#alison macintosh

[drjohnweston]

[rathertoofondofbooks]

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality, which is all about sharing the books that you’ve acquired in the past week!

  So, I haven’t shared a book haul for a couple of weeks so this is a rather large haul. I’m blaming Audible for having a fabulous sale (with books from my wish list in it!) when I actually had a few spare credits! Also, I went on NetGalley to leave some reviews and accidentally requested some more books… oops!

  Purchased eBooks

The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen

I’ve seen so many fabulous reviews of this book so when I spotted the ebook on sale recently I couldn’t resist downloading it. I love the idea of a lost letter department so am excited to read this!

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

I bought this essay collection on a whim because I love Zadie Smith’s writing. I’ve recently enjoyed a couple of essay collections so I’m looking forward to dipping in and out of this one very soon.

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

I still haven’t read The Heart’s Invisible Furies but I feel sure I’m going to love it so I couldn’t resist buying another book by the author!

Unfollow Me by Charlotte Duckworth

I forgot that I’d pre-ordered this book so I was delighted when I discovered it on my kindle the other day. It felt like a present from past me to now me! I’m really keen to read this one so am going to try and get to it in the next week or so.

The Girl Before You by Nicola Rayner

I bought this on a whim too after seeing some reviews by bloggers that I trust so am looking forward to getting to this one.

Anna by Patricia Dixon

I bought this book after the author posted a really lovely post on her publication day and I could empathise with what she wrote so immediately went and ordered a copy of her book.

Happiness for Beginners by Carole Matthews

This was a kindle daily deal this week so I snapped it up. I really enjoy Carole Matthews’ novels so am happy to have another one on my TBR stack.

Every Mother’s Nightmare by Mark Thomas

I bought this one this week and am now half-way through it. The formatting of the book is awful though, which is such a shame, and I’m not sure I’ll continue with it.

  Purchased Audiobooks

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde and The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

I bought both of these audiobooks in a recent Audible sale when they had the first few books in a selection of series for £3 each! I’ve already got the first book so I can’t wait to start listening to these books!

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Parry

This has been on my wish list for such a long time after a good friend recommended it to me. I decided to get the audio book in the recent Audible 2 for 1 sale!

Milkshakes and Morphine by Genevieve Fox

This memoir is a recent addition to my wish list so I was delighted to spot it in the same sale as the book above. I’m definitely going to be listening to this very soon.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

This is one of those books that I’ve heard so much about for so many years that I feel like I must have already read it but I actually haven’t. I do have a print copy of this on my TBR but couldn’t resist getting the audio book in the 2 for 1 sale.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

This is another wish list book that was in the sale so I had to get to it. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time so I’m really happy to have a copy of it.

Tennison by Lynda la Plante

I’ve read quite a few books from this series but I’ve never read them in order so when I saw this first book in the Audible sale I decided to get it. I think it’s nice to re-read books in a different format than I first read it in to get a different experience of a story.

Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather by Tessa Boase

I needed another book to go with the one above to get 2 for 1 and this one jumped out at me. It sounds like such an interesting read so I’m really glad I got it.

Help Me! by Marianne Power

This was an Audible daily deal recently and it sounded like an interesting listen. I went through a phase of reading self help books when I was in my teens and so this book seemed like it would be a fun look at those kind of books.

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

I love The Book Thief so couldn’t resist grabbing this new one by the author when it was on an Audible daily deal. I’m looking forward to getting to this one.

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

This was also an Audible daily deal so I decided to get it. I have tried to read the book when it was first published but I just couldn’t finish it. I’m hoping that I might cope better with it on audio.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

I actually downloaded this book via Scribd and have just finished listening to it. It was an interesting book but I was hoping for something more from it.

  ARCs

After the End by Claire Macintosh

This is one of my most anticipated books of the year so I was thrilled to get approved for it on NetGalley recently. I’m planning to read this as soon as I finished one of my current reads!

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson

This is another book that I’ve been keen to get my hands on so again it was great to get approved on NetGalley to read it.

Then She Vanishes by Claire Douglas

I love Claire Douglas’ novels so was delighted to get an email saying that I was pre-approved on NG for this new one. I love the premise of this one and hope to get to it very soon.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

I also got pre-approved for this one on NG and while it wasn’t on my radar at the time I’ve since seen some brilliant reviews of it and I think this will be a great read.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

This book isn’t due out until next year so I was surprised to get approved to read it straight away. I really want to read this one but feel like I should hold off until a bit nearer publication.

The Au Pair by Emma Rous

I requested this on a whim after seeing reviews of it. It sounds like my kind of book and one that I will likely devour over an afternoon!

The Friendship Pact by Alison James

I downloaded this on NG when I was browsing. It sounds like my kind of book and I can’t wait to get to it.

Horizontal Collaborations by Navie

I’ve already read this graphic novel set during the second world war. It’s got beautiful artwork and the story was very moving. I’ll be reviewing this one for the blog tour later this month.

The Sea Refuses No River by Bethany Rivers

I’ve also already read this poetry collection. It’s a beautiful collection looking at grief and I found it very moving. I’m on the blog tour for it this month so will be reviewing it then.

Don’t Feed the Bear by Rachel Elliott

This was a lovely surprise ARC that arrived a couple of weeks ago. It’s such a gorgeous book and I’m looking forward to reading it.

  Have you bought any new books over the last week? Please tell me below. 🙂 If you join in with Stacking the Shelves please feel free to leave your link and I’ll make sure to read and comment on your post.

A Brand New Book Haul (Stacking the Shelves 8 Jun 2019)! Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality, which is all about sharing the books that you’ve acquired in the past week!

[allmysmolbirbs]

So I was looking at Earth 11 stuff and was trying to think of what Batwoman’s alter ego might be named

A. Bryce. But that’s cursed so no

B. Other names that start with B. That’s another obvious choice, but I don’t think that most parents go “I like the letter B. Let’s do Bruce for a boy and Brooke for a girl.” (or maybe they do idk)

C. Bruce was a popular name back when Batman was first released. It was the 64th most popular boy’s name to be exact. Unfortunately, the 64th most popular girl’s name that year was Marlene. No. Other popular names from 1939 that I like Helen, Joanne, Jaqueline

D. Bruce is a Scottish name (via the Normans). Scottish girls’ names I’ve heard in the States Alison, Nora, Blair

E. Bruce like Robert the Bruce? Rebels- Christina (Christina of the Isles), Flora (like Flora Macdonald), Anne (Lady MacIntosh) or Royalty- Mary, Elizabeth, Victoria

F. The most roundabout way probably: Bruce means willowland and Leanna means willow

Idk man I just had fun thinking about this. Anyone have any opinions?

[bumblebeetrading]

NEW AUDIOS

my website is www.kaybeetrading.weebly.com

1/10/2020

Hamilton - 05/24/2019 - San Francisco, CA - Julius Thomas III (Alexander Hamilton), Julia K. Harriman (Eliza Hamilton), Darnell Abraham (u/s Aaron Burr), Sabrina Sloan (Angelica Schuyler), Isaiah Johnson (George Washington), Simon Longnight (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson), Brandon Louis Armstrong (Hercules Mulligan/James Madison), Rubén J. Carbajal (John Laurens/Philip Hamilton), Darilyn Castillo (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds), Rick Negron (King George III), Vincent J. Hooper (Philip Schuyler/James Reynolds/Doctor), Andrew Wojtal (Samuel Seabury), Christopher Campbell (Charles Lee), Brendon Chan (George Eacker), Tiffany Mellard, Emily Tate, Brion Marquis Watson, Sheridan Mouawad, Jennifer Locke, Morgan Anita Wood, Elijah Reyes. 

11/29/2019 - Madison, WI - M4a (Untracked) - RoseRedTrading's Master - Nick Sanchez (u/s Alexander Hamilton), Emily Jenda (s/b Eliza Hamilton), Nik Walker (Aaron Burr), Jen Sese (s/w Angelica Schuyler), Marcus Choi (George Washington), Warren Egypt Franklin (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson), Desmond Sean Ellington (Hercules Mulligan/James Madison), Elijah Malcomb (John Laurens/Philip Hamilton), Nyla Sostre (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds), Neil Haskell (King George III), Julian Ramos (u/s James Reynolds/Philip Schuyler/Doctor), Aaron J Albano (Samuel Seabury), Gabriel Hyman (Charles Lee), Trevor Miles (George Eacker), Demarius R Copes (Ensemble), Julia Estrada (Ensemble), Kristen Hoagland (Ensemble), Lili Froehlich (Ensemble), Marcus John (Ensemble), Quiantae Thomas (Ensemble), Samantha Pollino (Ensemble) notes: Rare capture of these three understudies performing together! First recording of Jen Sese as Angelica for a full show. 

09/24/2019 - tjonc’s master - Austin Scott (Alexander Hamilton), Jennie Harney-Fleming (s/b Eliza Hamilton), Gregory Treco (s/b Aaron Burr), Mandy Gonzalez (Angelica Schuyler), Nicholas Christopher (George Washington), Kyle Scatliffe (s/b Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson), Wallace Smith (Hercules Mulligan/James Madison), Anthony Lee Medina (John Laurens/Philip Hamilton), Joanna A. Jones (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds), Marc delaCruz (u/s King George), Roddy Kennedy (u/s Philip Schuyler/James Reynolds/Doctor), Thayne Jasperson (Samuel Seabury), Robert Walters (u/s Charles Lee), Terrance Spencer (George Eacker) 

1/8/2020 - 2nd UK Tour - musicalgifs's master - Lauren Drew (Catherine of Aragon), Maddison Bulleyment (Anne Boleyn), Lauren Byrne (Jane Seymour), Shekinah McFarlane (Anna of Cleves), Alicia Corrales-Connor (u/s Katherine Howard), Athena Collins (Catherine Parr)Notes: Alicia came from the Bliss cruise ship, where she was principal Howard, to understudy the role while alternate Howard Jen Caldwell is emergency covering in the West End production of the show. This is Alicia's tour debut. 

1/6/2020

12/13/2019 - Salford (Evening) - spicybelladonna's master - Cassandra Lee (u/s Catherine of Aragon), Maddison Bulleyment (Anne Boleyn), Lauren Byrne (Jane Seymour), Harriet Watson (u/s Anna of Cleves), Jennifer Caldwell (u/s Katherine Howard), Maiya Quansah-Breed (e/c Catherine Parr) Notes: Four of the principal actresses called out but there were only three alternates, so Maiya made an emergency return to the show to cover Catherine Parr. 

12/21/2019 - Salford (Matinee) - Lauren Drew (Catherine of Aragon), Maddison Bulleyment (Anne Boleyn), Lauren Byrne (Jane Seymour), Cassandra Lee (u/s Anna of Cleves), Jennifer Caldwell (u/s Katherine Howard), Athena Collins (Catherine Parr) Notes: Cuts out during megasix intro. File Type: M4A 

10/20/19 - West End - Zara MacIntosh as Catherine of Aragon (alt Aragon), Courtney Bowman as Anne Boleyn, Collette Guitart as Jane Seymour (u/s Seymour), Cherelle Jay as Anna of Cleves (alt Cleves), Vicki Manser as Katherine Howard, Hana Stewart as Catherine Parr (alt Parr) Notes: mp3 file

10/19/19 - West End - Matinee - Jarneia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon, Cherelle Jay as Anne Boleyn (alt Boleyn), Hana Stewart as Jane Seymour (alt Seymour), Alexia McIntosh as Anna of Cleves, Collette Guitart as Katherine Howard (u/s Howard), Danielle Steers as Catherine Parr

Notes: mp3 file. Cherelle's Boleyn debut!

10/27/19 - West End - Jarneia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon, Courtney Bowman as Anne Boleyn, Hana Stewart as Jane Seymour (alt Seymour), Alexia McIntosh as Anna of Cleves, Zara MacIntosh as Katherine Howard (alt Howard), Danielle Steers as Catherine Parr Notes: mp3 file

11/24/19 ~ West End ~ Jarneia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon, Zara MacIntosh as Anne Boleyn (alt Boleyn), Natalie May Paris as Jane Seymour, Alexia McIntosh as Anna of Cleves, Vicki Manser as Katherine Howard, Collette Guitart as Catherine Parr (u/s Parr) Notes: zip files. Zara's Boleyn debut! This audio is 2 for 1 limited trading, it's worth 2 audios or 1 bootleg.

01/04/20 - Australia - Evening - Chloe Zuel as Catherine of Aragon, Kala Gare as Anne Boleyn, Loren Hunter as Jane Seymour, Kiana Daniele as Anna of Cleves, Courtney Monsma as Katherine Howard, Vidya Makan as Catherine Parr. Notes: mp4. Second preview

07/17/19 - Chicago - Matinee - Miguel Cervantes as Alexander Hamilton, Keith Webb as Aaron Burr (u/s Burr), Alysha Delorieux as Eliza Schuyler, Nikki Renee Daniels as Angelica Schuyler, Tamar Greene as George Washington, Paris Nix as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, Ebrin R. Stanley as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, Jamaal Fields-Green as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton, Jared Howelton as King George (u/s King George)

09/15/19 - Broadway - Alison Luff as Jenna, Colleen Balliger as Dawn, Charity Angel Dawson as Becky, Todrick Hall as Ogie, Delaney Quinn as Lulu Notes: mp3 file. Gifted upon request. Alison Luff, Colleen Balliger, Charity Angel Dawson, Todrick Hall, and Delaney Quinn's last show. Many apologies, I'm not aware of the full cast. Notes: mp3 files. A slightly more detailed cast can be provided.

[kwebtv]

Shetland  -  BBC One  -  March 19, 2013 - Present

Crime Drama (26 episodes to date)

Running Time:  60 minutes

Stars:

Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez (series 1–)

Alison O'Donnell as DS Alison 'Tosh' MacIntosh (series 1–)

Steven Robertson as DC Sandy Wilson  (series 1–)

Mark Bonnar as Duncan Hunter  (series 1–)

Julie Graham as PF Rhona Kelly  (series 2–)

Lewis Howden as Sgt Billy McCabe (series 4–, recurring series 1, 3)

Erin Armstrong as Cassie Perez  (series 4–, recurring series 1–3)

Anne Kidd as Cora McLean  (series 5–, recurring series 2–4)

Stewart Porter as Sgt Billy McBride  (recurring series 2; temporarily replacing Lewis Howden)

[architectuul]

The Women Housing Architects Of Britain

Although women contributed in many ways to British architecture before the twentieth century, they officially entered the architectural profession only after the First World War. The RIBA did not admit women until 1898, when Ethel Charles (1871-1962) became a member, opening the debate on women’s role in architecture and causing a legalistic and bureaucratic resistance. 

Elisabeth Scott’s competition design for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (1927) marked the beginning of a breakthrough for women architects. | Photo via Architecture.com - RIBA Collections

Since then, British women architects have fought to redefine their professional identity, gaining access to education and big projects and often demonstrating to be architecturally and socially innovative. Among them, a few remarkable figures worked for local authorities in London and contributed to the public good with bold, progressive and human buildings and their multidisciplinary skills. Mainly involved in housing projects and often collaborating with each other, Elisabeth Denby, Judith Ledeboer, Rosemary Stjernstedt, Kate Macintosh and Alison Smithson can be considered inspiring and unsung pioneers who played a crucial role in social architecture and in the formulation of housing policy. 

Elizabeth Denby, the England's Jane Jacobs, was an urban planner, housing consultant and social reformer. | Photo via Architects’ Journal

Elisabeth Denby soon became a champion of urban renewal and a fundamental figure for the development of British housing program. Collaborating with Maxwell Fry who defined her as the leading spirit in housing in the 1930s, she designed several inner city flats where she applied her innovative ideas to respond to residents’ needs. Their Sassoon House has been defined the first modernist workers’ dwellings in Britain.

Denby contributed to the discussion about residential planning with the book Europe Rehoused. 

Fry and Denby used Kensal House to put into practice Modernist ideas for social change starting at home, offering carefully-planned flats with generous kitchens, bikes storages, gardens, large balconies and nursery. | Photo by Edith Tudor Hart at RIBA Collections

Elizabeth Denby was on the RIBA Housing Group with Jane Drew, Judith Ledeboer and Jessica Albery. The result of their collaboration was a report published in 1944 where they expressed their views about the future of housing, inviting decision-makers and colleagues to opt for carefully-designed terraced houses and flats instead of inhuman high-density complexes.

Born Dutch-English, Judith Ledeboer was an architect who collaborated with David Booth and John Pickheard. She became another significant voice in housing policy. Astragal, the diarist in the Architects' Journal wrote in 1934: "In our little world Miss Denby and Miss Ledeboer wield more influence and get more work done than any six pompous and prating males". In 1941 was the first woman employed by the Ministry of Health responsible for housing. Ledeboer also advised local authorities on the reconstruction of post-war Britain and contributed to the establishment of those space standards that then became mandatory in all public housing.

Poster for a new housing estate in Poplar, which is being advertised as a paid attraction during the 1951 Festival of Britain. | Photo by Festival of Britain

Also other women architects worked for the public sector and took crucial roles in Britain’s era of social housing provision with major schemes in the 1960-70s. AA-trained, Rosemary Stjernstedt moved to Sweden to work as town planner and returned to England after Second World War, joining the London County Council in the Housing Division. There, she was the first female architect to achieve Grade I status and she became the first woman to reach senior grade I status in any British council county division in 1950.

Rosemary Stjernstedt with her fellow architects in the LCC Housing Division (1950). | Image via Guardian

Her best-known project was the Alton Estate, which she designed in the role of the team leader in 1951-55, described by Pevsner as architecture at ease. When London County Council was dissolved in 1964, Stjernstedt started working for Lambeth Borough Council under the guidance of Ted Hollamby, a committed socialist architect and planner. 

Alton Estate has over 13,000 residents with the brutalist architecture inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation. | Photo via The Modern House  

Under Hollamby, Lambeth's architects produced several housing and welfare buildings, making the borough now nationally known for the ambition and quality of its output. In 1968, Kate Macintosh also joined Lambeth's Architects' Department where she embarked on 269 Leigham Court Road, a sheltered housing for the elderly. Responsible for some of the most innovative housing schemes commissioned by several local authorities, Macintosh believed that one of the generators of our work was the search for social justice. She was only 26 when she began designing Dawson’s Heights. 

Leigham Court Road Robin London. | Photo © Kate Macintosh Archive 

Among architects who contributed to London’s social housing, Alison Smithson, born Alison Gills, gave life with Peter Smithson to the New Brutalism and its interest in accommodating and adapting to the real experiences and desires of ordinary people. She worked in the architecture department of the London County Council before starting a practice with her husband in 1950.  

Alison Smithson at Hunstanton Secondary Modern School, Norfolk, during its construction. | Photo © Nigel Henderson Estate If Rosemary Stjernstedt’s Alton Estate was clearly inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation in Marseille, Alison and Peter Smithson brought to light new theories in antagonism to the Swiss-French master’s principles. As the only woman in Team X, a radical group formed to replace the CIAM philosophies of high modernism, Alison stressed the importance of the real social architecture needs and housing design solutions becoming internationally influential with numerous theoretical writings. Recently, the western block of their famous Robin Hood Gardens complex has been demolished opening a large debate so that now part of the building has been preserved by the Victoria and Albert Museum and was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.

In the Robin Hood Gardens the street-in-the-sky concept took form as broad aerial walkways into the long concrete blocks. | Photo © Lorenzo Zandri 2018

These five women are a most representative example of the extraordinary female contribution to social architecture in the United Kingdom in the post-war period when, despite the high pressure of housing needs, they proposed high quality projects designed for people. At a moment when the number of social homes being built in England is at its lowes and local authorities struggle in providing quality housing, we can learn from their experiences, projects and theories, recognising them as best practices and monitors for the current and future challenges.

---

Pioneer Architects XV by Giorgia Scognamiglio and Lorenzo Zandri

[howaboutcultura-blog]

Prehistoria

Como bien sabemos, tanto la historia como la prehistoria tienen de personaje principal al hombre, al macho joven, con fuerza y líder de todas las acciones, pero ¿cómo esos hombres han llegado a ser tan robustos, altos, vencedores, etc.?

Efectivamente, las sociedades están compuestas por ancianos, hombres, niños y mujeres.

Dado que la representación iconográfica por excelencia no refleja fielmente los roles sociales y de género de la prehistoria y nuestro trabajo desea descubrir un poco más el funcionamiento de los hombres y mujeres en las distintas épocas de la humanidad, nuestra protagonista será la mujer, porque los logros de los hombres ya nos los conocemos muy bien.

 Comenzando por la prehistoria, aquella en la que ya el homo sapiens está consolidado, en principio nómada y posteriormente sedentario, vamos a descubrir su sociedad.

En primer lugar, las sociedades prehistóricas eran muchísimo más igualitarias que la sociedad de nuestros tiempos, debido a que le rendían un gran respeto a la naturaleza y mantenían un contacto directo con ella. Cosa que sociedades amazónicas que perduran en la actualidad también practican.

En esta sociedad, la mujer mantenía un papel igual de importante que el hombre o incluso mayor, que veremos a continuación.

Francisca Martín-Cano Abreu señala que “la mujer gozaba de un gran poder social y económico […] aportaba los dos tercios de las calorías necesarias para la supervivencia del grupo, tenía autonomía para moverse e ir a cazar o recolectar, y su doble aportación económica y reproductiva le permitía tener poder político y religioso”.

Desmond Morris añade “La muerte del macho no era tan desastrosa como la de la hembra, cuya presencia era necesaria para las crías. Por eso se la adoraba y divinizaba”.

Estudios como el de la Universidad de Cambridge, liderado por la antropóloga Alison Macintosh y publicado en Science Advances demuestran que las mujeres de la prehistoria eran entre un 5 y 10% más fuertes que las atletas más destacables de hoy en día.

Esto demuestra que las mujeres prehistóricas realizaban labores como arar la tierra, cavar, cazar, pescar, recolectar y cargar con mucho peso. Además de realizar sus labores biológicas (por los cuales era una deidad), como el parto, la lactancia y la maternidad en general.

Todo esto no quita que no hubiese una división en la sociedad, pero la que había se establecía por edad, se podría decir que por experiencia.

 En segundo lugar, podríamos hablar de las “profesiones” e innovaciones que introdujeron las mujeres a su sociedad. En el paleolítico, sus aportaciones fueron ser maestra-nodriza, curandera y sacerdotisa y en el neolítico, ofrecieron descubrimientos como herramientas, artesanías del tejido, curtido de pieles, cerámica, técnicas de modificación de alimentos, fármacos y minerales. Se da un mayor control sobre la naturaleza.

En tercer lugar, debemos comentar las creencias de la época, en la que predominaba el culto a la mujer, ya que se la adoraba como una deidad que la propia tierra ha ofrecido a la sociedad para dar vida a lo que les rodea.

Las madres eran las que dirigían la humanidad y tenían su progreso biológico: de joven a madre a anciana.

En el paleolítico predominaban las Esculturas de Venus, de entre 2 y 25 centímetros, en los que se exaltaba los pechos, el vientre y las partes femeninas, que eran las principales partes del cuerpo de una mujer que daban vida y la mantenían, por ello no se le daba tanta importancia a los rasgos faciales, aunque vemos que las extremidades anchas también nos dicen que en cuanto más rellena la mujer, mejor porque así tenía más posibilidad de sobrevivir y dar qué alimentar a sus hijos. Todo ello nos dice que las esculturas eran un imán, un amuleto para la fertilidad de la tribu.

En el neolítico ya se da culto a la diosa madre, ésta daba protección a la agricultura y el ganado de la sociedad, representada en figuras pequeñas de arcilla.

 Finalmente, debemos reflexionar sobre cómo hemos construido la historia para dar lugar a un presente más igualitario, para ello, hay que posicionar a la mujer en los actos y acciones en los que ha participado. La mujer debe ser reconocida por su trabajo y la importancia social que ha desarrollado y sobre todo, erradicar la imposición e idea esencialista y biológica que le hemos dado a los trabajos que se le asocian a las mujeres. Debemos representarlas en la historia y por tanto en los museos para que futuras generaciones puedan tomar un buen ejemplo de nuestro pasado.

[drjohnweston]

Shetland Series 7 filming caught on the webcam at Eshaness Lighthouse

Via @onafi on Twitter

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Ancient farm women in Central Europe labored so vigorously at grinding grain, tilling soil and other daily tasks that the women’s average upper-arm strength surpassed that of top female rowers today, a new study finds.

In the early stages of farming more than 7,000 years ago, women engaged in a wide array of physically intense activities that were crucial to village life but have gone largely unnoticed by scientists, conclude biological anthropologist Alison Macintosh of the University of Cambridge and colleagues.

“Women’s labor provided the driving force behind the expansion of agricultural economies in the past,” Macintosh says.

[honeybadgerradio]

JMac and the Misogynerds - Rant 93

Join Karen, Alison, Brian and Dr. Randomercam as they take on Jonathan Macintosh and his fantabulist display of being "the one good man."

===========================================

Follow us at twitter, facebook, minds, vidme, youtube, and badgerfeed!

Check out the latest Honeybadgers episode.

[bitchesbrewcomedy]

Friday, July 5th!

8:30PM NO COVER Halyard’s Bar Backroom 406 3rd Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215

RESERVE YOUR SEAT HERE

Reserved seats: If you do not arrive on time, you will lose your seat. Standing room available in the back!

Music By: Big Willy Nelson 

Comedy By:

Nathan Macintosh (Tonight Show)

Petey Deabreu (Comedy Central)

Liz Miele (Comedy Central)

Jeff Scheen (JFL)

Lisa Curry (Comedy Knockout) 

Hosted By: Alison Leiby (Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

(Along with fellow Bitches Erica Spera, Naomi Karavani & Shelby Taylor)

[tesaonews]

Pesquisadores contam a coisa mais estranha que já fizeram pela ciência

Nem toda pesquisa científica é glamurosa. Na verdade, diversos experimentos exigem que os estudiosos por trás da empreitada se submetam a situações cômicas ou até bizarras. Todo pesquisador tem um bom causo científico para contar no almoço com colegas ou na pausa para o cafézinho. Nos últimos dias, essas histórias maravilhosas tomaram o Twitter, quando centenas de cientistas soltaram o verbo e abriram o jogo em uma thread genial: qual foi a coisa mais estranha que você já fez pela ciência?

Quem começou a brincadeira foi Jason Rasgon, da Universidade Estadual da Pensilvânia, que abriu os trabalhos em grande estilo. “Fiz enemas [introdução de solução no ânus] de nicotina em lagartas no meu pós-doc”, postou. O que se seguiu foi uma surpreendente avalanche de tuítes que escancaram o tipo de coisa às vezes degradante, mas sempre muito engraçada, que os pesquisadores fazem em nome da ciência.

What's the weirdest thing you've done for science? For me, it was giving nicotine enemas to caterpillars when I was a postdoc.

I'm certain this isn't the weirdest thing compared to what y'all have done

— Jason Rasgon (@vectorgen) January 24, 2019

Biólogos estão entre os que contaram as melhores histórias. Boa parte delas envolve sexo animal ou então interações inusitadas com alguma parte anatômica de animais (vivos ou mortos). São perfeitas para mostrar que a vida de um cientista nem sempre é entediante como muita gente pensa, e que grandes descobertas às vezes se escondem nos lugares mais improváveis. Confira abaixo alguns dos tuítes mais engraçados.

“Eu fiz uma boneca sexual para drosófilas e pintei ela todinha com feromônios” Dr. Orchid @BioShannon

Signed a sheet saying I would not purposely infect colleagues with Gonorrhea ….

— Estelle Caine (@caine_estelle) January 25, 2019

“Aprendi a apalpar galinhas com meu dedo indicador enluvado. Eu posso te dizer há quanto tempo ela ovulou” Dr. Stephanie Correa @Profa_Correa

I learned to palpate chickens with my gloved index finger. I could tell you how long since she had ovulated.

— Dr. Stephanie Correa (@Profa_Correa) January 25, 2019

“Uma amiga minha costumava masturbar coelhos para coletar sêmen. Eu amava tirar sarro dela por isso” Joseph Simko @Bamfurlough

A friend of mine used to masturbate rabbits to collect semen. I loved making fun of her for that, but she doesn't even rate in this thread.

— Joseph Simko (@Bamfurlough) January 26, 2019

“Fervi, higienizei e preparei na cozinha de casa cabeças de rato para determinar a melhor forma de preservar e expor seus pequenos crânios” Kimberly Moynahan @Kim_Moynahan

Boiled, bleached, and otherwise processed mouse heads in my kitchen to determine best way to preserve and display their little skulls.

— Kimberly Moynahan

(@Kim_Moynahan) January 25, 2019

“Medi as pélvis de humanos medievais durante meu doutorado e meu colar comprido entalou no canal de nascimento de alguém” Alison Macintosh @ali__macintosh

Measured Medieval human pelvises during my PhD and got my long dangly necklace caught in someone’s birth canal

— Alison Macintosh (@ali__macintosh) January 25, 2019

“Assinei um formulário dizendo que não infectaria propositalmente meus colegas com gonorreia” Estelle Caine @caine_estelle

Signed a sheet saying I would not purposely infect colleagues with Gonorrhea ….

— Estelle Caine (@caine_estelle) January 25, 2019

“Transportei 500 retos de raposa em decomposição na minha bagagem de mão em um voo da Ryanair” Charlie Evans @charlie_sci

Transported 500 decomposing fox rectums in my hand luggage on a Ryanair flight. https://t.co/9EVE7fIqn4

— Charlie Evans (@charlie_sci) January 27, 2019

“Fiz snorkel na água de refrigeração de uma usina de energia nuclear. No aguardo do desabrochar dos meus superpoderes” Fernando Mateos-González @Bioblogo

Snorkel in the refrigeration water of a nuclear power plant. Waiting for my super powers to blossom. pic.twitter.com/7X8KXjAvTF

— Fernando Mateos-González (@Bioblogo) January 28, 2019

“Uma vez deixei um rato muito doidão de óxido nitroso e cutuquei a bunda dele várias vezes com um alfinete para demonstrar inalação de anestesia” Ted Sweeney @MrFriendlyWalk

I once got a rat very high on nitrous oxide and poked its ass with a pin several times to demonstrate inhalation anesthesia.

— Ted Sweeney (@MrFriendlyWalk) January 25, 2019

Leia aqui a matéria original

O post Pesquisadores contam a coisa mais estranha que já fizeram pela ciência apareceu primeiro em Tesão News.

source https://tesaonews.com.br/noticia-tesao/pesquisadores-contam-a-coisa-mais-estranha-que-ja-fizeram-pela-ciencia/

[atlanticcanada]

Macdonald Bridge closed for repairs on busy weekend in HRM

Halifax's Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is going to be closed for what promises to be a very busy weekend in the city.

It's not part of the “Big Lift,” though; instead, it’s routine maintenance as workers will be replacing a support bearing under the bridge.

“This one requires a full weekend closure because of its size and location on the bridge,” said Halifax Harbour Bridges spokeswoman Alison MacDonald.

This weekend, the Halifax Mooseheads are having their home opener and Hal-Con, Atlantic Canada’s largest science fiction and gaming convention, which will be held downtown.

The Mooseheads are close to sold out for their home opener.

“We’re going to have 9,000 plus in the building on Saturday night, so make sure you leave a little extra early and get here on time,” said Halifax Mooseheads manager of media relations and communications Scott Macintosh.

Jennifer Lambe, the executive director of Hal-Con, expects 9,000 people to attend this weekend.

“It's actually going to cause a bunch of delays with getting our actors to and from the airport, or guests who are in the comic or author world to the airport who have to fly home on Sunday,” Lambe said.

About a third of the attendees are expected to be coming from out of town.

“It's a little inconvenient, but certainly the bridge does need fixing and finishing, which I'm sure we'll all be thrilled about when it's done, so we support that, but we wouldn't have been upset if it had been a different weekend,” Lambe said.

On the Dartmouth side, the Dartmouth Sportsplex will host its annual Christmas craft show.

This is their 43rd year, so organizers aren't worried, even though they’re expecting more than 7,000 people this weekend.

“Two years ago, the Macdonald Bridge closed on the same weekend we were here and it didn't affect us,” said Frank Rickets, president of the Dartmouth Handcrafters Guild.

Halifax Harbour Bridges says the A. Murray MacKay will be open all weekend, and able to handle the increased traffic.

“Having one bridge closed, it is an inconvenience and we certainly understand that and hope that nobody cancels their plans as a result of it,” said MacDonald.

The work being done this weekend has to be done before it gets too cold.

Because it's getting colder and late into the construction season, they say they couldn't wait any longer to replace this bearing, which dates to the 1950s and is due for replacement.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Emily Baron Cadloff.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/2JgVJV4

[bobcatmoran]

Wait, though, this leaves out the best part, namely how they figured this out. See, for years and years, anthropologists had been looking at prehistoric skeletons for signs of physical activity, and had concluded that while the men were generally super athletic, the women were not. The problem was, the standards they were using were based on male skeletons, and women’s bones react to stress put on them differently than men’s. 

So Alison Macintosh and her colleagues decided to compare the prehistoric women’s bones to those of modern female athletes (as well as some relatively sedentary women), and lo and behold, the prehistoric women's upper arms were the most similar to rowers, except they showed even more signs of physical activity. Not surprising, considering that twp of the major bits of “women’s work” consisted of grinding grain, which at that point in time consisted of manually crushing it between two rocks, and farming, which was done with hoes and digging sticks in the pre-plow era.

You can read the full National Geographic article here, or the actual scientific paper, which is blessedly open-source, here.

me, visibly crying tears of joy and love: holy shit

[livingwellpage]

Prehistoric Women Had Stronger Arms Than Competitive Rowers Today

[brightcove:5569684893001 default]

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

Today’s athletes may be strong, but they’ve got nothing on prehistoric women who spent their days harvesting crops and grinding grain. According to a new study in the journal Science Advances, the average woman who lived during the first 6,000 years of farming had stronger upper arms than modern-day female rowing champions.

The study “highlights the scale of women’s labor in prehistoric agricultural communities, and the hidden history of women’s work across thousands of years of farming,” says study author Alison Macintosh, a postdoctoral anthropology researcher at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Previous research has compared women’s bones to men’s of the same era, the authors write in their study. But male bones respond to strain in a more visibly dramatic way than female bones, they explain, which has caused scientists to underestimate the true nature and scale of the physical work done by women in prehistoric societies.

In this study, researchers used a CT scanner to analyze the arm and leg bones of living women, and compared them to those of Central European women who lived between 7,400 and 3,500 years ago—a time period that included early Neolithic agricultural eras into the Middle Ages. The living women were selected to represent a range of physical activity levels and included runners, rowers, soccer players and people with more sedentary lifestyles.

The researchers found that the early Neolithic skeletons (women who lived between 7,400 and 7,000 years ago) had leg bones of similar strength to today’s female athletes. But even when compared with women on Cambridge’s championship rowing team, the prehistoric women’s arms were 11-16% stronger for their size. They were also 30% stronger than the arms of the non-athletes analyzed in the study.

Women from the Bronze Age (4,300 to 3,500 years ago) had 9-13% stronger arm bones than today’s rowers, but they also had 12% weaker leg bones.

The researchers suspect that the early women’s superior arm strength came from the daily work they likely put in tilling soil, harvesting crops by hand and grinding grain to make flour. “For millennia, grain would have been ground by hand between two large stones called a saddle quern,” says Macintosh. “In the few remaining societies that still use saddle querns, women grind grain for up to five hours a day.”

Women were also likely involved in fetching food and water for livestock, processing milk and meat and converting animal hides and wool into textiles—evidenced by the variety of different behavior patterns reflected in their bones. Prior to the invention of the plough, the authors say, they also spent time manually planting, tilling and harvesting crops.

“By interpreting women’s bones in a female-specific context, we can start to see how intensive, variable and laborious their behaviors were,” says Macintosh. Comparing their bone characteristics to living people—whose exercise levels are known—also provides a better understanding of the real amount of physical activity these women got on a regular basis. (The Cambridge rowers, for example, trained twice a day and rowed an average of 75 miles a week.)

“It can be easy to forget that bone is a living tissue, one that responds to the rigors we put our bodies through,” Macintosh adds. Bone reacts and adapts to strain—like physical impact and muscle activity—by changing in shape, curvature, thickness and density.

MORE: Why Weight Training Is Ridiculously Good For You

Bone strength is affected by factors other than behavior, Macintosh says, including genetics, nutrition and overall health. These differences between prehistoric and modern women could affect some of the results, she says, although behavior “is still likely to be responsible for the bulk of these differences that we’re seeing.”

“Our study suggests that this labor was likely more rigorous and intensive than what is required of most living rowers in their sport,” says Macintosh. “Our work also highlights the huge variability in the daily activities of women, giving us a wider appreciation of the scale and variability of things that women were likely doing in their daily lives.”

In today’s industrialized societies, strenuous physical activity is less common and easier to avoid, Macintosh adds—and for the human species as a whole, bone strength and mobility have suffered because of it. The study serves as an important reminder, she says, about the importance of exercise—recreational or otherwise, and for men and women alike—for building and maintaining healthy bones.

Prehistoric Women Had Stronger Arms Than Competitive Rowers Today published first on your-t1-blog-url

[jeki2011-blog]

Literary Economy: On “The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics”

John Macintosh

I

THE INTRODUCTION TO The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, edited by Matt Seybold and Michelle Chihara, aims “to examine the complex and counterintuitive relationship between the two disciplines which gave this companion its title.” What follows is a compelling interdisciplinary history that begins with the literary inclinations of political economists Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. Although these political economists were steeped in literature and culture, Seybold and Chihara identify two turns that sent political economy on a different path. The marginal revolution of the late 19th century brought a new theory of value: subjective value and marginal utility were in; the labor theory of value was out. More definitively, in the 20th century, the Keynesian synthesis supposedly brought neoclassical microeconomics into accord with Keynes’s macroeconomic theory. Economists “increasingly severed themselves from their disciplinary roots in philosophy, rhetoric, and politics, seeking to style themselves as scientists inspired by mathematics, physics, and engineering.” By shedding this political economic skin, the emerging discipline of economics sought to leave behind the vagaries of people and politics for the clean rationalities of math and models.

In Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), the influential US economist Paul Samuelson solidified mathematics as the economic lingua franca. By the third edition of his textbook, Economics (1955), Samuelson consolidated the neoclassical synthesis and argued that it was “accepted in its broad outlines by all but about 5 per cent of extreme left wing and right wing writers.” Economic historian Philip Mirowski argues this consensus was won through the concerted “exile of history and philosophy from any place within the contemporary economic orthodoxy.” Mirowski writes:

After a brief flirtation in the 1960s and ’70s, the grandees of the [economic] profession took it upon themselves to express their disdain and scorn for the types of self-reflection practiced by “methodologists” and historians of economics, and to go out of their way to prevent those so inclined from occupying any tenured foothold in reputable economics departments. It was perhaps no coincidence that history and philosophy were the areas where one found greatest concentrations of skeptics concerning the shape and substance of the postwar American economic orthodoxy.

Top economics departments and journals policed a methodological orthodoxy. Economic history courses dwindled. Historical and philosophical debate were supplanted by quantitative analysis. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a mock Nobel established by Sweden’s central bank in 1968, helped to popularize modern economics as a scientific discourse. (Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen, two founders of econometrics, were the first laureates in 1969; Samuelson had to wait until the next year.) Mainstream economists may not self-identify as neoclassical today, but mathematical modeling retains a stranglehold on the discipline. Although traditions of heterodox economics exist, they have often been marginalized, and much debate and dissent has come from outside the discipline itself.

Where was the discipline of literary studies during this mathematical turn in economics? A through-line of Marxist literary criticism notwithstanding, Seybold and Chihara note that by the mid-20th century, “English and Economics departments each indulged their own brand of navel-gazing formalism, their repudiation of each other was characterized by apathy, not animosity.” New Criticism eschewed historical context for the unified whole of the text. The rise of structuralism and post-structuralism — the linguistic turn in literature departments from the late 1960s through the 1990s — also tended to emphasize form, semiotics, and the play of the signifier rather than political, historical, or social contexts. However, by the 1980s, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Ethnic Studies, Post-Colonialism, Queer Studies, and other fields sought to reestablish those contexts. While economics settled into methodological consensus and orthodoxy, literature departments began to pursue new methodologies and neglected areas of study.

Literary critics in this period also joined historians and philosophers in engaging with economics. In their preceding Routledge volume, The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics (1999), Mark Osteen and Martha Woodmansee identified a “first wave of economic criticism, which appeared during the late 1970s and the early 1980s.” The New Economic Criticism, “a second, seemingly tidal wave of scholarship investigating the relations among literature, culture and economics,” emerged in the 1980s and ’90s from the popularity of New Historicism (their own term sought to capitalize on its momentum), the make-it-new imperative of scholarly publication, and the reemergence of cultural studies. According to Seybold and Chihara, New Economic Criticism “was not a wholesale rejection of Marxist Literary Criticism,” but “New Economic Critics did tend to treat Marx as part of a historical continuum of economic thought, not an invalidation of it.” Some of these critics drew on the work of the founder of rhetorical economics — and later Chicago school civil libertarian — Deirdre McCloskey, who emphasized the rhetorical underpinnings of economics to temper the discipline’s truth claims. Some critics also followed her suggestion that literary economic criticism was stunted because its “knowledge of economics begins and ends with Karl Marx.” It is a pithy statement, if not exactly true. Marx himself was nothing if not a close reader of political economy, and for more recent critics, to understand Marx means to understand the body of thought that made up the object of his critique. In his chapter “Keynes and Keynesianism,” Seybold notes that “[o]nly a small fraction of professional economists read Keynes’s General Theory, or any canonical works in the history of economic thought, for that matter.” Put differently, the study of economic history in mainstream economics departments does not end with Marx — or Keynes or Mill or Smith — but rather before it begins.

II.

Speaking of beginnings, it seems clear why a new new economic criticism might emerge now — whether one prefers the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 or the almost 50 years of economic stagnation that economic historian Robert Brenner has termed “the long downturn.” One certainly need not be an academic to know that the economic weighs heavily on contemporary life. But why does “contemporary econo-literary criticism” respond so widely and so thoroughly in this period? Seybold and Chihara note that

a sizable community of scholars trained in literary and cultural studies have chosen to spend the last decade (or longer) fastidiously reading political economy, economic history, business journalism, Wall St. memoirs, microeconomics textbooks, and many other tediously “unliterary” genres which make up what Leigh Claire La Berge calls “financial print culture.”

Whatever the individual reasons for their engagement, the scholars in Literature and Economics “approach economic texts and contexts with rigorous attention to the disciplinary vocabulary, methodological assumptions, and intellectual history of economics.”

Literature and Economics is expansive. It ranges temporally from premodern economics (Andrew Galloway) to the rise of finance and behavioral economics (Richard Godden and Chihara, respectively). The essays included read literature with and against paper money (Mary McAleer Balkun), energy (Imre Szeman), real estate (Alison Shonkwiler), speculation (Peter Knight), inflation (Joseph Jonghyun Jeon), social want (Howard Horwitz), and black markets (Sharada Balachandran Orihuela). Some contributors use economic concepts as lenses to read literary texts or demonstrate how literary texts illustrate or complicate economic thought. Others read economic discourse using literary tropes and devices or demonstrate how those tropes and devices function in ways analogous to economic phenomena. Each chapter is informative and brief — most are 10 pages or less — and students of literary-economic history will find more avenues to explore in each chapter’s notes and references.

Seybold and Chihara group 38 chapters into four sections. The essays that comprise the first, Critical Traditions, set the stakes for the literary study of economics and the political and economic study of literature (including a stand-out essay by Christopher Chen and Timothy Kreiner on the politics of form and poetics of identity). The Histories section periodizes from medieval ethics to NAFTA novels. Each chapter of Principles (by far the longest section) tackles an economic trope, concept, or school, from Eleanor Courtemanche’s methodical history of “classical economics” to Annie McClanahan’s characteristically incisive reading of “[s]ecular stagnation and the discourse of reproductive limit.” The collection ends with a short section on contemporary culture, which further expands the literary (represented here by Laura Finch on global finance and scale in the novel) to include multimedia mergers (Michael Szalay), the musical Hamilton (Jennifer J. Baker), the podcast (Chihara), and serial television (David Buxton).

Seybold and Chihara’s introduction draws in part on Elizabeth Hewitt, who has argued the disciplines of literature and economics tend “to alternate between devotion and repudiation” in their relation to one another. This dynamic obtains within literary studies itself. Seybold and Chihara note that Marxist literary criticism repudiates orthodox economics, while New Economic Criticism has displayed more scholarly devotion. Given the financial crisis and recession, one might expect contemporary literary economic criticism to opt for the former. However, according to the editors, this is not the case, or at least not quite. Instead, Seybold and Chihara argue (in a move both dialectical and reparative) that “the nature of this era’s repudiation is […] distinct, as it is not so much an alternative to devotion as the synthesis of shared roots.” The editors continue:

Contemporary econo-literary criticism is, paradoxically, energetically engaged with the history of economic thought and methods of economic analysis and openly hostile toward economics’ prevailing disciplinary hegemony and its perceived program of institutional and cultural imperialism.

Seybold and Chihara then set out to show “how and (why) contemporary econo-literary criticism breaks the cycle by absorbing its extremes.” This critical recovery of shared disciplinary roots — provocatively, in language not unlike Samuelson’s description of the Keynesian synthesis — characterizes their account of econo-literary criticism today.

III.

The genesis of The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics was a 2015 American Comparative Literature Association panel, “Literary Finance: Why Now?,” convened by Seybold and Chihara. Drawing on La Berge, Seybold and Chihara describe how finance came to stand in for the economic writ large in popular discourse (see, for instance, the ubiquitous stock ticker on cable news, the hourly NASDAQ and the Dow updates on public radio, and pundits — and presidents — who erroneously use financial markets as indicators of the health of the economy). No doubt financialization generally and the financial crisis more pointedly provided exigence for cultural analysis of the economic. Due to popular fascination and finance’s increased share of the economy, the study of finance and financialization became a key node of contemporary literary and cultural economic analysis, as evidenced by the rise of interdisciplinary Critical Finance Studies working groups, conferences, and journals.

Yet despite its origins in literary finance, Seybold and Chihara are wary of limiting the economic to finance in the collection, and for good reason. As stock prices soar, a result of low interest rates, corporate tax cuts, and stock buy-backs, wages continue to languish. The economy has recovered, and the labor market is tighter than it has been in nearly 50 years, we are told, even as the jobs created since the financial crisis have been almost exclusively in low-wage, low-productivity service work. A fault line that characterizes contemporary criticism of finance emerges here: namely, the financial sector’s relationship to production or the “real” economy. Alissa G. Karl’s chapter on neoliberalism, for instance, deftly explains the varied histories and referents of this by now-vexed term. However, casual claims that “[f]inance and production became increasingly divorced from one another through a number of means,” or that finance has led to the creation of markets that are “divorced from actual labor or material goods” give pause. Indeed, they are sharply undercut in chapters by, among others, McClanahan, Szalay, and Christian P. Haines, the last of whom cautions against critique that “call[s] financialization into question only by repeating a fiction that finance tells about itself, namely, that finance capital belongs to another ontological level, that it is free of mere existence, untethered from the concrete labour that reproduces capitalism.” Also nodding to La Berge, Haines argues that discourses of complexity and abstraction

conceal the mutual imbrication of fictitious capital (i.e., capital that derives profits in a manner not immediately tied to commodity production) and productive capital (i.e., capital invested in the production of commodities), reinforcing belief in the transcendence of finance over the social domain of labour.

No matter the geographical or temporal remove at which it seems to operate, finance remains tethered to production through claims on future value. Now that finance is firmly established in literary studies, I suspect we will see more criticism that grapples with the continued imbrication of different sectors of the capitalist world system (as evidenced in Alden Sajor Marte-Wood’s chapter on “Consumption,” which offers a strong critique of literary studies that occlude production, distribution, and circulation).

While critiques of contemporary finance are well represented in the collection, the editors’ “use of economics gestures toward economic histories that predate the metonymy of finance.” This capaciousness is an asset and is reflected in collection’s broad temporal and conceptual range. This scope supplements more period specific collections, including contributor Shonkwiler and La Berge’s Reading Capitalist Realism (2014) and Mitchum Huehls and Rachel Greenwald Smith’s Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture (2017), both of which cluster around a particular intersection of contemporary literature and economics. Although it also trends toward 20th and 21st centuries and the Anglo-US contexts, Literature and Economics brings together scholars from across literary and economic history and its longer durée opens up comparative readings and implied conversations by critics who do not often appear together in print. One wonders if these conversations might be opened up to economists, too. (The New Economic Criticism was also primarily made up of literary critics, but did feature a handful of economists, evidence of a parallel track of contemporaneous heterodox criticism.) However, literary allusions in Thomas Piketty’s surprise best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) aside, orthodox economists do not seem interested in these conversations. If midcentury economists were merely disinterested in the humanities, the apathy of contemporary economists verges on antipathy.

IV.

It should not be controversial to note how mainstream economics undervalues social and cultural life, which produces and reinforces a tendency in US society more broadly. As Seybold and Chihara note, “Economists are routinely called upon to rationalize limitations of access to education, healthcare, and legal protection which disproportionately disadvantage minorities and enable harmful upward redistributions of wealth.” The policy prescriptions economists justify, lead, in no small part, to attacks on humanities specifically. The cynical economic imperatives behind the underfunding or outright elimination of humanities departments (most recently a reorganization — read cuts — at the University of Tulsa), the casualization and two-tiered system of academic labor, and the shortsighted attempt to defund Stanford University Press are obvious. However, I may be on less friendly ground in suggesting a tendency in the literary and cultural criticism of economics to overvalue our own contributions, at least in political terms.

Let me be absolutely clear: I am not chastising scholars in the humanities working at the intersection of culture and economics (of which I am one), or the methodologically sharp, interpretively fine-grained, and historically grounded analyses evidenced here. The rigor of collection’s interdisciplinary work is no small accomplishment, and as Seybold and Chihara note, “Interdisciplinary critiques of economics can and should be used to strengthen the society built around them.” Econo-literary criticism is one of the most exciting fields in literary studies, and its value, as this collection demonstrates, ought to transcend the discipline. This is important work, full stop. Yet I am suggesting, and I suspect that some, if not many, contributors to the present volume agree, that when we remind economists of their own historical, philosophical, and rhetorical traditions, or demystify the abstractions of global finance, or insist on the lived realities of our economic system occluded by the scientistic dreams of neoclassical economics, we tend to only do those things: remind economists of their roots or demystify finance or insist economists acknowledge that mathematical maps do not correspond to the actual economic territory.

Here it might be illustrative to move from beginnings to ends, from histories to futures. Seybold and Chihara’s introduction concludes not with Marx (pace McCloskey), but with a typically literary (and typically droll) Keynes: “The reason ‘good economists are scarce,’ Keynes posited, was that while neither the art nor the science of economics ‘require a highly specialized intellectual technique,’ the mind which possesses both ‘appears to be a very rare one.’” Keynes thus suggests another sort of synthesis: good economists — and, one imagines, good econo-literary critics — exist at the intersection of art and science. But the problem of the economic is not a merely a matter of finding equilibrium between rhetoric and models, history and mathematics, or moral philosophy and physics. Seybold and Chihara anticipate this:

We do not imagine that literature can or should represent an entirely autonomous field from power or from the capitalist social relations under which is produced. We do believe in the importance of literary knowledge in the face of the political and social matrix that creates us and that today threatens to destroy us.

This moves us into the realm of politics.

V.

The struggle over economic justice requires political contestation, not solely better ideas or histories. The greatest coup of modern economics was neither the marginal revolution, nor the neoclassical synthesis. Rather it was smuggling in an exploitative ideological project behind a technocratic front. Those who hold politico-economic power have no interest in ceding it, which is in no small part why the conversation this collection encapsulates seems one-sided. Mainstream economics has long demonstrated it cares little about being just, about being fair, about being equitable, about being egalitarian. In the lead up to and fall out from the financial crisis, it has demonstrated that it cares little about being consistent, let alone correct. It cares less about freedom, a concept it consistently evokes, than its relationship to power and its ability to reproduce that relationship. This is why “[t]he richest 1 percent alone absorbed nearly 60 percent of the total increase of US national income” since 1980, according to Piketty. No amount of historical, philosophical, or rhetorical arguments, no demystification, no study or synthesis will change this simple fact. If mainstream economics has reproduced its relation to power by making arguments that appeal to the interests of the powerful, the realm of argumentation seems limited. Making the economy more just is not, unfortunately, a matter of making just arguments to powerful people. It’s about making them do it, which amounts to taking their power away.

Many scholars in the humanities rightfully scoff at the economistic rationality of “the marketplace of ideas,” in which good thinking, well argued, must eventually win out, when it is uncritically proffered by university administrators confronted by encroaching hate speech and incitement on college campuses. The metaphor fails because it relies on bad economic thinking: free markets, equal access, and equilibrium. Like mainstream economic models, the marketplace of ideas refuses to see power — by design. Yet there is a similar market basis for the technocratic arguments offered by progressive critics — literary and otherwise — of the excesses of capitalism over the last 45 years. Calling economics to its shared roots in political economy and its relation to humanistic study is, to my mind, insufficient. Without the power of collective action, better interpretations alone will not change our politico-economic world. And, to paraphrase one of Seybold and Chihara’s literary-minded political economists, the point is, emphatically, to change it.

It is also by design that Christopher Newfield’s contribution “What is literary knowledge of the economy?” directly follows the editors’ thought-provoking introduction. Newfield’s chapter situates “literary knowledge of the economy at the center of an answer to neoliberal economization.” While the claim is optimistic, Newfield suggests how literary knowledge of the economy might turn to praxis. If literature “posit[s] that economy determines subjectivity only across a gap of incommensurability,” then “[t]his apparent paradox has the effect of constituting psychic possibilities and seeing the psyche (and its cultural effects) as incommensurable with these apparently determinate forces.” As examples of this paradox, Newfield references Judith Butler’s work on the political possibilities opened up by power’s inability to reproduce itself perfectly, as well as the “moments of revolutionary possibility that Benjamin called jetztzeit, when the flow of history is interrupted.” Both are examples of an incommensurability between economic, which is to say historical, determination, and a political subjectivity that exceeds the current economic order that conditions it.

Of course, in The 18th Brumaire, Marx also had an account of determination, subjectivity, and political praxis. He argues, in a familiar line, that “[m]en [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” As scholars, students, and readers of literature and economics, it is our job to understand and explain and contest this shared history — the synthesis that Seybold and Chihara suggest in their definition of the new new economic criticism — and that there is no more capacious introduction to this history than The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics. But, to modify Marx once more, we also must not allow history to smother our own content. When it comes to the political contestation of economics, we cannot take our poetry from the past but only from the future. No economic arrangement lasts forever, but what follows is not inevitable. Literary knowledge of the economy may allow us to see the possibilities opened up by this incommensurability, but possibilities need to be seized, not solely historicized.

John Macintosh is a lecturer in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently at work on a book project on labor, precarity, and contemporary fiction.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literary-economy-on-the-routledge-companion-to-literature-and-economics/