Reading :: Our Towns

Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America
By James Fallows and Deborah Fallows

I confess that I did not read this whole book. It's well and engagingly written, but it's also a popular book, with lots of emphasis on stories, which I found not to be dense enough. So I found myself reading the introduction, then a couple of the chapters, then skipping ahead to the end. 

The setup is that the Fallows spent five years traveling across the US in a single-prop plane, visiting dozens of towns. They present a chapter on each town, grouped by year, yielding a total of 35 chapters. Since the towns ranged from Pittsburgh to the American Prairie Reserve in Montana, they describe quite a range. And each chapter is described in narrative format: We arrived under these conditions, talked to these people, read these things in the town library, learned these things about this town. 

Individually, the chapters were interesting. But I quickly became bored because I was not actually interested in the individual towns -- I was interested in how the insights built into something larger. The Introduction didn't give me a strong idea of where the book was going, so after the sixth chapter, I skipped to the last two: "What We Saw and What We Learned" and "10 1/2 Signs of Civic Success."

In "What We Saw and What We Learned," the Fallows reflect on the imprints of the past and identify three unpredictable elements that "can show us what to anticipate and what to seize on right now": (1) "the national shock that galvanizes effort," such as how we reacted to Sputnik; (2) "the ability of political power to control strictly economic forces," as when the New Deal realigned the relationship between public and economic forces; and "fertile experimentation with new approaches and possibilities," as when the states were conceived as laboratories of democracy (pp.398-399). 

In "10 1/2 Signs of Civic Success," the Fallows say that "these things were true of the cities large or small that were working best":

1. "People work together on practical local possibilities, rather than allowing bitter disagreements about national politics to keep them apart" (p.402)
2. "You can pick out the local patriots" (p.402)
3. "The phrase 'public-private partnership' refers to something real" (p.402)
4. "People know the civic story" (p.403)
5. "They have downtowns" (p.404)
6. "They are near a research university" (p.404)
7. "They have, and care about, a community college" (p.405)
8. "They have distinct, innovative schools" (p.406)
9. "They make themselves open" (p.406)
10. "They have big plans" (p.407)

And the final half-criterion? "A city on the way back will have at least one craft brewery, maybe more, and probably some small distilleries, too" (p.407). They attribute this characteristic to the fact that "A town that has them also has a certain type of entrepreneur, and a critical mass of young (except for me) customers" (p.408; the "me" here is James Fallows). 

That's the book. If you're interested in what makes a town work, but you're not interested in an academic text, this book will give you insights and plenty of stories. Personally, I found myself skimming a little and then skipping to the end -- reading just a few accounts of town visits helped me to contextualize the claims at the end. 

Reading :: The Domestication of the Savage Mind

The Domestication of the Savage Mind
By Jack Goody

I had some concerns about the title of this book, but these were quickly addressed: Goody takes issue with the primitive-advanced dichotomy that anthropologists and sociologists of the past have adopted, a dichotomy that has primed scholars to examine current relations aside from the social system in which they have developed (p.2). Along these lines, he critiques Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind for its ahistorical unity (p.4) and urges us to think in terms of more specific criteria—with one starting point being the acquisition of language (p.9). 

He further charges that sociology and anthropology tend to neglect technical changes: Durkheim steered clear of material culture, while Weber moved emphasis from production to ideology (pp.10-11). Goody, on the other hand, locates differences not in the mind but in the mechanics of communicative acts (p.12). Specifically, he is interested in "non-speech uses of language in writing,"such as "tables, lists, formulae and recipes" (p.17). 

In Chapter 2, Goody takes up intellectual behavior in preliterate societies. For Durkheim, he notes, the highest intellectual activity was social (p.21); Durkheim was interested in "society" and wanted to attribute everything to it (p.22). 

In Chapter 3, Goody turns to literacy. He argues that culture is a series of communicative acts (p.37) and thus writing, specifically alphabetical literacy, give oral communication a more permanent form, allowing it to be scrutinized (p.37). This also allowed orthodoxy to become ascendant. 

Chapters 4 and 5 are about tables and lists, respectively. Unfortunately, we don't get deeply into either, at least in the sense I was expecting. He does argue that writing doesn't just duplicate speech, it changes the nature of language use (p.76). In particular, the list rarely appears in oral discourse (p.80). Goody identifies seven distinct senses of "list, " including retrospective (e.g., kings or events; p.80), plan (e.g., shopping list; p.80), and lexical (e.g., inventory; p.80). Lists are processed differently from oral speech or from other writing (p.81). The list "relies on discontinuity," "depends on physical placement," "can be read in different directions," "has a clear-cut beginning and a precise end," and "encourages the ordering of the items" (p.81). The boundaries in particular make categories more visible and abstract (p.81). Writing allows one to re-sort items by different criteria, and in comparison to highly contextualized oral information, it can be simplified and abstract (p.87). Writing, he says, sharpens categories but also questions the nature of the classes (p.102). 

Chapter 6 shifts to the question of formulas,. As with tables and lists, "the formalisation of writing flouts the flexibility of speech, and it does so in a manner that is both distorting and generative" (p.112). By "formulae," he means "fixed statements of relationships in abstract form" (p.112), and he means them broadly, in the sense of formalized types of communication such as epics. (We might put genre under this category as well; cf. p.120.) Among other things, Goody claims here that rhetoric relies on "the deliberate analysis ... that writing makes possible" (p.114), an argument that aligns with Olson's. Quoting Ong, Goody argues that rhetoric is an art developed by a literate culture to formalize oral communication skills that structure thought (p.116). 

Overall, I found this to be an exciting and generative read. Most of the ideas are not new to me, but Goody does a great job of drawing them together and relating them to anthropological and archaeological insights into writing. If you're interested in writing as it structures how we encounter and make sense of the world, definitely pick this book up.

Reading :: On Task

On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done
By David Badre

Another short review. I picked up this book on Kindle to get a better handle on what cognitive neuroscience has to say about tasks. The book is readable, full of examples and research summaries pitched to a general audience. But at the same time, I found it a little frustrating, since it tries to balance between the author's deep specialist knowledge and the general audience register. That is a tricky balance to keep, and it's hard for an author to figure out (for instance) how much detail is enough, how much explanation is needed at a given stage, and how much repetition to bring across chapters. I don't think the balance was quite right here, but to be fair, the book was Finalist for the PROSE Award in Popular Science and Mathematics, Association of American Publishers—so take what I say with a grain of salt. 

In any case, parts of the book are fascinating. Badre notes that we still don't have a good explanation of how people orchestrate even a fairly simple task, such as making a cup of coffee (p.1). The brain must generate and track plans and link goals with actions, AKA cognitive control or executive functions (and the author acknowledges that these are slightly different in the specialist literature, p.2). "Cognitive control processes live in the murky spaces between knowledge and action," he adds (p.3). 

In subsequent chapters, Badre discusses the evolutionary origins of human cognitive control; stability and flexibility; hierarchies; multitasking; the tricky question of stopping (i.e., finishing or abandoning a task); and how cognitive control changes over the lifespan. Among other things, Badre notes that our memories are really geared more toward making successful future predictions rather than recording the past; that our cognitive abilities decline after 30, with a sharp decline after 65, and that this sharp decline is probably due to the fact that we compensate failing cognitive functions with other cognitive functions until we can no longer compensate adequately; and that problems that were traditionally framed as inhibition problems are more likely deficits in motivation.

Overall, the book is a really interesting look at what cognitive neuroscience has to say about how we perform tasks. At the same time, it tends to get a bit into the weeds, limiting its clear application to our own lives. Still, I expect that I'll revisit it as I continue thinking about what makes people productive.

Reading :: Startup Communities

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
By Brad Feld

Here's another brief review. Brad Feld uses Boulder, Colorado's startup community as an extended example of how to build and maintain a healthy startup community. Through vivid stories, he discusses the principles of a vibrant startup community, the participants such a community needs, its leadership, its classical problems, and the relationships such a community needs with universities, government, and other community members.

The book is just under 190 pages, but it's a quick read -- I read it in one (long) sitting, but it's really written to be consumed in short bites. Like some other books I recently reviewed, it has a lot of illustrative stories, so it's not a dense read (for good or ill). But it does a good job of crystallizing the deep experience Feld has with building, maintaining, and elevating startup communities. If that's your interest, definitely pick it up. And if your interest is more specific -- such as starting a company, participating in a university-industry partnership, or visiting an incubator -- you'll find the book useful as well. 

Reading :: Small-Town America

Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future
By Robert Wuthnow

Just a quick review. 

In this readable, public-facing book, Robert Wuthnow draws lessons about small-town America based on surveys and interviews he and his graduate students have collected across his career. Based on this work, he paints a picture of who lives in small towns, how they view them, how they develop bonds with each other, how they make sense of work, leadership, faith, and morality, and how they view their futures. 

Along the way, Wuthnow illustrates his points with vivid details and stories. The result is well illustrated and often gripping. But I confess that as I read this book and others like it, I became impatient -- I want my information to be more dense so I can move faster!

Still, the book does a great job of exploring these aspects of small towns and both comparing and contrasting different communities. I think it would be even better if these small towns were contrasted more effectively in terms of region, industry, or other differentiating factors. But it's a solid read and I recommend it if you're interested in how small towns work.

Reading :: The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society

The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society
By Jack Goody

I've been meaning to pick up Jack Goody for a long time—really, since I was in my MA program—but didn't really get motivated until recently, when seeing citations in Comaroff and Comaroff. Now I wish I hadn't waited so long. Goody, a social anthropologist, uses his fieldwork in West Africa as well as literature from the Ancient Near East to better understand how writing impacts human societies. 

In Chapter One, he argues that only literary religions can be religions of conversion (p.5) because conversion itself is a function of the boundaries that the written word defines (p.10). In written communication,

1. codes extend outside boundaries to all the faithful
2. written statements must be abstracted from situations to the universal (pp.12-13)

Thus religions of the book impose restrictions on literacy and control over education. Later, this power is assumed by the state (p.17—cf. Vygotsky and Luria's Uzbek expedition). The development of bureaucracy widened the gap between church and state (p.19).

In Chapter Two, Goody explores "the part played by economic activities in the origin of the first complete writing systems" (p.45). He draws on Schmandt-Besserat's account of the development of writing in the Middle East, noting that writing functions as communication at a distance, but also as a means to distance oneself from communication (p.50). And he notes that "writing encourages a non-syntactical use of language that renders it especially adapted to the purposes of accounting that are so characteristic of Aegean Linear B" (p.54). In enabling administrators to more precisely forecast needs, writing resulted in the penetration of the State into domestic life (p.63). "The nature of writing means that each activity is transformed in significant ways by its introduction" (p.67). And he concludes the chapter by claiming that neo-colonialism was successful in societies that did not have a strong written tradition that could stand up to written cultures (p.86).

In Chapter Three, he asks: "how do regimes with writing differ from those without?" (p.87). He argues that "The segregation of administrative activities in a specific organization, the bureaucracy ... is critically dependent, in this extended form, on the capacity for writing to communicate at a distance, to store information in files, and to tend to depersonalize interaction" (pp.89-90). Literate bureaucracy provides a "consolidating factor in state-building" (p.112). 

We'll leave it there. But if you are interested in thinking through the relationships among literacy and organization, this book is a must-read.

Reading :: Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume Two: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier

Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier
By John L. and Jean Comaroff

I just reviewed Volume One, in which (I just noticed) the order of the authors was reversed. Volume One explored the early encounter between British missionaries and the Southern Tswana in South Africa; this volume explores the later colonial world, as "these processes worked themselves out over the much longer run" (p.7). 

In this volume, they make seven claims about colonialism:

1. Colonialism was a process in political economy and culture. (p.19)
2. Colonialism effected changes via informal rather than formal agents of empire. (p.21)
3. Colonialism remade the colonizers as much as the colonized. (p.22)
4. The categories of "colonizers" and "colonized" are not just polar; each category should be internally differentiated. (p.24)
5. Still, colonizers and colonized are represented as poles, a feature that is intrinsic to colonialism. (p.25)
6. Non-Western societies were complex and fluid, and their workings had a direct effect on colonial encounter; the old view of these societies as "closed," "traditional," or "unchanging" is inaccurate. (p.27)
7. "Colonialism was founded on a series of discontinuities and contradictions." (p.27)

These come together in the authors' central argument: that "colonial encounters everywhere consisted in a complex dialectic: a dialectic, mediated by social differences and cultural distinctions, that transformed everyone and everything caught up in it, if not in the same way" (p.28).

Much of the rest of the Introduction involves the authors taking their critics to task—the critics who argued with their Volume One. As an outsider to the discussion, I was entertained. The rest of the book is densely argued, drawing from archives to explore the forms of agency and resistance in this dialectical encounter.

Like Volume One, Volume Two is tough sledding for nonspecialists. But if you have an interest in colonialism and post-colonialism, agency, or just culture, definitely take a look.

Reading :: Of Revelation and Revolution Volume One: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa

Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa
By Jean and John Comaroff

In this thick volume, two anthropologists examine the early phases of British missionary work in South Africa, among the Southern Tswana (1820-1920). Specifically, they are interested in "a plurality of 'cultures'—that is, of 'systems' of symbols, values, and meanings which are reified and objectified in the course of colonization itself" (p.28). They see colonization as a dialectic in which British missionaries and colonizers introduced changes, the Tswana had their own ripostes, and the two cultures became objectified in relation to each other (p.206). That is, the British were changed in this process just as the Tswana were. 

The Comaroffs argue that the Tswana had agency and participated in the dialectic—colonization didn't just happen to them, it was a process of mutual struggle. But at the same time, the Comaroffs are not arguing that the dialectic was equal or that the Tswana chose to be colonized. Rather, they want to disrupt the idea of colonization as a unidirectional imposition of culture, By examining how Christianity (which has a history of malleability—think about how Samhain was transformed into All Hallow's Eve) was sloppily repackaged in terms of Tswana theology, or how colonists began to adopt Tswana architecture and clothing, they examine larger questions of culture and power.

The book is much more complex than I can delve into in a quick review, so I'll end by saying: If you are interested in issues of culture, colonization, and power, it's definitely worth a read. However, nonspecialists may find it to be tough going. 

Reading :: Strangers in their own Land

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
By Arlie Russell Hochschild

In this National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes the result of her five years of fieldwork around Lake Charles, Louisiana. As she explains in the Preface, she was alarmed by the hostility between the American Right and Left. "I had some understanding of the liberal left camp, I thought, but what was happening on the right?" (p.xi). Specifically, she wanted to understand the Right's "deep story," or what narrative the Right emotionally felt to be true (p.xi), so she reached out across a wall of empathy (p.5), using a contact in the Lakes Charles area to make contacts in the community and conduct long interviews with residents. These interviews focused on environmental issues, partly because they affect everyone, partly because the Lake Charles area had encountered severe environmental issues as a result of decades of sloppy regulation of the petroleum and chemical industries. 

Based on these interviews, she put together a "deep story," a story that she presented to her informants to see if they thought it accurately reflected their emotional experience. In this story, they are in line for the American Dream, waiting patiently, working hard. But the line seems to have stopped moving, and they see someone—is that President Obama?—letting people cut in line! (Ch.9—she does much better at telling this story than I do at summarizing it). Her informants, she says, all agreed that this story reflected their experience and explained their anger at the Left, which they perceived as putting classes of people and even protected animals in front of their interests. (To my mind, it sounded like the informants saw themselves as the brother of the Prodigal Son. When the Prodigal Son came home, his father celebrated him and threw a party. The brother, who had been faithful and steady, wanted to know why he had never been given a party.)

So Hochschild has accomplished her mission to understand the anger and mourning on the American Right. She has made explicit this deep story. My main criticism is that she doesn't contrast this with the (a?) deep story on the Left. Perhaps she felt like this deep story was beyond her fieldwork, or she thought that most readers would be on the Left and didn't need that story explained. But without such an explanation, readers may be left with the impression that the Right has a story—a fairy tale of grievance—while the Left sees cold hard reality. But Hochschild makes clear that the Left is not objective: "I don't believe we understand anyone's politics, right or left, without it. For we all have a deep story" (p.135). Can the Left really understand the Right, or their dynamic, without better understanding itself?

Still, it's a strong book and can teach us a lot about the rise of Trump (see the Afterword) as well as the Right's COVID response. If you're on the Left and interested in compassionately understanding the Right—or if you're on the Right and interested in how a sociologist on the Left thinks you tick—definitely pick it up.