what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Should I buy this book?

A year or so ago I devoted an entire post to the need to ration the production of non-fiction books. When I’m browsing in a bookshop and come across an interesting title, I ask three questions –

1. Can the author clearly demonstrate (eg in the introduction or opening chapter) that the book is the result of long thought and not just an inclination to jump on the latest bandwagon? 
Put bluntly why, despite these other previous efforts, does the author still feel compelled to inflict another book on us??? This is so important that I would ideally like an entire chapter on this – particularly if it’s on a subject which attracts a lot of interest.....

2. Is there a clear list and comment on what the author regards as other essential texts? 
And I don't mean a long "bibliography" viz reading list which I see as little more than a sign of "penis envy"  My favourite writers have an endnote they call "SOURCES" which identify the books which the author has found particularly useful in her/his writing. We begin to get a sense of the author’s likes and dislikes - and perhaps even of their prose style

3. Is it written in an “inviting” style? Last year I held up Yanis Varoufakis’ writing style as an exemplar - for the sheer originality of his prose – showing a mind at work which is constantly active……rejecting dead phrases, clichés and jargon… using narrative and stories to carry us along…..thinking constantly about how to keep the readers’ interest alive…

There’s also a couple of other features I look for –

- a “potted version” of each chapter. Most think-tank reports have executive summaries. I don’t know why more authors don’t adopt the same approach for their chapters (eg this book on Defending Democracy).
- para headings, tables….and graphics. Readers can absorb only so much continuous text. And if the subject matter is difficult, it helps if, at least every couple of pages, there is a heading which gives a sense of the argument…

If the book survives these tests and is brought home, the post then goes on to give some hints about what we might call “active reading” – eg identifying some key questions to use in the book’s interrogation; scribbling comments; and writing these up to have a record of the book…
The basic message is reinforced in the conclusion with advice to publishers and authors when they write their “blurbs” -

- tell us what’s distinctive about your book; ie why you feel you need to add to what is already a huge literature on the subject
- “position” your book – ie tell us what you consider the key texts in the field (and why) and how your book relates to them. At best you can offer a typology of the different schools of thought on the issue
- convince us that you have not only read the “relevant literature” but that you have done so with a reasonably open mind; At best, offer an annotated list of key reading - with your preferences. This will give us a sense of your stance and fairness

A new book has just come out to which I can’t apply the tests – because it’s not yet in the physical bookstores – only on Amazon. It’s Capitalism on Edge - How fighting precarity can achieve radical change without crisis or utopia (2020) by Albena Azmanova who was a Bulgarian dissident in the 1980s and now teaches at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies, where she chairs the postgraduate program in international political economy.
She obtained her PhD at the New School for Social Research in New York and her recent work “aims at bringing the critique of political economy back into critical social theory, with publications tracing the metamorphoses of neoliberal capitalism”. As it happens I posted about a fascinating book about the Frankfurt school of critical social theory whose German refugees had helped found that famous New York School in the 1930s.

I can’t hold “Capitalism on Edge” in my hands and skim – as I would in a bookshop – but I do have cyber sources which allow me to apply most of the required tests….The sources are -
- 60 or so pages of Amazon excerpts which include not only the intro and a tantalising few pages from the opening few chapters and Conclusion - but also the notes and the entire bibliography (16 pages)
- 2 of her (rather academic) articles on related subjects here and here

Having looked at all of these quite closely (well, not the last two!!) my initial judgement is that the book fares reasonably well on the tests…
- it recognises that a non-academic audience does require a clarity which is not expected by an academic audience
- reference to other books is woven into the text itself, not just relegated to the end of the book
- it makes an effort (in chapter 2) to explain what’s distinctive about the book
- it could have made more of an effort with tables, graphics and summaries
- and, every now and then, the academic jargon shows up. What, for example, are to be make of “What places them in an agonistic dialogue of a meaningful disagreement about injustice?” or “structural antinomies that translate into historical patterns of social injustice within the trajectories of relational, systemic and structural domination????”

On balance, I would be tempted to buy it – but for the price - 25 pounds….Just for the paperback version!! That’s more than double the normal price.
But what, I can hear some of you say, about the content…the drift of the argument???
It’s all very well for you to sound off about the style, the presentation, whether there is an annotated bibliography or enough tables and graphics…….even the price. But we want to know how well argued it is……. whether it gives us an angle we hadn’t thought of??…..  

And to that question, I’m not so sure….I liked the challenge she raises to the grip ”inequality” has taken recently on our language - which she argues should be seen not as a symptom of capitalism’s crisis but rather of its unfailing good health! Why, she asks, do people seem more distressed by the rich than by the poor? That’s an interesting question…..

One of her basic theses is that “neoliberalism” has been replaced by what she calls “precarity capitalism”. I’ve never been happy with the word neoliberalism – but I need some persuasion that the new millennium saw a fundamental change in what I’ve called the Beast that drives the world. At one stage she suggests three reasons for this - the nature of discontent; the agent of change; the mechanism for change
Her conclusion talks of “socially irresponsible rule” and “discerns 2 main contradictions generated by contemporary capitalism’s basic drive for competitive production of profit” – what she calls “surplus employability” (AI Robots etc) and “acute job dependency” (the state’s inability to supply jobs) respectively.

At this point my eyes began to glaze over…….

But I’ve read less than a quarter of the book. This very thorough and sympathetic reviewer has read the entire book and given us 11 pages to think about

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