Sociology
Spring| Summer 2019
Race, Disability Studies, Healthcare, Work
Social Poverty
Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties Sarah Halpern-Meekin June 2019 320pp 9781479816897 £23.99 PB 9781479891214 £74.00 HB NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
Provides a muchneeded window into the nature of social "es among low income, unmarried parents, highligh"ng their o#enignored forms of hardship. Drawing on indepth interviews with thirtyone couples, collected during their par"cipa"on in a governmentsponsored rela"onship educa"on program called Family Expecta"ons, she brings unprecedented a$en"on to the rela"onal and emo"onal dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Poverty scholars typically focus on the economic use value of social "es—for example, how rela"onships enable access to job leads, informal loans, or a spare bedroom. However, Halpern Meekin introduces the important new concept of “social poverty,” iden"fying it not just as a deriva"ve of economic poverty, but as its own condi"on, which also perpetuates poverty. Through a careful and nuanced analysis of the strengths and limita"ons of rela"onship classes, she shines a light on the fundamental place of core socioemo"onal needs in our lives. Engaging and compassionate, Social Poverty highlights a new direc"on for policy and poverty research that can enrich our understanding of disadvantaged families around the country.
Intersectionality
Origins, Contestations, Horizons Anna Carastathis
Expanding Fron!ers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality May 2019 300pp 1 illus. 9781496212481 £23.99 NIP UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
While “intersec"onality” circulates as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other cri"cal voices to urge a more careful reading. Challenging the narra"ves of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersec"onality is a horizon, illumina"ng ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to “go beyond” intersec"onality are premature. A provisional interpreta"on of intersec"onality can disorient habits of essen"alism, categorial purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segrega"on and subordina"on in poli"cal movements. Through a close reading of cri"cal race theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s germinal texts, published more than twentyfive years ago, Carastathis urges analy"c clarity, contextual rigor, and a poli"cized, historicized understanding of this widely traveling concept. Intersec"onality’s roots in social jus"ce movements and cri"cal intellectual projects—specifically Black feminism—must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so its radical poten"al to actualize coali"ons can be enacted.
Prison Land
Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America Brett Story March 2019 232pp 9781517906887 £15.99 PB 9781517906870 £66.00 HB
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
Offers a geographic excava"on of the prison as a set of social rela"ons— including property, work, gender, and race—enacted across various landscapes of American life. Prisons, Bre$ Story shows, are more than just buildings of incarcera"on bound to cycles of crime and punishment. Instead, she inves"gates the produc"on of carceral power at a range of sites, from buses to coalfields and from blighted ci"es to urban financial hubs, to demonstrate how the organiza"on of carceral space is ideologically and materially grounded in racial capitalism. Story takes an expansive view of what cons"tutes contemporary carceral space, interroga"ng the ways in which racial capitalism is reproduced and for which police technologies of containment and control are employed. By framing the prison as a set of social rela"ons, Prison Land forces us to confront the produc"on of new carceral forms that go well beyond the prison system. In doing so, it profoundly undermines both conven"onal ideas of prisons as logical responses to the problem of crime and a$achment to punishment as the relevant measure of a transformed criminal jus"ce system.
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The Politics of Operations
Excavating Contemporary Capitalism Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson March 2019 312pp 9781478002833 £20.99 PB 9781478001751 £83.00 HB DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Sandro Mezzadra and Bre$ Neilson inves"gate how capital reshapes its rela"on with poli"cs through opera"ons that enable the extrac"on and exploita"on of mineral resources, labor, data, and cultures. They show how capital—which they theorize as a direct poli"cal actor—operates through the logis"cal organiza"on of rela"ons between people, property, and objects as well as through the penetra"on of financializa"on into all realms of economic life. Mezzadra and Neilson present a capacious analysis of a wide range of issues, from racial capitalism, the convergence of neoliberalism and na"onalism, and Marx's concept of aggregate capital to the financial crisis of 2008 and how colonialism, empire, and globaliza"on have shaped the modern state since World War II. In so doing, they illustrate the dis"nc"ve ra"onality and logics of contemporary capitalism while calling for a poli"cs based on collec"ve ins"tu"ons that exist outside the state.