Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews最新文献

{"title":"Dangerous Medicine: The Story behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis","authors":"Jacob Heller","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096l","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096l","url":null,"abstract":"In Dangerous Medicine: The Story behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis, Sydney Halpern has written a painstakingly researched and readable historical analysis of the pressures, actions, and outcomes regarding research that intentionally infected people with hepatitis (a set of debilitating, longterm—and sometimes fatal—viral liver diseases). In the tradition of work on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, but with a historian’s focus and broader context, Halpern documents and deepens our understanding of mid-twentieth-century health research. Under the direction and supervision of elite organizations ranging from the Department of Defense and the Public Health Service to Ivy League universities and state oversight agencies, researchers exploited vulnerable populations, groups that were unable (or less able) to withhold their consent to participate. This is not a story of evil scientists, but of an institutional culture that supported practices we now condemn. Halpern relies on institutional records, reinforced by newspaper accounts and a handful of interviews with individuals connected to the hepatitis experiments. The first two sections of the book focus on initial hepatitis programs carried out by the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board (AFEB), which established the use of research subjects who would now be understood as ‘‘vulnerable populations.’’ The third section details the development and implementation of now-infamous experiments on mentally incompetent children at Willowbrook State School, and less-well-known experiments at Joliet Penitentiary in Illinois—both with AFEB support, and conceived to develop ways to create immunity in the population. Halpern paints a series of detailed, compelling pictures that shows the range of contexts: an esprit de corps among conscientious objectors in early experiments at Yale, proud to be helping with the war effort against Germany and Japan without taking lives; organized objections among staff to using mental patients at the University of Pennsylvania; efforts to assert the ‘‘redemptive’’ benefits of participation in experiments for incarcerated individuals; and, finally, the attempts by institutional elites to defend the use of intellectually incompetent children in ‘‘challenge’’ tests at Willowbrook State Home— described by some as among the most egregious examples of unethical research outside Nazi Germany. During the historical period when ethical rules regarding research subjects’ rights were being codified and strengthened (from the Nuremberg Code in 1947 to the Helsinki Declaration in 1964), Halpern shows, these American medical researchers systematically violated ethical principles and endangered and harmed vulnerable research subjects. They prioritized the goals of ‘‘science’’ over the rights and health of their research subjects. Though hepatitis is the focus here, these practices were not limited to hepatitis experiments. Halpern’s detailed and meticulous account begins during the Second World ","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"242 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43664001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation","authors":"Youssef El Chazli","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096h","url":null,"abstract":"ally focuses on the settler aspect. Does the superior group identity work of settler identity not intersect with white racial identity? Denis focuses on the racialization of Indigenous people by white settlers yet does not explore the racialization of the white settlers themselves. It is my opinion that more of a ‘‘both/and’’ strategy would have strengthened his analysis, exploring more deeply both white and settler identity and how this identity affects white settlers’ understandings. Nevertheless, as more and more graves of Indigenous children are uncovered from the residential school system, and as white nonIndigenous Canadians continue to ‘‘wake up’’ to the experience that is the horrifying and often incomprehensible history and ongoing reality of settler colonialism, Denis’s work adds a crucial lens for attempting to understand these horrors and the relationships that follow. It is the individuallevel understandings of Indigenous people and relations that can uphold or challenge the oppressive ideologies of settler colonialism. Canada at a Crossroads is not only an important read for settlers who are looking to reflect on their own understandings of Indigenous people, but also for sociologists who want to expand their own inclusion and analysis of settler colonialism in their work. Denis provides us with a wellresearched, detailed, and clear understanding of how Indigenous and white settlers understand one another and what may unite or divide us. And, like all good research, the book left me with questions and a deep desire for even more insight and reflection into this important line of inquiry. Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation, by Mona El-Ghobashy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. 390 pp. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9781503628151.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"234 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46194166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Outside the Bubble: Social Media and Political Participation in Western Democracies","authors":"Deana A. Rohlinger","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096ii","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096ii","url":null,"abstract":"There’s been a lot of hand-wringing the last several years over social media’s influence on information environments and democratic processes. This is true in the United States, where a former president and countless elected officials used social media, and other platforms, to falsely claim that Joesph Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, pundits, podcasters, and pollsters anxiously point to platforms such as Gab, Parler, and the ironically named Truth Social as havens for misand dis-information and as potential hubs for political radicalization. While Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani do not make any sweeping conclusions about the relative desirability of different kinds of citizen participation, particularly at the extremes, they do ask readers to pause, take a deep breath, and think more seriously about average social media users, their political experiences in digital spaces, and the implications of these experiences for political participation inside—and outside—the United States. The resulting book, Outside the Bubble: Social Media and Political Participation in Western Democracies, is a veritable treasure trove of empirical findings on social media and political participation in nine western liberal democracies. Recentering social science research on average social media users and their experiences in digital spaces is a key contribution of the book. The authors remind us that most social media users are not particularly interested in politics and that some users actively avoid exposure to political posts and messages. Consequently, by focusing on average social media users, Vaccari and Valeriani are in a position to underscore three shortcomings that haunt the existing research on digital technologies and political participation, which they call fallacies, and address these specters head on. In a nutshell, the current stock of knowledge tends to (1) overdetermine the importance of platform affordances on political engagement, (2) flatten the relationship between online political interactions and participation, and (3) neglect the effects of the national political context and the structure of its media system on social media use and political participation. The authors address these shortcomings in two ways. First, they draw on some 15,000 survey respondents to focus on the personal experiences of social media users with political information. Specifically, they consider the extent to which their respondents engage with messages they agree or disagree with, the frequency with which they encounter political messages accidently while on a platform for other purposes, and whether they receive messages urging them to vote for a candidate or party. Second, they assess whether these experiences are moderated by a state’s institutional characteristics, including patterns of electoral competition, whether the political system is focused on parties or candidates, and its mass media system (à la Hallin and Mancini). The bul","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"284 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43909030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electric Mountains: Climate, Power, and Justice in an Energy Transition","authors":"Daniel Auerbach","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096i","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096i","url":null,"abstract":"itself in several important ways; I’ll mention two. First, while interviews and observations have become staple methods within the qualitative sociology and political science of the Middle East, Bread and Freedom chooses to solely rely on the ‘‘torrent of documents’’ (for a list, see p. 44) produced by the revolution. Here, classicism is a virtue: the breadth of the documentation sheds light on episodes that have been absent from accounts of the revolution. However, the author’s justification for this choice is debatable. El-Ghobashy opposes a ‘‘hermeneutic study that recovers and represent subjects’ inner states (emotions and dispositions)’’ (p. 42)—that is, subjects’ selfunderstandings and her own ‘‘analytical narrative of events’’ (ibid). This dualism, almost reproducing classical (again) distinctions between objective and subjective, structure and action, seems to be more of an obstacle to research on revolutions than anything. Indeed, following authors like Ivan Ermakoff, whom El-Ghobashy cites in her theoretical conclusion, we can argue that subjects’ self-understandings are both an invaluable indicator and a crucial mechanism of the indeterminacy, volatility, and uncertainty she so aptly describes. Second, El-Ghobashy’s main theoretical interlocutors are, beyond Tilly of course, classical authors of the transitology era. The younger generation of scholars of the Egyptian revolution remain largely absent from the theoretical discussions. The book tends to oscillate between, on the one hand, being a book of political history, documenting and organizing a series of events, and providing a renewed—and highly convincing—narrative of what went on in that period. And on the other hand, an analytic intervention, and a tentative explanation of revolutionary mechanisms, without necessarily engaging with the literature. The methodological choices, the data, and the theoretical interlocutors all tend to produce a general trend: despite the vivid vignettes of popular politics, the narrative remains one of high politics. This is not a critique, per se, as El-Ghobashy acknowledges that, in her perspective, ‘‘[b]y definition, revolutions are about control over states,’’ making most of the narrative a nuanced and compelling (hi)story of how a variety of actors engaged to redefine how Egypt would be ruled. But it doesn’t exhaust other possible discussions of what revolutions are (also) about. In any case, Bread and Freedom’s classicism reminds us how classical tools and insights can produce novel arguments about the Egyptian Revolution, and that this classicism shouldn’t be an obstacle to Bread and Freedom becoming a classic.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"236 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49506147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media: Civic Engagement, Contested Issues, and Emerging Identities","authors":"Yao Li","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096s","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096s","url":null,"abstract":"Activism among Asian Americans has risen in recent years. Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media: Civic Engagement, Contested Issues, and Emerging Identities is a timely book exploring the way Asian Americans use social media to participate in civic activities and politics in the United States, as well as how these experiences affect their political identities. This book is highly relevant for anyone seeking to understand the use of social media in mobilization, the impact of social media on participatory politics, and the racial politics of Asian Americans. In Chapter One, author James S. Lai sets the discussion in the context of two seemingly opposing trends among Asian Americans: low voter participation, on the one hand, and high digital connectivity with the Asian American community, on the other. Lai then poses the book’s main research questions, which include 1) how online ‘‘connective action’’—actions such as posting and creating a chat group via social media platforms to voice and organize group concerns—can facilitate offline civic engagement (such as political protest), 2) the extent to which the panethnic identity in the Asian American community emerges during online connective action campaigns, and 3) how, given the ideological, ethnic, and class diversity within their national community, Asian Americans can fit in with future progressive, multiracial political coalitions on contentious public policy issues such as racial profiling and affirmative action. Chapter Two sets the theoretical background: in particular, how this book engages in the discussion on racial politics and the possible role of social media in shifting race relations, political incorporation, and current racial hierarchies. Chapter Three establishes a theoretical model that frames the three dimensions—the Medium Dimension, the Goals Dimension, and the Site Dimension—within which Asian American connective action takes place. Chapters Four through Nine—the main body of the book—zoom in on six diverse case studies of connective action by Asian Americans, revealing the heterogeneity among Asian groups and their issues. These cases include mobilization around the 2016 trial of police officer Peter Liang for killing Akai Gurley (an unarmed African American), the fight against affirmative action in higher education admissions in California in 2012, the battle against a 2016 California Assembly bill on Data Disaggregation of Asian Americans, the exclusively online Asian American organizations’ activism on immigration issues, the 2016 California textbook controversy regarding efforts to prevent India from being replaced by South Asia in California textbooks, and activism in connection with the erecting of monuments in U.S. cities to commemorate the atrocity of Korean, Chinese, and Filipino comfort women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. These case studies reveal the diversity and tension in civic partic","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"254 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44317673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Confidence Culture","authors":"B. Barton","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096y","url":null,"abstract":"that multiracial people often choose partners who ‘‘disappear difference’’—that is, such that the relationship doesn’t look interracial. While she recognizes that this choice is sometimes made in an effort to avoid constant questioning and racial harm, there is concern for how these partner choices may reify monoraciality and the racial hierarchy. In some spots, Mills seems to imply that multiraciality does (or can) destabilize the racial hierarchy and that when multiracials ‘‘disappear difference’’ through partner choices and appear to be monoracial or in an endogamous relationship, this choice is harming progress. Thus, I was eager for more conversation on whether Mills suggests multiraciality should be a goal and felt this analysis could have been more in the forefront. With that said, Mills makes a clarion call in the conclusion for individuals and scholars alike to recognize the fluidity of race, to examine multiraciality and interraciality more closely, and to make decisions that challenge racial borders.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"265 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44118601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels","authors":"K. Moore","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096cc","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096cc","url":null,"abstract":"In Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels, Pamela Prickett offers a rich ethnographic account of Muslims attending a neighborhood mosque located in a predominantly African American community south of downtown Los Angeles. Based on extensive participant-observation over five years (2008 to 2013), Prickett explores the efforts of many of her interlocutors to live Islam in an urban environment that has witnessed significant change. The book begins by addressing the growth and decline of the mosque—Masjid al-Quran (MAQ)—which, in its heyday, hosted activities that attracted Black entertainment and sports celebrities as well as the first African American mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, to visit. Located in one of the poorest and most blighted areas of Los Angeles, MAQ was founded in the 1950s as a Nation of Islam temple. For this community of believers, the 1962 LAPD shooting of an unarmed African American Muslim man outside another NOI temple was a defining moment and illustrates that police violence and surveillance are nothing new for African American Muslims. Drawing on interviews with current MAQ members, Prickett recounts how this African American Muslim community concentrated on growing their economic base in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s by running businesses, teaching children, cooking food, importing fish, and selling newspapers on the street. In fact, the community experienced so much growth in the early 1970s that it needed more space, so they purchased a nearby building and converted the commercial property into a religious and educational facility. The community witnessed profound changes to its theological foundations and suffered financial setbacks following the 1975 death of NOI leader, Elijah Mohammed; and an existing schism widened between members who were modestly prospering and those who remained poor. Several of the more prosperous members of MAQ moved out to the suburbs, and poverty rates soared as the local economy shifted to the service sector. During the 1980s, drugand gang-related crime swept over South Central LA, coinciding with a dramatic demographic shift as new migrants from Central America moved in. Those who had moved out to wealthier neighborhoods often joined newer mosques in other neighborhoods, and MAQ was depleted of resources. By the early 2010s, when Prickett conducted her fieldwork, many of the formerly Muslim-owned enterprises catered to a growing Latinx population. Prickett sums up the impact: ‘‘MAQ faced the challenges of sustaining its Muslim, historically Black community in a religious ecology that increasingly favored Latino Christian denominations’’ (p. 57). Through an inquiry into her interlocutors’ stories of economic instability and community life, Prickett skillfully shows how the believers turned Islam into a ‘‘toolkit’’ that incorporated their lived reality into constructions of piety in a neighborhood of changing demographics and disadvantage. The book joins ","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"273 - 274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47677672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Troubled Birth: The 1930s and American Public Opinion","authors":"Shannon C. McGregor","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096o","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096o","url":null,"abstract":"rules it encompasses are an alternative pathway to incrementally moving up the social ladder. To highlight the moral norms surrounding the cultural practices, Hashemi shows that the ability to be seen as economically self-sufficient, responsible, and hardworking is crucial for young men and women to prove their worth to others in the community. For young men, it helps to be seen as ‘‘man enough’’ to gain more opportunities for well-paid jobs; for young women, while economic deprivation is the primary driver of their initial entry into the labor force, the appeal of work is that it enables them to be seen as good and competent daughters and wives. Hashemi shows that the facesavers take calculated steps to lower the risk of being exposed as poor and present a middle-class front to others by manipulating their mannerisms and physical appearance. By presenting themselves as ba kelas (someone with class and moral character) and as belonging to middle-class society, face-savers are able to extend their networks to the world of the middle-class. At the same time, these young men and women use the public discourse of proper Islamic citizens, produced in the Iranian public sphere, to prove themselves morally pure citizens and differentiate themselves from morally impure others in order to gain jobs and access to significant others. For Hashemi, ‘‘facework’’ provides a low-cost, highimpact tactic to improve one’s lot in life in contemporary Iran, but it also leads to the embodiment of the moral dispositions endorsed by the game through daily practice. Despite the fact that the author’s approach provides her with a vantage point to view the cultural practices of everyday life beyond the macro-politics of the state, it ignores the impact of significant political turbulences such as the 2009 Green Movement and subsequent protests on the lived experiences of low-income Iranian youth. This becomes more important when we realize recent protests in Iran have moved geographically and discursively from middle-class Tehran to the marginalized neighborhoods in provincial towns in reaction to increasing economic hardship. However, students and scholars in the fields of sociology and Middle Eastern and Iranian studies will find the content of the book intriguing in that it offers a fresh approach and sheds light on the complexity of life shaped not only by poverty and hardship, but also by acceptance, hope, and the promise of a better life.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"247 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46229088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Politicking while Female: The Political Lives of Women","authors":"Malliga Och","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096","url":null,"abstract":"Politicking while Female: The Political Lives of Women is one of those rare academic volumes that you devour in one sitting. Each chapter author frames their research around one central question: ‘‘how does existing knowledge about gender and politics map onto the political landscape after the 2016 presidential election?’’ Reevaluating the gender and politics literature from this vantage point allowed me to see existing research in a new light and prompted me to reexamine my own assumptions about gender and politics research. In short, this volume is everything a scholarly volume should be: engaging, thought-provoking, and innovative. The volume follows women through the political life cycle, assessing the chances and hurdles women face as voters, candidates, and representatives and drawing on social psychology, social movements, and intersectionality. Unfortunately, the table of contents does not follow the same political life cycle, which makes it a bit difficult if you want to read essays relating to a specific political life cycle stage. Mary-Kate Lizotte takes on the common assumption that women are ‘‘unified in their political views and behavior’’ (p. 15). While the vote choice gender gap certainly exists, she finds that women, like men, are influenced in their vote choice by other identities such as race and ethnicity, education, economic status, religiosity, and family status, affecting the presence and size of the gender gap. For example, women who attend church frequently and are married are least likely to vote for Democrats. Most notably, Lizotte finds that the vote choice race and ethnicity gap is comparable or larger than the vote choice gender gap. For example, Black men are more likely to vote for Democrats than are white women and Latinas. Monica C. Schneider and Mirya Holman ask the age-old question whether the presence of women representatives increases women’s willingness to run for office. They introduce a gendered description of political office as either communal or power-based to determine whether this changes women’s political ambition. Even by introducing a gendered approach, their analysis does not find positive effects on women’s willingness to run for office. They conclude that it might be necessary to have repeated or more detailed interactions with women officeholders to shape political ambition. Danielle Casarez Lemi investigates the willingness of female voters to vote for multiracial female candidates. She finds that being a multiracial candidate generally has no effect on female voters. Instead, partisanship, nativity, and political experience were more important. Women of color do prefer to vote for a multiracial female candidate who shares part of their race over an outgroup monoracial female candidate. In contrast, Asian American women prefer a monoracial Asian candidate and are less likely to vote for a multiracial Asian female candidate. Taken together, these findings are important because they will have im","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"219 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48955256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism","authors":"M. Talcott","doi":"10.1177/00943061231172096bb","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096bb","url":null,"abstract":"ion. Elizabeth Povinelli, author of Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism, is also located in a discipline— anthropology—whose epistemological and methodological origins and continuing trajectories are imbricated with colonialism and Eurocentrism. Sociologists, anthropologists, and decolonial thinkers across, beyond, and against disciplinary thought will be interested in Povinelli’s newest interrogation of what she terms the ‘‘ancestral catastrophe of late liberalism.’’ Between Gaia and Ground is organized into five main chapters and includes a useful glossary with which readers can refer to a variety of the concepts she mobilizes to build her argument throughout the book, some of which emanate from her prior works, such as Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (2011) and Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016). In the first chapter, ‘‘The Four Axioms of Existence,’’ Povinelli names and interrogates ‘‘a set of discursive phrases that could be considered so widespread and authoritative as to constitute something like four axioms of existence’’ within what she casts as ‘‘contemporary critical thought’’ (p. 15). This chapter frames the book’s main preoccupation with the way in which dominant forms of critical thought—those that begin with an ontological claim and then move into historical analyses—reproduce colonial forms of reason (even if unwittingly). Povinelli names the four axioms in the order in which they are often invoked, with the first typically treated as the most foundational, as follows: (1) ‘‘the entanglement of existence’’; (2) ‘‘the distribution of the effects of power and the power to affect a given terrain of existence’’; (3) ‘‘the multiplicity and collapse of the form of the event’’; and (4) ‘‘the violent roots of Western liberal epistemologies and ontologies, or, what I have called geontopower, in the history of colonialism and slavery’’ (p. 15). Moving swiftly through a wide range of thinkers’ engagements with elements of these four axioms (Karen Barad, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, among others), Povinelli makes the case— in the theoretical and imaginative company of Nikhil Anand, Édouard Glissant, Saidiya Hartman, and Ursula Le Guin—that 270 Reviews Contemporary Sociology 52, 3 ontology matters only to the extent that it directs us toward altering the present and ongoing racial and colonial catastrophe. In other words, Povinelli seeks to ‘‘make irrelevant and inoperable all ontological questions that do not begin and end in the history of power’’ (p. 23). She challenges readers to attend not to abstraction, but to the ongoing catastrophe of colonialism—whether in Flint, Michigan, Standing Rock, or on Ogoni lands—with the vital question, ‘‘What do we really care about?’’ After grounding Between Gaia and Ground in the claim that centering historical and ongoing relations of racism and colonialism (in ","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"270 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48227440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}