Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2021 -

Over three sections, Bickford (Georgetown Univ.) analyzes the US military's efforts to biomedically enhance soldiers to better prepare them for the imagined battlefields of the future. Part 1 frames the argument, noting how the quest for "supersoldiers" has involved both "skin-out" or external body armor and, more recently, "skin-in" or internal biological armor, which is Bickford's focus. Part 2 chronicles the US military's attempts to create pharmacologically enhanced "kill-proof" soldiers from WW II to the Cold War. While protecting soldiers has been a paramount concern, so has preserving and projecting US imperial power. Part 3 examines the modern US supersoldier and the current drugs used to enhance soldiers to make them stronger, faster, bolder, less prone to fatigue, resistant to PTSD, more resilient to disease, and able to quickly acclimatize to any environment. Bickford argues that such performance enhancement has ethical, political, and sociocultural implications, such as the promotion of a bolder US foreign policy, freed from concerns over casualties, and the creation of citizen supersoldiers who, because of their previous marginalization, may pose a threat to the status quo. This is a significant contribution to military studies in anthropology, sociology, and political science, supplemented with tables, diagrams, illustrations, and direct quotations from military documents and research.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

None of the classical anarchists represented here would have self-identified as criminologists and, conversely, those criminologists who are quite heavily influenced by anarchist thinking rarely declare themselves as such either. An initial reaction to this volume might therefore be to ask, What's the point? However, the editors are to be commended for this rather comprehensive collection of anarchist writings. The omission of Max Stirner is unfortunate, but Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, William Godwin, Errico Malatesta, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and most notably Peter Kropotkin are all represented here, as are other less-well-known but nevertheless relevant thinkers. As the editors correctly state, "illiteracy of anarchism has stunted criminology and criminal justice studies." It thus becomes necessary to clarify the unjustified assumptions underpinning these "bodies of knowledge." Germanely, anarchism identifies the state/corporate nexus as the primary source of social discord, hence both state and corporate agencies are patently ill fitted to resolve this disunity. Ultimately, one cannot escape the truism that the cause of crime is law and those who have power and choose to enforce it. This collection should be essential reading for those starting programs in criminology or criminal justice.Summing Up: Essential. All levels.

Contentious Minds addresses a serious gap in the literature on social movements. Much of the previous discussion has been about the social/structural determinants that create an environment for social activism. Little has been said about individuals and what they are thinking when they join activist organizations. This book bridges the gap between the individual and the organizations that together constitute a social movement. Passy and Monsch (both, Univ. of Lausanne, Switzerland) examine in detail the social mind of the individual and suggest that personal commitment to social justice organizations is a complex process of interaction between the individual and the social structure. By bringing the construction of meaning by the individual activist back into focus, the authors provide a roadmap for understanding how activists perceive their own political allegiances as well as how they construct networks and are influenced by experiences in crosscutting political organizations. The authors focus on conversational interactions within "islands of meaning" (networks) to demonstrate how synchronized meanings are reproduced within organizations. In doing so, they show how the construction of meaning is critical to the production of an activist toolkit. This text is essential for understanding how talk and social network ties work to sustain activism.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

Johannsen (St. Mary's Univ., London) and Garrisi (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool Univ., Suzhou) have edited a very timely interdisciplinary anthology exploring media use by persons affected by disability and media representations of disability. Consistent across the chapters is a theme of "othering"--in media and discursive practices that represent disabled bodies as other, less-than-human, and outside the neoliberal polity. Media examined include social media platforms, serialized television, news and journalism, and government documents and broadcast media. In separate chapters, various authors study, for example, the "dis-ablism" of Reddit contributors; the "branding" of disability activists on social media; autoethnographic accounts of breast cancer; Twitter as a platform for disruption and counterdiscourses; studies of Japanese, North Korean, and South African representations and deployments of disability as a gendered and/or nation-defining concept; and a comparative study of German and UK access to media by persons with disabilities. The international scope (spanning the US, Japan, North Korea, Germany, South Africa, and the UK) and intersectional approach to representation (i.e., representations of people with disabilities and self-representation) make this volume an important contribution to disability studies. It will be very useful in introductory disability studies classes, while it is also sophisticated enough to advance scholarship and clarify thought in the field.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty.

Drawing on C. Wright Mills's "sociological imagination," Fong (California State Polytechnic Univ., Pomona) develops a new understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche, in which the anti-sociological father of existential philosophy is rediscovered as the founder and most profound practitioner of critical sociology. Though Nietzsche's sociology is partly rooted in the praxis-related struggles of the Ubermensch, the "overcomer" serves also as an ideal type for a new mode of seeing, being, and existing. Thus, Nietzsche's critical sociology represents the first step in the formulation of an existential sociology, which is the larger ambition of the book. Fong's analysis of Nietzsche is scrupulously grounded in primary-source material and is contextualized through the author's impressive understanding of contemporary social theory. Fong's Nietzsche is a profound critic of the modern condition and is explicitly examined as a forerunner of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School (and its critiques of conformity, the culture industry, the totally administered society, and the colonization of the Habermasian concept of the lifeworld). The result is a valuable contribution to Nietzsche scholarship and a stirring call to reimagine sociology in this unprecedentedly conformist and dysfunctional age. This reviewer hopes that readers and sociologists take heed!Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Whatever the flaws of The Dialectical Imagination, its 1973 publication was a watershed in the reception of the Frankfurt School in the English-speaking world. In this new collection, Jay (emer., Univ. of California, Berkeley) once again returns to critical theory with 11 keenly perceptive and often personal meditations on the legacies of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and compatriots. The first six chapters touch on the difficulties of ascribing form foundations to critical theory, Jay's personal interactions with Horkheimer and others, the tempering of the more radical elements of critical theory, the influence of Sigmund Freud, the relevance of Judaism to understanding the Frankfurt School, and the evolution of Adorno's "nonconceptuality." Subsequent chapters offer ruminations on the critical aesthetics of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, and the irony underpinning Herbert Marcuse. The final chapter investigates how a somewhat obscure band of mid-century intellectuals has been elevated by conservatives as the sinister source of "cultural Marxism." With a deep understanding of the Frankfurt School that can only come after a lifetime of dedicated study, Jay's essays are as erudite as they are affecting, and they only serve to burnish his reputation as one of the preeminent intellectual historians.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Rogaly's Stories from a Migrant City challenges contemporary understandings of immigrant inclusion and exclusion and xenophobic antipathy in the aftermath of Brexit. Rogaly (Univ. of Sussex, UK) criticizes common analyses of Brexit as a clash between open-minded, cosmopolitan elites and racist, native-born, working-class whites. Instead, using a politics of place in Peterborough (a small, provincial city outside of London), coupled with illuminating oral history data drawn from "locals," "newcomers," "immigrants," and "elites," he reveals that the politics that put Brexit into play are more complicated than the superficial images presented in the media and in much academic discourse. Rogaly demonstrates that cosmopolitanism is regularly practiced in the everyday lives of Peterborough's working- and middle-class inhabitants. Late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism have put everything in flux so that the terms "native" and "migrant" do not adequately reflect who lives in Britain and whose "authentic" British lifestyle is at stake from the promises and threats of Brexit. Disruption of continuity of place magnifies changes, making them seem more threatening to the national and local projects. Rogaly provides glimmers of hope highlighting historical moments of opportunities for unity.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Distinguishing itself from an already crowded field of reference resources, The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication is comprehensive, well organized, and bridges disciplines. With its in-depth examination of theoretical frames germane to this broad field, the handbook will be valuable for scholars in the fields of linguistics, psychology, education, business, and the many other fields in which global connectedness and culture are core concepts. Embracing discourse around ethics, power, and privilege across intercultural interactions, the book's 32 essays (all by experts in the field) are divided into five sections: "Introducing Intercultural Communicaton," "Theoretical Approaches," "Methods," "Application," and "Assessment." Each essay is a well-written narrative in its own right, and taken together the essays serve as a state-of-the-art companion to those who are seeking to understand and enhance communication beyond the narrow perspectives of monocultural ways of knowing. Of particular interest are treatments of social and digital media, refugee students, cinema, literature, study abroad, and assessment--timely topics that bring applied and theoretical elements into sharp focus. This handbook will be valuable across the scholarly spectrum.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.