "ABMSs." In her new book In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Keisha Lindsay critiques ABMSs from a feminist perspective and has some helpful things to say about how to educate young African-Americans generally.Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Scholar at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode, I talked with Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim about her new book, Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research (Sage Publications, 2016). The book offers a comprehensive overview of the theoretical foundation and practical guidance of narrative inquiry. It embodies narrative thinking by seamlessly weaving together epistemological theories, methodological discussions, and personal stories. Seasoned with Dr. Kim’s unique sense of humor, Understanding Narrative Inquiry is highly accessible and at the same time extremely insightful. A highlight of the interview will be Dr. Kim’s discussion on how to strike a balance between aesthetic play and rigorous social research in narrative studies. It is also helpful to hear her explanation of the various ways researchers can think with theories in crafting their stories. The book has received the 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from the Narrative Research Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Associ

Though early American labor organizers agitated for the eight-hour workday on the grounds that they were entitled to “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” free time as a political good has received little attention from politicians and political philosophers. In her book, Free Time (Princeton University Press, 2018), Julie L. Rose explains that this neglect arises from the mistaken characterization of free time as a matter of personal choice and preference. The book instead argues that not only should we understand free time as a resource that is required for the pursuit of one’s chosen ends and for the exercise of formal liberties and opportunities, but also that it is a resource to which citizens are entitled on the basis of the widely held liberal principles of individual freedom and equality. The claim that the fair distribution of free time is required for justice serves as grounds for the book to interrogate a whole host of policy choices—including maximum work

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons periodically, and occasionally providing consultations for policymakers. In Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (Teachers College Press, 2018), renowned critical psychologist Michelle Fine challenges us to imagine social research radically differently. According to Fine, if a researcher’s social justice work was only targeted at top politicians of this era, she probably would feel our era had never been darker. Fine argues that social research can do far more than that: It could create new solidarities across multiple marginalized groups, democratize the knowledge production process, disrupt the reproduction of oppressive social structure, and ultimately, sow the seed of positive social changes.  Just Research in Contentious Times documents Fine’s long-term grounded research

Television started as a dream of nineteenth-century science fiction. It took its place in the twentieth-century home, and became a fixture of family life and a transformative cultural force. Today, televisions are both less visible and more present than ever, thanks to screens on our walls and in our pockets. Chris Horrocks traces the cultural history of the television set in The Joy of Sets: A Short History of the Television (Reaktion Press, 2017). Horrocks is a filmmaker and professor in the School of Critical Studies and Creative Industries at Kingston University in London. His previous books include Cultures of Colour: Visual, Material, Textual (Berghahn, 2012), and Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality (Icon, 2000).Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices