I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

Straightened. Stigmatised. “Tamed”. Celebrated. Fetishised. Forever misunderstood.

Black hair is never ‘just hair’. It’s time we understood why.

Recent years have seen the conversation around black hair reach tipping point, yet detractors still proclaim “It’s only hair!” when it never is. This book is about why black hair matters and how it can be viewed as a blueprint for decolonisation. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power and into today’s Natural Hair Movement, the Cultural Appropriation Wars and beyond.

Touching on everything from women’s solidarity and friendship, to forgotten African scholars, to the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian’s braids, Don’t Touch My Hair proves that far from being only hair, black hairstyling culture can be understood as an allegory for black oppression and, ultimately, liberation.

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The Verdict:

Emma Dabiri is a teaching fellow in the Africa Department at SOAs and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmith’s College. This passionate, fascinating and very interesting book uses black hair as the basis for examining racial attitudes, colonial attitudes, double standards and how it damages Black people and mixes Dabiri’s personal experience with history, sociology, and anthropology to produce a nuanced, thought-provoking read.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top.

Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful ‘class pay gap’ exists in Britain’s elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 200 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting - they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile.

This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.

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The Verdict:

Sam Friedman is Associate Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Daniel Laurison is Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College. This is an absolutely fascinating book that really resonated with me about the role class and privilege play in social mobility and the role homophily still plays in career progression using case studies and interviews in an anonymised accountancy firm, TV channel, acting and an architecture firm.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

We tend to think cities look the way they do because of the conscious work of architects, planners and builders. But what if the look of cities had less to do with design, and more to do with social, cultural, financial and political processes, and the way ordinary citizens interact with them? What if the city is a process as much as a design? Richard J Williams takes the moment construction is finished as a beginning, tracing the myriad processes that produce the look of the contemporary global city.

This book is the story of dramatic but unforeseen urban sights: how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city results in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories have been repurposed as creative hubs in a precarious postindustrial economy. It is also the story of how popular urban cliches and the fictional portrayal of cities powerfully shape the way we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us.

Thought-provoking and original, Why Cities Look The Way They Do will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the contemporary city, shedding new light on humanity’s greatest collective invention.

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The Verdict:

Richard J Williams is Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures at Edinburgh University. In this fascinating book he builds the argument that global cities look the way they do due to different, interacting processes operating on them. He focuses on the impact of money, power, sex, work, war and culture (specifically creative industries) predominantly on western cities, and I came away with a different way of thinking and looking at places.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

”Because you’re worth it”, proclaims the classic cosmetics ad. “Just do it!” implores the global sports retailer. Everywhere we turn, we are constantly encouraged to experience as much as possible, for as long as possible, in as many ways as possible. FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – has become a central preoccupation in a world fixated on the never-ending pursuit of gratification and self-fulfilment.

But this pursuit can become a treadmill leading nowhere. How can we break out of it? In this refreshing book, bestselling Danish philosopher and psychologist Svend Brinkmann reveals the many virtues of missing out on the constant choices and temptations that dominate our experience-obsessed consumer society. By cultivating self-restraint and celebrating moderation we can develop a more fulfilling way of living that enriches ourselves and our fellow humans and protects the planet we all share – in short, we can discover the joy of missing out.

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The Verdict:

Svend Brinkmann is professor of psychology at Aalborg University and in this readable book (translated from Danish by Tam McTurk) he examines the values of self-restraint and moderation to combat the Fear Of Missing Out lifestyle. However, while Brinkmann makes strong psychological and philosophical arguments for why moderation is good for you, he doesn’t give any guidance on how to practice it and so it feels a little half-done as a subject.

THE JOY OF MISSING OUT was released in the United Kingdom on 8th February 2019. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

From the rise of terrorism to the uncertainties associated with economic crisis and recession, our age is characterised by fear. Fear is the expression of a society on unstable foundations. Most of us feel that our social status is under threat and our future prospects in jeopardy. We are overwhelmed by a sense of having been catapulted into a world to which we no longer belong.

Tracing this experience, Heinz Bude uncovers a society marked by disturbing uncertainty, suppressed anger and quiet resentment. This is as true in our close relationships as it is in the world of work, in how we react to politicians as much as in our attitudes towards bankers and others in the financial sector. Bude shows how this fear is not derived so much from a "powerful other" but rather from the seemingly endless range of possibilities that we face. While this may seem to offer us greater autonomy and freedom, in reality the unknown impact and meaning of each option creates a vacuum which is filled by fear.

What conditions lead people to feel anxious and fearful for themselves and others? How can individuals withstand fear and develop ways of making their fears intelligible? Probing these and other questions, Bude provides a fresh analysis of some of the most fundamental features of our societies today.

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The Verdict:

Heinz Bude is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kassel and in this very academic book (translated from German by Jessica Spengler), which I found difficult to follow at times, he sets out the nature of the fears inherent within modern society, from fears within relationships to fears of immigrants and foreigners and fears among the middle and working classes.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

We live in times of increasing public distrust of the main institutions of modern society. Experts, including scientists, are suspected of working to hidden agendas or serving vested interests. The solution is usually seen as more public scrutiny and more control by democratic institutions - experts must be subservient to social and political life.

In this book, Harry Collins and Robert Evans take a radically different view. They argue that, rather than democracies needing to be protected from science, democratic societies need to learn how to value science in this new age of uncertainty. By emphasising that science is a moral enterprise, guided by values that should matter to all, they show how science can support democracy without destroying it and propose a new institution - The Owls - that can mediate between science and society and improve technological decision-making for the benefit of all.

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The Verdict:

This book defends what Collins and Evans call Wave Three of Science Studies, which aims to preserve the expertise of science and better manage its trade off with democratic accountability most notably though establishing a new institution called The Owls who can mediate between the two groups as some kind of honest broker in a highly theoretical read with noble intentions but which never really convinced me.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader is an engaging examination of this new and growing field, bringing together provocative, multidisciplinary articles to look at the interplay of medical science, clinical practice, consumerism, and the healthcare marketplace. Ranging far beyond the simple discussion of patients, symptoms, and pills, this reader offers important insights into contemporary cultures of health and illness and the social life of pharmaceuticals.

Drawing on anthropological, historical, and sociological research, it delves into the production, circulation, and consumption of pharmaceuticals. The coverage here is broad and compelling with discussion of topics such as the advent of oral contraceptives, taxonomies of disease, the evolution of prescribing habits, the ethical dimension of pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, and drug production in the age of globalisation. Placing a strong focus on context, this collection exposes readers to a variety of approaches, ideas, and frameworks and provides them with an appreciation and understanding of the complex roles pharmaceuticals play in society today.

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The Verdict:

Sergio Sismondo and Jeremy A Greene have pulled together 17 papers drawing on anthropology, history and sociology to look at the interaction between the pharmaceutical and medical research industries and consumerism in an anthology that’s fascinating and frightening but also very US centric and filled with academic jargon, which makes it quite dense and difficult to get through.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable – from American “shooters” and ISIS to Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media?

In Age Of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century, before leading us to the present.

He shows that as the world became modern those who were unable to fulfil its promises – freedom, stability and prosperity – were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who were left, or pushed, behind, reacting in horrifyingly similar ways: intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence.

Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.

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The Verdict:

Inspired by the rise of the Hindu nationalists to government in India in 2014, Pankaj Mishra attempts in this book to explain that the rise of the demagogues together with the attraction of extremist groups such as ISIS to the westernised youth. He specifically draws parallels between the current world situation with the political, economic and social disorder that occurred during the right of the 19th century European capitalist economies and involved notions of the clash of civilisations and obvious inequalities that led to widespread anger but goes on to argue that the modern plight is heightened by the promotion of individualism and the rise of globalisation.

AGE OF ANGER will be released in the United Kingdom on 26th January 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.