The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection that has been chosen by one of our Subject Consultants. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.

October’s Book of the Month was selected by Helen Worrell, Subject Consultant for Anthropology.

A short history of the blockade: giant beavers, diplomacy, and regeneration in Nishnaabewin

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

University of Alberta Press, 2021

Available as an eBook via SOLO

Simpson uses four Nishnaabeg stories as an illustration of the politics of blockades in Canada. These stories build on Simpsons theories on generative resistance and Audra’s Simpson’s theory on ethnographic ‘refusal’. This book will be of interest to Anthropology, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, and Geography.

Book Overview

In A Short History of the Blockade, award-winning writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics, and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver—or in Nishnaabemowin, Amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance as both a negation and an affirmation. Widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation, Simpson’s work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song, bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. A Short History of the Blockade reveals how the practice of telling stories is also a culture of listening, “a thinking through together,” and ultimately, like the dam or the blockade, an affirmation of life. Introduction by Jordan Abel.

Reviews

“Simpson, a celebrated Indigenous storyteller, artist, and scholar, offers four Nishnaabeg stories from the wisdom of the beaver nation and the foundational teachings of their blockades (dams) as an established practice of world-building resistance. Together, the stories are also a commentary on current issues of social media, lateral violence, binary thinking, and surveillance that house the potential to hinder the generative, relational, and reciprocal nature of Indigenous resistance.”

Morgan Mowatt, University of Toronto Quarterly, August 2023

How can I access it?

This title is available as an eBook which can be accessed from any Bodleian Library computer or used remotely, by logging on to SOLO with your SSO.

What would your SSL Book of the Month be? Do you have a favourite book in our collection? If so, we would love to know what it is. Add a comment below or email us.

The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection that has been chosen by one of our Subject Consultants. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.

September’s Book of the Month was selected by Andy Kernot, Subject Consultant for Geography, Social Policy & Intervention, Public Policy, and Internet Studies.

The map in the machine: charting the spatial architecture of digital capitalism

Luis F. Alvarez Leon

University of California Press, 2024

GV109.4 ALV 2024

Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, we need to grasp how advances in geospatial technologies underpin the construction, operation, and refinement of markets for digital goods and services. In The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez Leon examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem.

Book Overview

In this book Luis F. Alvarez Leon develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez Leon shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change.

Reviews

“The Map in the Machine deconstructs the spatial architecture of the new digital economy, uncovering its deeply geographical foundations. Synthesizing geographical political economy and critical approaches to information technology, Luis Alvarez Leon offers an original framework for understanding processes of location, valuation, and marketization across the variegated worlds of digital capitalism.”

Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia

“Despite the persistence of abstract, fluffy metaphors like the cloud and Ethernet, The Map in the Machine conclusively demonstrates that digital information is–and always has been–intimately intertwined with our physical and material world. This is a must-read book for anyone looking to understand the place-based underpinnings of digital capitalism.”

Catherine D’Ignazio, Associate Professor and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, MIT, and coauthor of Data Feminism

How can I access it?

We have one lending copy of this book, which is located on our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). Its shelfmark is GV109.4 ALV 2024. It is also available as an eBook which can be accessed from a Bodleian Library computer or use it remotely, by logging on to SOLO with your SSO.

What would your SSL Book of the Month be? Do you have a favourite book in our collection? If so, we would love to know what it is. Add a comment below or email us.