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T J Clark at Bristol Festival of Ideas This Weekend

May 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Clark author photo

T J Clark’s Picasso and Truth offers a breathtaking and original new look at the most significant artist of the modern era. This Saturday evening, T J Clark will be speaking about this important painter and his new book at a Bristol Festival of Ideas event.

Please click here if you would like to find out more about this event.

T J Clark will also be speaking at:

The London Review Bookshop on 28th May (sold out)

Hay Festival on 30th May

Birkbeck, University of London on 7th June (free entry)

and the London Lit Weekend on 5th October (stay tuned for more information)

Filed Under: Art and Architecture, Cultural Studies, European History, Events, Humanities, PUP Europe, Twitter

Country/Rap Song on Race Relations

April 10, 2013 by

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J on the same track? That’s equally as strange as the Tim McGraw and Nelly duet in 2004′s “Over and Over”. Unlike that smooth song about heartbreak, however, Paisley and LL’s song has a much different topic. The new song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is causing quite a stir.

The song is supposed to be interpreted as a song about overcoming racial tensions caused by past events in American history. However, as is everything that exists, its message is subject to interpretation. Race relations has never been an easy topic to discuss and many are calling the song an epic fail. The duo calls the song “a conversation starter.”

While the two may have had good intentions in writing this song, to get a better picture of race relations and how they are evolving, check out some of these PUP books.

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver & Traci R. Burch

The American racial order–the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s races and ethnicities–is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.

The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s election–not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices.

Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.

Jennifer L. Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, professor of African and African American studies, and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. Vesla M. Weaver is an assistant professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Traci R. Burch is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation.

What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans by Kenneth Prewitt

America is preoccupied with race statistics–perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different “race” line–the nativity line–separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government’s “statistical races.” Not likely, observes Kenneth Prewitt, who shows why the way we count by race is flawed.

Prewitt calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenth-century race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical “Asian race.” One that once tried to divide the “white race” into “good whites” and “bad whites,” and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains four hundred years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated twenty years ago. Contrary to common sense, the classification says there are only two ethnicities in America–Hispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better?

What Is Your Race? clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It’s not an overnight task–particularly the explosive step of dropping today’s race question from the census–but Prewitt argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race by Thomas J. Sugrue

Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner’s famous remark “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama’s America and how President Obama intends to deal with it.

Obama’s journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions–particularly between blacks and whites–remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama’s evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama’s place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency.

Does Obama’s presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton).

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, In the News, Music, Sociology, Twitter

Paul Seabright on the Relationship Between the Sexes

October 2, 2012 by

 

Women occupy fewer positions of power in business than men. Why is that? What explains the types of relationships that men have with women and the different ways in which men and women network with friends and acquaintances? In this Social Science Bites podcast, Paul Seabright, author of ‘The War of the Sexes‘, combines an economist’s perspective with insights from biology and evolutionary science to give answers to just these questions.

Filed Under: Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Cognitive Science, Cultural Studies, Mind, Pod/Vodcast, Popular Science, Psychology, Sociology

Paul Seabright in the UK

June 1, 2012 by

Seabright RSA photo

Paul Seabright, author of ‘The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present‘ was in the UK in May.  He spoke at the RSA and recorded an interview with VoxEU.

Please follow the attached links to listen again to any of these.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Cultural Studies, Economics, Sociology, Twitter, United Kingdom

Paul Seabright, author of The War of the Sexes, will be in the UK in May

April 30, 2012 by

Paul Seabright, whose book ‘The War of the Sexes’ is published on 10 May, will be in the UK on 14th and 15th May.  He will be talking at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on 14 May and at the RSA on 15 May.  Please follow links to sign up for either of these events or contact Caroline Priday cpriday@pupress.co.uk
for further information regarding his trip.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Cultural Studies, Economics, Sociology, Twitter, United Kingdom

Emrys Westacott interview on BBC World Service

April 2, 2012 by

Emrys Westacott, author of ‘The Virtues of our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits’ was one of the guests on BBC World Service’s The Forum on Sunday 1 April. In addition to talking about his book he was asked to provide the programmes regular Sixty Second Idea to Change the World in which he suggested tackling political corruption by introducing some austerity constraints. To hear more about these and listen to his interview please click here

Filed Under: Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Sociology

Emrys Westacott in Europe

March 20, 2012 by

Emrys Westacott, author of ‘The Virtues of our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness and Other Bad Habits‘ will be visiting the UK in March.  On 28 March he will be in discussion with Julian Baggini at a Festival of Ideas Event at Foyles in Bristol and will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on 31 March.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Twitter

So, what kind of music do you like?

January 23, 2012 by

It’s the question teenagers have been asking each other for decades to size up each others’ style, philosophy, and  even politics. There’s no doubt about it, music communities matter. But how much credit should we give to musical geniuses like George Clinton, or James Brown? Which musical failures should we blame on greedy record labels, or jealous spouses? And how much did spectacular events change musical history? What about Dylan going electric in Newport, or Hendrix playing Woodstock? In Banding Together, Jennifer Lena argues no genius, no accident, and no event matters as much to American popular musics as the everyday activities of the communities that support them. But Jenn not only offers a sociological explanation for the growth of 20th century American popular music, she also made us a mix tape! She was kind enough to share with me a “Spotify playlist for Banding Together”, along with some thoughts on her choices, which range from “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” to “Me so Horny.” You can check out her playlist here:

The Banding Together Spotify playlist

Anyone that wants to hear the playlist needs to join Spotify (by creating a login ID and password), and downloading the free software. Then you can find the playlist for “Banding Together” by typing “spotify:user:lenajc” into the search box, or clicking on the link, above. Read on for some great music trivia after the jump:

I love that my friend Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) claims that my book “has a beat and you can dance to it,” but it just isn’t true. I begged Princeton University Press to make the world’s first musical book—I imagined something like those greeting cards—but it wasn’t to be. Thank goodness for Spotify. This free service will allow you access to an amazing repository of recorded music (including the stuff in your existing digital library). You can create playlists, share them with others, and even collaborate in their creation! It really is a terrific resource.

The playlist I created for the book (“Banding Together: The Spotify Playlist for the Book”) clocks in around 3 hours, and I’m still looking for more music to add. Each of the songs I chose is either specifically mentioned in my book, or stands as a representative of a musical style that I discuss in Banding Together. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

  • “Funky Butt” by Mississippi John Hurt. The Library of Congress did us a magnificent favor by funding the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress, which now contains over 3 million artifacts including recordings like this one. “Funky Butt” is King Buddy Bolden’s “signature tune” (and on page 79 I describe its link to other “funky” things), but I love Hurt’s version—a beautiful guitar tone, a strong and sweet vocal, and hilarious lyrics.
  • “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. I included this song for two reasons: the first is that I discuss the politics around the crediting of this white band as “original Dixieland” in Chapter 3 (starting on page 98). The second is that Chicago Judge George A. Carpenter argued (while presiding over a copyright dispute) that “no living human being could listen to that result on the phonograph and discover anything musical on it” (see page 101). I wonder what you think about Carpenter’s taste?
  • “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” by Mahalia Jackson. If you’ve never heard black gospel, this is a great place to start. The song was penned by the “inventor” of gospel, the Reverend Thomas A. Dorsey, and later became a million-record seller for Elvis Presley (see pages 104 onward, and his version is in the playlist, too!). Here, one of Dorsey’s “discoveries,” the great Mahalia Jackson, shows incredible vocal control and spiritual inspiration. Jackson toured the “gospel highway” for five long years, but her hard labor was rewarded with a feature in Time Magazine, and the honor of performing at JFK’s 1961 inauguration and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral.
  • “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by Bill Monroe. Monroe, the “father of bluegrass,” performs this country and bluegrass standard, the lyrics of which are etched on the wall of the Country Music Hall of Fame, in Nashville, TN. Originally a hymn, adapted into country song, and performed by scores of musicians ranging from Johnny Cash to Moby, it is a true American original.
  • “Night in the City” by Judy Collins and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Still and Nash. These two songs, plus singles by Janis Joplin (also with Big Brother and the Holding Company), The Doors, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Leonard Cohen (singing one of my all-time favorite songs, about his brief romance with Joplin), represent the wild and wonderful years of the “Laurel Canyon” group on Ridpath Lane. Stephen Stills plays guitar on the Collins song, and his bandmate Graham Nash wrote and named the second tune after Judy. You can read more about their bohemian grove in Chapter 3.
  • “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke. Quite simply, one of the very best pop tunes ever written, but one of those nearly lost to history. Cooke originally recorded the tune while working under the name “Dale Cook.” After the weak sales of his first single, “Lovable,” Specialty Records released him from the contract leaving the rest of the session, including this song, on the cutting room floor. Thankfully, his producer kept the tape and it later was a hit for the singer recording under his own name.
  • “Chocolate City” by Parliament. The wild ways of George Clinton’s twin groups Parliament and Funkadelic are carefully detailed in Chapter 3 of Banding Together. The lyrics of this song figure in the text. Which of today’s black entertainers do you think Clinton would hire for cabinet posts?
  • “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew. This song topped the charts at the very height of moral panics around the dysfunction wrought by popular music (in 1989). The song samples dialogue from two movies—do you know which they are?
  • “On & On” by Jesse Saunders. Alleged to be the first House music single, this song attracted attention at the 1986 New Music Seminar in New York, and led a generation of DJs to be signed by British record labels—a brain drain that arguably led to the end of “original” House music in Chicago.
  • “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. This song represents the rapid rise and fall of Seattle’s Grunge music. This song’s chart success in 1991 propelled the rock group Nirvana to the top of the charts, although the band was said to quickly tire of its infamy. It is often cited as the greatest rock song ever recorded.
  • “Nothing to Lose” by Cui Jian. I was so glad to see this classic of Chinese rock included in the Spotify library. The title is a mistranslation of the song I refer to in the book as “I Have Nothing.” While we watched from afar, Jian’s music was the soundtrack to China’s Tiananmen Square revolution.
  • “La carta” by Violeta Parra. This is easily my favorite song to emerge from Chile’s nueva cancion movement of the 1970s. The title references a letter that brings Parra’s protagonist news of her brother’s imprisonment. She laments: “A letter comes to tell me/ There is no justice in my country/…/Luckily I have a guitar/ With which to lament my pain.” Heartbreaking.
  • “Water Get No Enemy” by Fela Kuti. Fela was and still is the king of African music (in as much as Elvis is American music’s king). I won’t spoil his amazing life story (see Chapter 4 in Banding Together!), but it is the only one in the book to include a defenestration.
  • “39.2” by Ceca. The wedding video of Serbian turbo-folk star Svetlana “Ceca” Veličković to paramilitary commander Željko Ražnatović Arkan was played outdoors for days, a technique designed to antagonize and terrorize the Croatian residents of Mostar during the terrible Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Her songs are a testament to the destructive power music can have when it falls into the wrong hands.

 

This Banding Together Spotify playlist demonstrates the varied influences, instruments, and personality of several musical idioms, while the book emphasizes the things they share in common. Within each genre, fans, club owners, journalists, merchandizers, musicians, and other community members must band together to make music, and the book is a study of how and when that happens. You will only hear traces of those communities in these songs: in the featured performers, borrowed lines, and references to people and places in the lyrics. I hope you’ll read Banding Together to learn more about how genres create communities in popular music, and I hope you’ll have fun with my musical book, even if you can’t dance to it (without Spotify).

 

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, Music, Sociology, Twitter