Adia Harvey Wingfield, acknowledges receiving another award for No More Invisible Man

This week in North Philly Notes, Adia Harvey Wingfield, author of No More Invisible Man, offers her thoughts on winning the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) section on Race, Gender and Class, 2014.

I am so happy and proud to receive the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Race, Gender, and Class Section. This section of the ASA has long been at the forefront of focusing scholarly attention on how these fundamental issues of race, gender, and class are overlapping categories that mutually influence each other in different ways. It is a section that is replete with brilliant scholars doing cutting edge work, so it really means a lot to me to be honored in this way.

I particularly appreciate the recognition that black professional men’s work lives are significantly shaped by these issues of race, gender, and class in ways that render their experiences unique. As the title of this book indicates, for far too long these men have been ignored and overlooked by scholars and media alike. I am happy to be part of the effort to highlight how black professional men, too, live lives that are formed not just by race but also by their gender and class position, and am so pleased that the Race, Gender, and Class section saw fit to recognize these men as well.

Announcing the publication of Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

Temple University Press is pleased to announce the publication of
Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

Kalfou is the Haitian Kreyòl word for “crossroads.” It is a scholarly journal focused on social movements, social institutions, and social relations. Editor George Lipsitz explained, “The publication of Kalfou ushers in a new era in engaged scholarship. This first issue blends contributions from the leading scholars in ethnic studies with compelling writings from artists and activists. This journal constitutes a new public square for addressing the most important issues of our time.”

The journal seeks to promote the development of community-based scholarship in ethnic studies among humanists and social scientists and to connect the specialized knowledge produced in academe to the situated knowledge generated in aggrieved communities.

Kalfou is published by Temple University Press on behalf of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Spring 2014, Volume 1, Issue 1

Introduction: A New Beginning • George Lipsitz

Feature Articles
Martin Luther King Encounters Post-racialism • Kimberlé Crenshaw
Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and the “Illegible” Politics of (Inter)personal Justice • Tricia Rose
The Ideological Alchemy of Contemporary Nativism: Revisiting the Origins of California’s Proposition 187 • Daniel Martinez HoSang
Beyond Conflict and Competition: How Color-Blind Ideology Affects African Americans’ and Latinos’ Understanding of Their Relationships • Chrisshonna Grant Nieva and Laura Pulido, with Nathan J. Sessoms
From College Readiness to Ready for Revolution! Third World Student Activism at a Northern California Community College, 1965–1969 • Jason Ferreira

Talkative Ancestors
Chris Iijima on Asian American Identity

Keywords
Critical Ethnic Studies • Chandan Reddy

La Mesa Popular
The Alchemy of Race and Affect: “White Innocence” and Public Secrets in the Post–Civil Rights Era • Paula Ioanide

Art and Social Action
Music and Mobilization: Kombit Pou Haiti 2010 • Chuck D and Gaye Theresa Johnson

Mobilized 4 Movement
Race, Municipal Underbounding, and Coalitional Politics in Modesto, California, and Moore County, North Carolina • Emily Tumpson Molina

Teaching and Truth
The Bigger Scandal • Pauline Lipman

In Memoriam
Afro-Asian People’s Warrior: Richard Aoki, 1938–2009 • Diane C. Fujino

Book Reviews
The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, by Catherine S. Ramírez • Reviewed by María Angela Díaz
From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution, edited by Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins • Reviewed by Michael E. Brandon

 

KALFOU EDITORIAL BOARD

Senior Editor: George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara

Associate Editors:
Enrique Bonus, University of Washington, Seattle
Maria Herrera-Sobek, University of California, Santa Barbara
Roberta Hill, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Tricia Rose, Brown University

Book Review Editor:
Paul Ortiz, University of Florida, Gainesville

Founding Editors:
Claudine Michel, University of California, Santa Barbara
Melvin Oliver, University of California, Santa Barbara

Managing Editor:
Rose Elfman, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Addressing our changing relationship with our work

In this blog entry, Peter Fleming, author of Resisting Work, addresses some of the consequences of too much work.

When 21-year old banking intern Moritz Erhardt died in his London apartment in 2013, it attracted worldwide attention. What was so disconcerting about his death was that it followed 72 straight hours of stressful work. Reports of the banking culture discovered firms gleefully celebrating such arduous displays of commitment. Working incredibly long hours was a badge of honor.

Erhardt’s parents stated that they had become increasingly worried about their son’s lifestyle, noting how his emails were sent at unusual times, 5am or even worse. A story in the London Evening Standard cited how the intern worked “crazy hours” because “he felt under intense pressure to succeed.” Meanwhile, the Independent wrote about the “furore that developed over long hours and macho culture at banks.”

In January 2014, Li Junjie, a 33-year old investment banker for a large U.S. firm jumped to his death from its high-rise tower in Hong Kong. The story was reported in the Daily Mail and on Alex Jones’ Infowars.com  Reports suggested that he had a rather stressful job, but it was news of an impending financial crash that had prompted this awful act. The wave of banker suicides in 2014 has shocked many of us, with some large firms even banning its employees from using email after hours so they can unwind. But the fact remains, why would someone take their jobs so seriously that they can contemplate ending their life when something goes wrong in the office? How does such a lack of perspective come about?

Resisting Work seeks to challenge the overly sunny reputation that work has gained in our society of late. It suggests these two sad events tell us much about how a growing number of people approach their jobs in the post-industrial workforce. Many of us have become completely wedded to our work. Whereas our grandparents could ‘switch off’ after leaving the office or factory, workers today no longer see their jobs as something they just ‘do’ among others things, but something they ‘are’. While suicide and death-by-overwork are extreme cases, my book reveals numerous examples of people in similar situations who see their jobs as everything, who cannot switch off, are unable to holiday and even destroy personal relationships for the sake of it.

I hope to show that this changing relationship with our work – and some of its deeply negative consequences – is no accident. Using historical analysis, I demonstrate that it represents a new configuration of power that is symptomatic of the neo-liberal economic paradigm, which tends to glorify work as the highest virtue. But here is the rub: if we actually had pure neoliberalism in the office – say, complete individualism, no state regulation, rampant competition, no mutualism or open co-operation – absolutely nothing would get done. Neo-liberal ideals are completely chaotic when actually applied in most employment settings. As a result, corporate capitalism requires us to be fully present, socially resourceful human beings in order to pick-up the slack. We need to live with its problems and employ our whole persona to deal with them. This I call ‘biopower’, whereby life itself is literally put to work.

All of this sounds bleak, and it is. But the true focus of the book is about how we might resist work today. Given the above trends, this is easier said than done. For how might we oppose ‘biopower’ when our jobs are now somehow tied up with our very sense of self, our identities and personal worth? And what would a world without work actually look like? I argue that a new resistance moment is emerging in post-industrial societies and beyond that seeks to put work ‘in its place’. However, unlike older conceptions of employee resistance (such as the strike or sabotage) which tended to call for more, better or fairer work, these newer forms of opposition seek to escape the paradigm of work altogether. It does not view our over-attachment to working as a natural part survival, but as a political construction that we now live as if things had always been like this.

I give many examples of this new anti-work movement. And it is for this reason that I really admire a moving study by Bonnie Ware, a nurse who cares for the terminally ill. She recently reported on the most common regrets people had when close to death. First and foremost was not being true to themselves, living a life that was not authentic. A close second, however, was the regret that they had worked far too much. From the perspective of near death, all of that labor and worry seemed such a waste. For these patients, it is too late. The central question of this book concerns the following. What about us? How might we embody this final epiphany throughout our entire lives, and what might an alternative to work look like?

 

Temple University Press announces a new Executive Director

Temple University Press and Temple University Libraries are pleased to announce that Mary Rose Muccie will be the new Executive Director of Temple University Press and the Library Officer for Scholarly Communication.

Most recently, Ms. Muccie was the Director of the JSTOR Current Journals Program, where she launched and managed the program that brought current issues to the JSTOR platform, handling business development, operations management, publisher relations, and platform enhancement. Previously, Ms. Muccie was the director of Project MUSE at the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Joseph Lucia, Dean of Libraries at Temple University, acknowledged Ms. Muccie’s experience with and commitment to scholarly publishing: “We are excited that Temple’s academic publishing and scholarly communication enterprises will be guided through this era of continuing challenge and transformation by Ms. Muccie’s able hand. She is both a bold trailblazer and a careful manager with recognized talent for bringing large publishing projects to fruition in an efficient and sustainable way. ”

Ms. Muccie will function as the chief executive for Temple University Press and lead the development of a diverse scholarly communications program for the university libraries. The Executive Director/Library Officer for Scholarly Communication sits on the University Libraries Executive Committee and will contribute to supporting scholarship and learning on a local and global level.

Ms. Muccie is enthusiastic about joining Temple University Press on June 16. She said, “I look forward to leading a premier university press and navigating together the challenging waters of scholarly publishing. I am also excited by the opportunity to create new publishing initiatives for both the Press and Temple University.”

About Temple University Press

Founded in 1969, Temple University Press chose as its inspiration Russell Conwell’s vision of the university as a place of educational opportunity for the urban working class.

Temple University Press is perhaps best known as a publisher of books in the social sciences and the humanities, as well as books about Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region. Temple was an early publisher of books in urban studies, housing and labor studies, organizational reform, social service reform, public religion, health care, and cultural studies. It became one of the first university presses to publish in what later became the fields of women’s studies, ethnic studies—including Asian American and Latino studies, as well as African American Studies. Today, it continues in those fields and in newer ones such as disability studies, animal rights, criminology, gender and sexual identity, and sport and society. Temple’s regional list encompasses scholarly books, coffee table books, and books about art, culture, birding, fishing, hiking, sports teams, and the urban and suburban environments.