I have to admit I love the fall. Readers can probably tell, given that all my reading list posts this time of year praise it. I’m not turning into full Pumpkin Spice Latte Man here. But I do enjoy taking a book to the park and spending an afternoon or evening reading.
What’s on my list now? Read on to find out.
Ásta – Categories We Live By
Ásta writes on the metaphysics of social categories, particularly those of gender and race. She defends a conferralist framework, or the notion that people confer social categories upon us. For example, we’re a man or woman because people around us use background facts about us to confer on us those categories. Ásta extends this framework much more broadly, from informal categories (e.g., ‘being a tool’) to institutional properties (e.g., ‘being a professor’).
Ásta’s account can help explain a great deal of our social world. It also extends plausibly into an account of social identities. In fact, I suspect her account does a far better job with identities than broader categories, which some reviewers pointed to as a potential weakness.
I agree with the NDPR review, which pointed out difficulties for the account when it comes to an objective category like economic class. What’s the problem? Material forces play a leading role in many categories, with ‘conferral’ playing a much less important one. In that sense, the conferralist account relies too heavily on people and not heavily enough on the material world.
For that reason, I find Ásta’s account far more useful for identities than for categories. It provides theoretical structure to issues of gender and race, helping us further explain some of the differences between class politics and identity politics. That is to say, a restricted version of the account helps us explain why gender and race are identities, while class isn’t an identity. People confer identities, while class remains an underlying force regardless of what people ‘confer.’
Marisa G. Franco – Platonic
So, I read this book in the context of turning 40 and thinking about how to make friends as a middle-aged person. Franco approaches the topic by applying attachment theory, a theoretical structure in (social) psychology, to advice about making and keeping friends.
Admittedly, I was skeptical. I read this book at the same time that I was reading about the replication crisis in the social sciences. And so, I was in a mindset to challenge the science in the book. And, indeed, the science didn’t impress me much. Nor do I really endorse the frames Franco uses to organize her conversation.
That said, I found it an enjoyable and useful book. Setting the likely flawed science of attachment aside, Franco gives great advice. She tells interesting stories about people navigating friendship. And so, the book reminded me about a few things and taught me a few other things.
Dorothy Seymour Mills – Chasing Baseball
This is an interesting little book for a number of reasons. A baseball historian, Mills directs her historical work toward promoting marginalized aspects of baseball.
In the first section, she documents the wide range of ways people play baseball. It’s not just a game of professionals getting paid millions of dollars. Millions of Americans play the game for recreation or in amateur leagues. Mills sees the increasing marginalization of amateur baseball as a key part of why it’s perceived as losing its popularity and losing its status as the “nation’s pastime.”
In the second section, she delves extensively into the history of women in baseball. Long relegated to softball and excluded from participation in baseball, women still find many ways around the discrimination and exclusion they face. Mills talks not only about the historical aspects of women in baseball that many people know (i.e., that documented in the film A League of Their Own), but also the women who currently play at all levels of the game. And those who hope to someday make a major league roster.
It’s a quirky book, and the politics aren’t always the best. Mills takes more than one detour into weird forms of cultural feminism. On the other hand, she also carefully (and usefully) points to how women are often exploited for research labor by their academic husbands. On the whole, it’s an excellent book. It even inspired me to think about finding an adult baseball league to play in.
Hans Speier – German White-Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler
A little background: I heard historian Daniel Bessner mention Speier (and his book on Speier) on the American Prestige podcast. I wanted to go back and read for myself.
I’m glad I did. Speier provides an excellent overview of the period leading up to Hitler’s election and the end of Weimar Germany. He attributes Hiler’s rise in part to the support of white-collar workers. Especially to those hurt by economic crises.
White-collar workers lost income, status, and social prestige. Rather than taking it out on the capitalist system, they took it out on blue-collar workers. Why? They gained short-term benefits (i.e., it wasn’t just “false consciousness”) from nationalist and anti-semitic movements – a benefit mostly in terms of psychology and social prestige – and didn’t see the long-term disaster that resulted.
Speier tells a compelling story about why other analysts missed this, providing us with an explanation of the analytical difficulties in discussing white-collar workers. Sociologists conflated, for example, low income and low status workers with foremen, executives, and the independent petty bourgeoisie. He argues against placing most white-collar workers in either the middle class or lower classes, arguing that their precarity kept them out of the middle class and their social prestige and opposition to working-class politics kept them out of the lower classes.
As an explanation in terms of social prestige and self-image, that’s all fine. Of course, I think Speier tends to conflate social prestige with objective economic and social role. Hence, he misses the fact that most white-collar workers, in terms of their underlying economic role, really are workers. It’s just that they’ve been convinced otherwise.
I’m sure regular readers know that I’ve long thought that white-collar workers are key to a leftist organizing strategy. Speier provides a useful reminder of what happens when that organizing fails.
