Our book of the Month choice for April

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.

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

 

Sian Lazar

How to struggle: a political anthropology of labour

Pluto Press, 2023

HD4901.LAZ 2023

 

 

 

It was chosen to highlight innovative ethnographic research into labour struggles and worker strikes. It illuminates different perspectives within a complex global environment

Book Overview

This comparative ethnography presents a global perspective on labour agency, from heavy industry to the service sectors. Lazar goes beyond looking solely at organised trade unionism, also examining how individuals strive to improve their lives and working conditions.  A coda to the book examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on labour struggles and worker’s political agency.

Reviews

‘Anthropology at its best. Lazar explores how different capitalist strategies for organizing workers’ productivity generate problems that encourage certain solutions that in themselves create more problems, and on and on … Remarkably imaginative in revealing how, in large and small ways, workers of all stripes can organise to create otherwise, generate new possibilities for resistance and lead more fulfilling lives’

lana Gershon, Ruth N. Halls professor of anthropology, Indiana University, US

‘As brilliant as it is useful. Lazar manoeuvres lightly among the opposing schools of labor anthropology and shows with world-wide examples that how we struggle for better lives is deeply embedded in the type of relationships in which we labour, care and serve; relationships that are globally produced, intimately lived, and more often than not divisive. A boon for analysts and activists alike’

Don Kalb, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, author of Expanding Class

How can I access it?

This title is available in hard copy in the library. One of our copies is currently located at  our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). The shelfmark for the title is HD490.LAZ 2023. It is available to borrow by Oxford University students and staff members.

An eLegal Deposit copy of the title is also available on SOLO. This can be viewed on library reading room computers only.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heart

Our Book of the Month choice for March

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.

Andy Kernot selecting a book from the SSL shelves

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

Cover of the book 'The new map: energy, climate, and the clash of nations' by Daniel Yergin, with a rosette on top which says 'SSL Book of the Month.'

 

Daniel Yergin

The new map: energy, climate, and the clash of nations

Allen Lane, 2020

HD9502.A2.YER 2000

 

 

 

It was chosen because Pulitzer Prize-winning author and global energy expert, Daniel Yergin offers a revelatory new account of how energy revolutions, climate battles, and geopolitics are mapping our future.

Book Overview

The New Map tells a sweeping story about how the role of energy in climate change is shaping geopolitical discussions, challenging our industries and our lifestyles, and accelerating a second energy revolution – the quest for renewables. It also brings realism to the debates over the energy transition.

A master storyteller and global energy expert, Daniel Yergin takes the reader on an utterly riveting and timely journey across the world’s new map. He illuminates the great energy and geopolitical questions in an era of rising political turbulence and points to the profound challenges that lie ahead.

Reviews

“There are many … stories in this wonderful book, all of them directed at the transformation of the global map of power and wealth that has happened in the 21st century. Don’t waste your time on Boris or Trump, Covid or novichock, just read this to find out what is really happening.”

Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

“Daniel Yergin won a Pulitzer in 1992 for The Prize, an acclaimed history of petroleum and political power … In The New Map he turns his talents to what might be called geopolitical cartography … Fans of the author’s previous books will appreciate the snappy prose and plethora of well-told anecdotes … revealing and apposite … The book brings the general reader admirably up to date on the many subjects it covers.”

Edward Lucas, The Times

“Yergin is the most respected chronicler of energy history and politics today. Yergin has enviable talents. He writes fluently in a style that brings to life the arcane dynamics of the energy business. He is deeply knowledgeable and analytically prescient… The New Map is an excellent read because, through multiple interconnected storylines, it pulls together the transformative occurrences that have shaped the energy world in recent years into a cogent framework from which the reader can discern the future pathways of the next energy transition.”

Vikram S Mehta, Indian Express

How can I access it?

This title is available in hard copy in the library. One of our copies is currently located at our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). The shelfmark for the title is HD9502.A2.YER 2000 Our copies are available to borrow by Oxford University students and staff members.

An eLegal Deposit copy of the title is also available on SOLO. This can be viewed on library reading room computers only.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for February

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.

Subject Consultant John Southall, selecting a book from the SSL shelves.

February’s Book of the Month was selected by John Southall, Bodleian Data Librarian and Subject Consultant for Economics and Sociology.

 

Evelyn Ruppert & Stephan Schell

Data Practices: making up a European people

HB3582.5.A3.DAT 2021

 

 

 

 

It was chosen because it presents a set of detailed case studies in the practice of statistical data production and research methodologies within the Social Sciences.

Book Overview

This work focuses on data practices that involve establishing and assigning people to categories and goes on to consider how this matters in enacting Europe as a population and people. Five core chapters explore key categories of people – usual residents, refugees, homeless people, migrants, and ethnic minorities – and how they come into being through specific data methodologies. This includes practices such as defining, estimating, recalibrating and inferring. Additional chapters address two key subject positions that data practices produce and require: the data subject and the statistician subject.

Reviews

The entities we call “Europe” and “European” can be studied in many ways, through history, institutions, language, and cultural practices… How people are counted and who is counted are crucial to both our understanding of populations and of politics.

Sally Wyatt, Professor of Digital Cultures, Maastricht University

This rigorous collection brings home how we are living through a crucial period in which data is mobilised in increasingly powerful and pervasive ways.”

Mike Savage, Professor of Sociology, LSE.

How can I access it?

This title is available in hard copy in the library and is currently located in our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). Its shelfmark is HB3582.5.A3.DAT 2021 and it is available to borrow by Oxford University students and staff members.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for January

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.

Sarah Rhodes (an SSL Subject Consultant) selecting a book from the shelves in the SSL

January’s Book of the Month was selected by Sarah Rhodes, Subject Consultant for International Development, Forced Migration, and African & Commonwealth Studies.

The cover of the book 'When communities design aid' which features drawings of different coloured hands, reaching towards the title. On top of it is a rosette with the words 'SSL Book of the Month' in it.

 

Richard Atkinson

When communities design aid: creating solutions to poverty that people own, use, and need

HC79.P63.ATK 2022

 

 

 

 

It was chosen to highlight the importance of communities struggling with poverty to be involved in the design and planning of programmes to facilitate their own development.

Book Overview

Aid initiatives go wrong for many reasons, but a common and surprising one is that poor people often don’t want the kind of aid that is offered. The importance of radically accelerating the transfer of knowledge, skills and power from outside ’experts’ to communities on the ground is key to resolving this issue.  The author’s twelve proposals for Participative Development Goals hope to stimulate debate and action amongst development practitioners, researchers and organisations interested in developing solutions for the world’s poorest communities.

Reviews

‘This welcome book provides an actionable blueprint for bringing the end-user into the design of interventions.  As such, it effectively challenges the supply-side approach that dominates the field’.

Per Braginski, Insights, Copenhagen

How can I access it?

This title is available in hard copy in the library and is currently located in our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk). Its shelfmark is HC79.P63.ATK 2022 and it is available to borrow by Oxford University students and staff members.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for December

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.

Andy Kernot choosing a book from the shelves in the SSL

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

 

 

Ice: Nature and Culture

Klaus Dodds

Available as an eBook.

 

 

 

It was chosen because it provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural, natural and geopolitical history of ice, revealing how throughout history human communities have made sense of ice.  For those who are intrigued about our relationship with ice, this book will provide an informative and thought-provoking guide.

Book Overview

Ice has played a prominent role in the history of the earth and its living communities for millennia. We have had fun with and on ice, battled over ice, imagined ice, struggled with ice and made money out of ice. It has transformed our relationship with food, and our engagement with ice has been captured in art, literature, popular film and television, as well as made manifest in sport and leisure. Our lakes, mountains and coastlines have been indelibly shaped by the advance and retreat of ice and snow. Beyond Planet Earth, ice can be found in meteors, planets and moons, and scientists think that ice-rich asteroids played a pivotal role in bringing water to Earth.

Reviews

“Dodds’s addition to the Earth series provides an introduction to the many ways ice can be viewed and understood, and presents the frozen material in a way which is extremely accessible to a non-expert audience. Ice: Nature and Culture is abundantly illustrated, with the 95 illustrations that pepper the 211-page volume providing engaging visual material that supports the prose. The book draws on the history and significance of ice in areas as varied as geopolitics, scientific research, literature, and sport. Despite this eclectic amalgamation of subject matter, Dodds has deftly linked each chapter to the previous one, drawing together the ways in which ice has shaped our understanding of the world, and our relationship to this phenomenon. . . . Fantastically written and well-researched. . . . This is a great book for the lay polar enthusiast.”

Polar Journal

“In Ice: Nature and Culture, Dodds gives the slippery and ephemeral material center stage to show how ice is not only fascinating but fundamental to human life itself. As a part of Reaktion Books’ Earth series, Dodds’s exploration of ice is both a literary and a visual pleasure to read, with beautiful color photographs throughout the book. . . . Wide-ranging.”

Cultural Geographies

“Transform[s] ice from frozen water into something remarkable: a substance always on the edge of our understanding. Once the instability of ice made it something to be claimed and conquered; today, however, this quality is inextricable from human interference. ‘The tone of the conversation’ about ice, Dodds writes, has been imbued with ‘a profound sense of loss.’ With the disappearance of ice comes the loss of cultures and languages that have evolved to express its complexity.”

Times Literary Supplement

How can I access it?

This title is available to consult as an eBook. Access it from a Bodleian Library computer or use it remotely, by logging on to SOLO with your SSO.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for November

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.

November’s Book of the Month was selected by Jo Gardner, Bodleian Social Science Librarian and Subject Consultant for Politics and International Relations.

 

 

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory

Edited by Lucy Bernholz et al.

Available as an eBook.

 

 

 

 

It was chosen because it brings together a range of contributors to explore how new digital technologies are reshaping our understanding of democracy and democratic theory.

Book Overview

This book looks closely at how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, the editors bring today contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory.

Reviews

“This volume is a timely and essential addition that will help its audience understand the affordances—but also the very real detrimental effects—of social media in society on our governing principles and institutions.”

Sarah T. Roberts, University of California

 “This diverse collection of essays addresses how to reimagine the informational diet of democracy, free speech and association, the boundaries of the demos and political exclusion. An important and engaging read!”

Beth Simone Noveck, director, The Governance Lab

“The original potential of the volume lies in promoting cross-disciplinary scholarship on questions of democracy in the digital age. Thus, for scholars and students of a variety of disciplines including media studies, social science and the humanities, as well as engineers, the volume is essential reading.”

Rahel Süß, London School of Economics and Political Science

How can I access it?

This title is available to consult as an eBook. Access it from a Bodleian Library computer or use it remotely, by logging on to SOLO with your SSO.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Black History Month at the SSL

For October, we’ve replaced part of our usual new books display with a display highlighting the theme of black history throughout our subjects. The display has been produced by the graduate trainee, with the content put forward by subject librarians.

The Black History Month display at the Social Science, featuring four books with accompanying recommendations, as well as the front covers of several ebooks.

Politics and International Relations: Jo Gardner

Jo really enjoyed engaging with the project, and produced several recommendations; we’ve chosen to highlight the print copies in the library, which are Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne’s 100 Great Black Britons, and Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law. Jo’s contributions also included ebooks which has provided a small ‘further reading’ addition to the display. Links for these can be found at the end of this post too.

100 Great Black Britons  Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne

The front cover of 100 Great Black Britains, featuring black and white text over a simplified black and white version of the union flag.

“This book is timely and so important. Especially now during the Black Lives Matter movement, people all over the country are looking to expand their knowledge of Black British historical figures and this book will help people to do just that.” – Dawn Butler MP

“An empowering read . . . it is refreshing to see somebody celebrate the role that black Britons have played in this island’s long and complicated history.” – David Lammy in ‘The Best Books of 2020’ The Guardian

100 Great Black Britons is only available as a print copy in the library, and its record on SOLO can be found here.

 

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein

The Front Cover of Rothstein's 'The Color of Law', with text displayed over a 'redlined' urban zoning map.

“A powerful and disturbing history of residential segregation in America. [..] One of the great strengths of Rothstein’s account is the sheer weight of evidence he marshals. […] While the road forward is far from clear, there is no better history of this troubled journey than ‘The Color of Law.'” – David Oshinsky, New York Times

“Rothstein’s comprehensive and engrossing book reveals just how the U.S. arrived at the ‘systematic racial segregation we find in metropolitan areas today, ‘ focusing in particular on the role of government.” – Starred review in Publishers Weekly

The Color of Law is only available as a print copy in the library, and its record on SOLO can be found here.

Geography, Social Policy & Intervention, Public Policy, and Internet Studies: Andy Kernot

Andy Kernot recommended Black Faces, White Spaces, and wrote the blurb below, which looks at a more contemporary relationship between black communities and the environment, of interest to Geographers and Environment Studies students.

Black faces, white spaces : reimagining the relationship of African Americans to the great outdoors – Carolyn Finney

The Cover of Black Faces, White Spaces. A black person obscures their face with a painted portrait of another head, while sitting beside a waterfall.

Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the “great outdoors” and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces. – Andy Kernot

Besides the physical copies in the library, there is also a link to the e-book here.

 

International Development, Forced Migration, and African & Commonwealth Studies: Sarah Rhodes

Sarah Rhodes chose to recommend Voices of the Windrush Generation, of interest to students in International Development and Commonwealth Studies for its first hand account of the post-Colonial relationship between Britain and the Caribbean. Its outlook is based in individual experience, which also makes it more accessible for the general reader.

Voices of the Windrush Generation – David Matthews

This book details the personal testimonies of the many migrants who arrived in Britain in the early 1950s from the Caribbean. Through their own voices and stories we learn of the struggles they faced as they created communities and navigated integration into an often hostile society. Their resilience shines through as the book celebrates their contribution to black British culture we have today. – Sarah Rhodes

Voices of the Windrush Generation is only available as a print copy in the library, but its catalogue record can be accessed here.

Further Reading: e-Books

The following are e-books that we wanted to highlight, you can click each to go through to its solo record and e-book.

Invisible Voices: The Black Presence in Crime and Punishment in the UK, 1750-1900 – Martin Glynn

Available online here.

 

Who’s Black and Why? A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race – Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Andrew S. Curran

Available online here.

Teaching Black History to White People – Leonard N. Moore

Available online here.

Feel free to pop by and pick up one of these books, or come and tell us if you’re read something that should be featured too!

Our Book of the Month choice for October

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 John Southall, Bodleian Data Librarian and Subject Consultant for Economics and Sociology.

 

 

 

 

Value chains: the new economic imperialism

Intan Suwandi

Available at HD5852.SUW 2019 but currently on display at our New Books Display Area.

 

 

 

Winner of the 2018 Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, it was chosen because of the insights it provides into recent structural developments in the global economy

Book Overview

In Value Chains, Suwandi investigates the processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. She considers various current corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production. This includes labour management methods that serve to maintain the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy.

Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labour creates the surplus value that enriches the economy of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South.

Suwandi’s richly documented book depicts in detail the relations of unequal exchange that structure today’s world economy.

Reviews

“This is a marvellous, highly accessible book. It zeroes in on global value chains, the most important transformation of the neoliberal era, and weaves excellent theoretical insights and empirical research into a notable contribution to literature on global political economy and Marxist theories of imperialism.”

John Smith, author, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century

“In a brisk 172 pages, Suwandi piles on the evidence that power is an important element in describing behaviours of firms and persistent global inequalities.”

Alexandra Eisenbarth, The New School Economic Review, 11 (2021)

How can I access it?

A hard copy can be found on our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk), which can be borrowed by Oxford University students and staff. It is usually shelved at HD5852.SUW 2019.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for September

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 Helen Worrell, Subject Consultant for Anthroplogy.

 

 

After society: anthropological trajectories out of Oxford

Edited by Joao de Pina-Cabral and Glen Bowman

Berghahn Books

Available at GN25.AFT 2020 but currently on display at our New Books Display Area.

 

 

It was chosen to introduce the newly moved Anthropology collections and highlight the recent history of Oxford’s Anthropology department.

Book Overview

In the early 1980s, when the contributors to this volume completed their graduate training at Oxford, the conditions of practice in anthropology were undergoing profound change. Professionally, the immediate postcolonial period was over and neoliberal reforms were marginalizing the social sciences.  Here self-ethnography is used to portray the contributors’ anthropological trajectories, showing how analytical and academic engagements interacted creatively over time.

Reviews

“This volume provides a valuable mix of autobiographical reflections on what it was to be a student of anthropology at Oxford at a particular time in the Institute’s history. Such reflections are all the more insightful, written as they are, by former students who by now have had largely successful (indeed very successful) careers in the discipline.”

Elizabeth Ewart, University of Oxford

How can I access it?

A hard copy can be found on our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk), which can be borrowed by Oxford University students and staff. It is usually shelved at GN25.AFT 2020.

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.

Our Book of the Month choice for August

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.

 

August’s book of the month was selected by Sarah Rhodes, Subject Consultant for International Development, Forced Migration, and African & Commonwealth Studies.

 

 

 

 

Contemporary boat migration: data, geopolitics and discourses

Edited by Elaine Burroughs and Kira Williams

Rowman & Littlefield International

Available at KZ6530.CON 2018 but currently on display at our New Books Display Area.

 

 

It was chosen to highlight migration at sea, an issue which is becoming more frequent and precarious as states increasingly make entry illegal.

Book Overview

As migration at sea becomes more common, it has gained attention from a range of actors, including enforcement authorities, political elites, media, and non/inter-governmental organizations. The sea has thus become a space of hope/desperation for migrants as well as conflict over territory and sovereignty, representing wider social debates in and beyond Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States. Current literature on migration by boat reflects these debates, primarily concentrating on the humanitarian and legal realities of migration by boat and border enforcement at sea, however, few studies have analysed their empirical relationship. This edited volume aims to fill this gap.

Reviews

‘Contemporary Boat Migration’ offers an original and interdisciplinary take on migration by considering people who move from one country to another via sea routes.  The chapters provide rich empirical insights, comprehensive examinations of legal regimes, and analyses of representations of people who migrate by boat.  This volume marks an important contribution to the understudies area of migration by sea’.

Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology, University of California.

How can I access it?

A hard copy can be found on our New Books Display Area (around the corner from our Issue Desk), which can be borrowed by Oxford University students and staff. It is usually shelved at KZ6530.CON 2018. This title is also available as an eLegal Deposit Book via SOLO. eLegal Deposit material can only be accessed via a Bodleian Libraries computer

Image of an open book with the pages curled to form a love heartWhat 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.