Book Reviews
The word “woke” has been used in connection with racial awareness for at least a century. In tracing the history of this word, Aja Romano (2020) notes that its earlier use, as a call for African Americans to be wary of mistreatment, changed in more recent times to designate a critical perspective on political racial dynamics—first…
Read Full Article...Benjamin Heim Shepard’s Sustainable Urbanism and Direct Action opens with a tribute to German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, but it is Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga whose ludic spirit pervades this carnivalesque chronicle of creative civic activism in the belly of the beast that is New York City. Shepard’s method and mode are less dialectical than unabashedly…
Read Full Article...In Sustainable Urbanism and Direct Action: Case Studies in Dialectical Activism, Benjamin Heim Shepard takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of urban activism, mainly in New York City. He defines sustainability broadly, integrating work for climate justice, community gardens and bicycling with organizing around sex work, libraries, harm reduction, and housing. Sustainability, here, means cities that…
Read Full Article...Back in 1961 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told staff it was their duty to “reaffirm” the bureau’s Christian purpose … to defend and perpetuate the dignity of the nation’s Christian endowment,” since Christianity was “the main line of resistance against all enemies of our heritage.” (P 229) Many of us had assumed that this public…
Read Full Article...Andrew Feenberg’s philosophical work has centred on three main themes: the reconstruction of Herbert Marcuse’s philosophy, an appreciation and contemporary reconstruction of Georg Lukács’ early work, and an engaged philosophy of technology. The latter project is grounded in the first two insofar as the relation between reification and the critique of technology is central to…
Read Full Article...This book is a significant contribution to ongoing efforts to re-evaluate Fromm’s work. Featuring prominent Fromm experts, including Joan Braune, Kieran Durkin, Michael J. Thompson, Lauren Langman, and Neil McLaughlin, this edited collection approaches the writings and thought of Erich Fromm from multiple angles, offering incisive analyses of his innovations and contributions as a radical…
Read Full Article...In this 2023 book, Moisés Kopper ethnographically investigates the political, material, and subjective layers of the Brazilian housing policy Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV). Drawing on fieldwork conducted mainly between 2012 and 2015, in a local housing association and social movement in Porto Alegre called Conselho de Desenvolvimento do Partenon (Codespa), the author critically traces…
Read Full Article...Barbara Kingsolver Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins, 2007). Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet (Three Rivers Press, 2007). Sara Bongiorni, A Year Without “Made in China”: Our Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy (John Wiley & Sons, 2007 Colin Beavan, No Impact…
Read Full Article...Did it start with Bowie, or was it Gary Glitter—that vast mid-1970s dumbing down that glam rock initiated and then perfected? “Outrageous” outfits, the androgyny fix, retro Space fantasies, and at the fringes the desiccated meth freaks for whom the Velvet Underground was alpha and omega. The Stones, Yardbirds, Animals and even purist Eric Clapton;…
Read Full Article...In December 2006, several months before the completion of my dissertation fieldwork in Istanbul, I offered a preliminary presentation of my research on civil Islamic foundations and secularism at the American Research Institute in Turkey, which had partially funded my research. Although I had alerted several Turkish friends and colleagues of my talk, I was…
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Latest Issue
2024: Vol. 23, No. 2
Latest Issue
2024: Vol. 23, No. 2
Between The Issues
