Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

Väliaho (film and screen studies, Goldsmiths, Univ. of London, UK) maps uncharted critical terrain in what Nicholas Mirzoeff has termed critical visuality studies by skillfully joining recent work in neuroscience with current economic and political thought.  Väliaho argues that contemporary culture is characterized by a shift from selfhood to brainhood, a new model of subjectivity that seeks to apply political power to virtually every aspect of human life and that conceptualizes and defines the 'human as a productive entity rooted in biology and, more precisely, the brain.  In addition to a fascinating theoretical first chapter, the book includes three chapters in which Väliaho explores the power of first-person shooter video games to reshape perception and corporeality, the role that virtual reality technologies have played in treating post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility for video installation artists to disrupt the current logics of power.  Focusing on current issues and combining the most recent interdisciplinary tools to do so, this book is of the moment.  It is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the intersection of images, politics, and media in 21st-century culture.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

This book is the second in a series that seeks to examine the evolution of Europe through the lens of technology rather than war.  Kohlrausch and Trischler have succeeded brilliantly in fulfilling this demanding charge, producing a book that is certain to become a standard reference in the emerging field of global technology studies, and that establishes a high bar for successive works it will likely inspire.  The authors examine the evolution of Europe via a series of seminal developments, including the rise of the technical expert as both practitioner and icon; information and depiction technologies; technology in relationship to totalitarian governments; international technical transfer, whether forced or voluntary; Europes entry into the nuclear age; and Europe as a player in international space.  The range of subjects covers the spectrum of modern technologies, but the authors avoid the pitfall of producing simply a classification guide to technology studies.  Gracefully and cogently written, superbly illustrated, and meticulously sourced, this is an invaluable work for those studying modern Europe and its engagement with global science and technology.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Sociologist Atkinson (Cardiff Univ., UK) has written what should become a classic in the field of ethnography.  For those who feel that ethnographies written over the last 20 years lack the liveliness of the great community studies of the 20th century, this book contains answers.  Atkinson offers a corrective to what has become a methodological fetishism in the field, focusing more on technique than the art of understanding human communities as lived.  In the spirit of C. Wright Millss charge to take it big instead of getting bogged down in the small debates of intellectual status groups, Atkinson advises readers to preserve the strength of the humanistic ethnographic tradition.  He admonishes grounded theory for creating a fixation on coding and thereby disaggregating research instead of coming to know it in a more complicated way.  Anthropologists should not think of themselves as the chief proprietors of ethnographic research.  In a pithy chapter on ethics, Atkinson elegantly explores how ethnography is in itself a deeply ethical practice with its own built-in means of regulation, and is often traduced by review committees whose concerns are chiefly legal, not ethical or moral, and whose tradition comes out of the medical sciences, which have no affinity with the ethically attuned approach of ethnographic research.Summing Up: Essential. Most levels/libraries.

One of the oldest traditions in the social sciences, evolutionary thinking, met with hostility from social scientists in much of the 20th century.  The publication of E. O. Wilsons highly debated Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975 (CH, Nov'75) helped reignite academic interest.  Since then, particularly in the new millennium, evolutionary analysis has mushroomed in the social sciences, greatly improving understanding of human social behavior.  Edited by three experts in the field, this new handbook provides critical reflections of past achievements and skilled guidance for future endeavors.  In 31 wide-ranging chapters, contributors survey six major areas of research: the relationship between an evolutionary perspective and the analysis of human behavior and social patterns; the application of sociobiology to the study of the human mind; the contribution of evolutionary analysis to the study of both micro and macro social phenomes; the use of sociobiology for research on gender, human reproduction, and pair bonding; social control and order; and pioneering research in primates, the economy, and the humanities.  The chapters are well written in general, and each chapter begins with a very helpful short introduction.  The book will not only be indispensable for veteran researchers but also serve as a quick introduction to evolutionary social science for beginners.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Francis and Taylor edit this collection of essays on Herbert Spencer by 11 leading writers in various fields, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, politics, biology, and literature.  The contributions in this essential addition to scholarly collections are insightful critiques of Spencers thought, influence, and connections to the contemporary world.  They are not, however, for the weak of heart or for those unfamiliar with Spencerism and evolutionism.  The authors get deep into the weeds of an esoteric but important argument in the history and historiography of science, and touch on current debates on human social and moral development.  The essays demonstrate how far the current disciplinarily segregated intellectual world has moved from the epistemology of Spencers A System of Synthetic Philosophy (1910) and its all-encompassing theories of matter, life, mind, and morals.  Each author introduces a different aspect of Spencers thought, puts it into late-19th-through early-20th-century context, identifies its contemporary influence, and suggests its ongoing relevance.  Spencer scholars will find things with which to quibble, but overall this is the best and most comprehensive consideration of Spencers place and influence in the broad history of ideas since 1900.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

This book presents a well thought out historical view of growing old in todays world.  Greenstein and Holland (both, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) do a wonderful job of placing aging in historical context.  The book is intended to help readers consider aging not in terms of old age per se but as a process of growing lighter, of becoming "lighter as we go.  The authors situate aging in positive aspects of character, strength, and continuity, all virtues that allow one to absorb and accept the inevitable changes in life as natural. The authors draw on real stories and events readers can relate to in order to help develop images of themselves as they age.  A major contribution to the field of aging and adult studies, this study provides a new way to view, consider, and teach aging.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This fascinating collection of articles on social movements in times of democratic transition makes a significant contribution to the field.  The book begins with a discussion of social movement theory.  As the authors suggest, there is a paucity of social science research on what happens to social movements that succeed in fundamentally changing a country.  How does a successful social movement interact with a new government?  Does the social movement decline or become more radical?  Is it revitalized, or does it go into abeyance?  Or does it become disengaged?  These are some of the essential questions addressed in this volume.  In the remainder of the book, contributors use Latin America, South Africa, and east-central Europe as landscapes for investigation.  The authors raise crucial issues social movement organizations experience in Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, South Africa, and Poland.  In each instance, the authors demonstrate that the particular history of a successful social movement shapes and conditions its interaction with the new government.  This volume has much to teach social movement researchers and does a superb job of framing the issues.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Anthropologist Sussman (Washington Univ. in St. Louis) does a masterful job of tracing racist thought in western Europe and the US from 15th-century polygenics through the eugenics of the 20th century to the continued racism and anti-immigration stances of todays radical Right.  He discusses the importance of the idea of culture as developed by Franz Boas and his followers in scientifically disproving these views, but points out that while it is the concept of culture that enables us to disprove the biologically deterministic anti-environmental view of racial inequality . . . , it is the reality of culture that continues to keep this same racist view of humanity alive.  Although the racists at whom Sussman directs his message are unlikely to read it or to credit it if they do, this book should be in every library, from high school through public to university, in hopes that it will affect some minds before they become completely shuttered by prejudice.Summing Up: Essential. All high school, public, and academic levels/libraries.