William Morris’s designs are still admired and revered, but his radical politics and utopian inclinations are less well known. Michael Robertson discusses the nineteenth-century Englishman’s insistence on craftsmanship, his critiques of industrialism, his turn toward socialism, and his utopian novel News From Nowhere.

Michael Robertson, The Last Utopians: Four Late Nineteenth-Century Visionaries and Their Legacy Princeton University Press, 2018

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We expect to find strawberries in the supermarket all year round.  But geographer Julie Guthman argues that for strawberries to be produced throughout the year — which used to be harvested a few weeks in spring — has required an enormous marshaling of chemical fumigants, pesticides, workers’ labor, and land.  And that effort is now fracturing.

Resources:

Julie Guthman, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry UC Press, 2019

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What can we learn from Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of Marxism? Why did the influential French sociologist reject Marx’s emphasis on labor and class struggle? Michael Burawoy lays out Bourdieu’s famous troika of interrelated concepts: habitus, field, and capital. He also points out some of the key differences between how Bourdieu and Marx thought about politics, culture, and domination.

Michael Burawoy, Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu Duke University Press, 2019

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If we look back over the 20th century and even into the 19th, we can see a series of historical periods that shaped how food was produced and consumed. And we can see how periods of relative stability alternated with periods of crisis. Sociologist Harriet Friedmann discusses her theory of food regimes and what they tell us about how capitalism absorbs movements from below.

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According to Margaret Hunter, growing numbers of white people are “shape shifting into Blackness”: they’re taking on or inhabiting aspects or characteristics of Blackness. Hunter discusses the emergence of three forms of Blackness tried on by whites in the post-civil rights era: cultural Blackness, political Blackness, and intellectual Blackness.

Tamai, Dineen-Wimberly, and Spickard, eds., Shape Shifters: Journeys across Terrains of Race and Identity University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming

Margaret Hunter, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone Routledge, 2005

The post When Whites Try on Blackness appeared first on KPFA.

Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity.  But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of what makes us human.

Resources:

Agustín Fuentes, Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being Yale University Press, 2019

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Do fictional narratives, like those found in novels, plays, and films, promote empathy? Does emotion-based empathy spur people to alleviate suffering in the real world? Namwali Serpell calls into question much of the conventional thinking about empathy in relation to art. Drawing on thinkers like Arendt and Brecht, Serpell points to fiction’s capacity to enlarge our understanding to encompass the positions of others.

Namwali Serpell, “The Banality of Empathy” NYR Daily

Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift Hogarth, 2019

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Within the left, debates rage over whether we should focus on race, class, or gender as the primary form of oppression today. Josh Fattal points to the writings of CLR James and Raya Dunaevskaya as a way out of the conundrum: they saw the struggles of one oppressed group acting as spores for spreading revolt to others. Josh Fattal discusses the covertly-influential intersectional ideas of James and Dunayevskaya.

Resources:

Josh Fattal, “Fermenting Revolution: Anti-Racism and Broader Social Struggles,” The Activist History Review, September 2019

The post CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya on Spawning Revolt appeared first on KPFA.

The spiritual pioneer, writer, and teacher Ram Dass on how to embrace aging and changing.

The post Fund Drive Special: Ram Dass on Aging Well appeared first on KPFA.

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