New Library Acquisitions

Hochschild, Arlie Russell

The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling/ Arlie Russell Hochschild. - Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. - 327 p.

In private life we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or "emotional work," just as we manage our outer expressions through surface acting. But what happens when this system of adjusting emotions is adapted to commercial purposes? Hochschild examines the cost of this kind of "emotional labor." She vividly describes from a humanist and feminist perspective the process of estrangement from personal feelings and its role as an "occupational hazard" for one-third of America's workforce.

 Stitziel, Judd

Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany/ Judd Stitziel. - Oxford: Berg, 2005. - 260 p.

This is the first history of communist fashion in East Germany. Using clothing as a lens to read society, the author unveils wider tensions between the regime and the population and within the regime itself. In telling the surprising--and often bizarre--story of communist haute couture, fashion shows, seasonal clearance sales, the textile and garment industries, and everyday consumer practices, this book explores the paradoxical causes, forms, and consequences of East Germany's attempt to create a communist consumer culture during the Cold War.

Verdery, Katherine

National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania/ Katherine Verdery. - Berkely and Los Angelis: University of California Press, 1991. - 406 p.

The current transformation of many Eastern European societies is impossible to understand without comprehending the intellectual struggles surrounding nationalism in the region. Anthropologist Katherine Verdery shows how the example of Romania suggests that current ethnic tensions come not from a resurrection of pre-Communist Nationalism but from the strengthening of national ideologies under Communist Party rule.

McGee, Micki

Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life/ Micki McGee. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. - 288 p.

The huge success of self-help, according to McGee, rests on the fact that its practitioners seamlessly combine two conflicting goals, financial or outward success and religious or inner transcendence, claiming that you can eat your cake and have it, too. In a tone less caustic and more sociological than Steve Salerno's in SHAM (Reviews, May 30), McGee, a sociologist and cultural critic at NYU, carefully demonstrates the fallacious underpinnings of this mindset, drawing from a deep well of quintessentially American resources ranging from Cotton Mather to Emerson and Max Weber. Self-help overemphasizes the individual's agency at the expense of the necessary reliance on or assistance of a network of others, and it can be sexist, too, says McGee.

Laclau, Ernesto

On Populist Reason/ Ernesto Laclau. - London: Verso, 2005. - 276 p.

In this highly original work Ernesto Laclau continues the philosophical and political exploration initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Here he focuses on the construction of popular identities and how "the people" emerge as a collective actor. Skillfully combining theoretical analysis with a myriad of empirical references from numerous historical and geographical contexts he offers a critical reading of the existing literature on populism, demonstrating its dependency on the theorists of "mass psychology" such as Taine and Freud. He demonstrates the relation of populism to democracy and to the logic of representation, and differentiates his approach from the work of Zizek, Hardt and Negri, and Ranciere. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the question of political identities in present-day societies.