|
|
Post by dasein on Feb 5, 2013 14:44:44 GMT -5
We've had a bunch of reading lists/recommended reading over the years.
Here's a compilation of Mark's various lists (as best I can remember):
Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Suicide, Division of Labor - Emile Durkheim
Capital - Marx
Escape from Freedom and Anatomy of Human Destructiveness - Erich Fromm
Leaves of Grass - Whitman
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Nietzsche
Sublime Object of Ideology - Zizek
Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Economy and Society (for the obsessive types) - Max Weber
The Fine Line - Eviatar Zerubavel
The Gift and General Theory of Magic - Marcel Mauss
Philosophy of Money - Georg Simmel
Crowds and Power - Elias Cannetti
Books I would add:
Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber
Late Victorian Holocausts - Mike Davis (more history than sociology, but a very underreported part of history and it also gets into some of the social aspects of severe famines that are both fascinating and horrifying)
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Feb 5, 2013 17:44:45 GMT -5
I would also add:
Monsters of the Market, McNally
Dialectical Materialism, Henri Lefebvre
The Causes of Suicide, Maurice Halbwachs
Freud...all of it...including the five vol. collected papers
And, of course, my own books LOL
|
|
|
|
Post by davidmgt on Feb 7, 2013 12:00:28 GMT -5
I would add
"The Sociology of Economic Life" by Grannoveter & Swedburg, "The Economic Institutions of Capitalism" by Oliver Williamson and, of course, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac Mccarthy.
|
|
|
|
Post by chrissh on Feb 7, 2013 14:56:06 GMT -5
Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber I gave this to my dad for Christmas. Is it canonical or just a decent read? |
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Feb 7, 2013 17:59:46 GMT -5
I'd have to disagree re. Grannoveter and Swedburg. I read that one in grad school and was not knocked out, personally. However, I come from it from a totally different angle, paradigmatically speaking. In a counter vein I'd aim folks at, say, The Condition of Postmodernity (Harvey) even though I am a critic (in print even) of his naive Realism (intrinsic value problem) Others to read time and again: The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann And anything by Bourdieu is useful. C Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination The Phil. of Symbolic Forms, 4 vols. books.google.com/books/about/The_Philosophy_of_Symbolic_Forms.html?id=I9k1OF3rK1MCneo-Kantian but worth the read anyway Pinkard's biography of Hegel...wow Actually, the books by Pinkard, Andrew Bowie, Fred Beiser, etc., on German philosophy are great for the most part. Labor and Monopoly Capital, Braverman, the 'father' of labor process theory The Political Economy of Growth, Baran Europe and the People without History, Eric Wolf The 'world systems theory' lit. is good Samir Amin Andre Gunder Frank Braudel The early Sartre Although he is a disaster (due to his vitalism) de Chardin....he's a catastrophe but love reading him Ortega y Gasset is in the same category |
|
|
|
Post by dasein on Feb 7, 2013 23:40:35 GMT -5
Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber I gave this to my dad for Christmas. Is it canonical or just a decent read? Depends on what you mean by 'canonical.' Graeber is writing for a popular audience, so his tone has less gravitas than your typical academic screed (or less B.S. depending on how you look at it). It's certainly not perfect. Sometimes he hits on insights that I wish he would elaborate on. For example, he spends an entire chapter debunking the myth that money commodities came about from the need to simplify bartering markets. This is a worthy cause to spend time on. But he also briefly mentions how, in the ancient world, rulers would actually force a market on their subjects by foisting a currency on them and then demanding it back as taxes. This is a fascinating tidbit, and anyone who's spent any time reading Marx can see the parallels to "primitive/original accumulation" -- a set of social processes that appear to be natural, even eternal, were actually forced on people through violent means. But unfortunately, Graeber doesn't really expand on it. But despite minor flaws, it's an extremely worthwhile book that seems all the more pertinent and urgent now. Shortly after I got it, I had dinner with some extended family of mine. Somebody asked me what I was reading, so I began to talk about the book. Someone else chimed in with, "Someone should give that book to Congress, what with the mess they're leaving us in!" Everyone laughed. I just sat there and smiled weakly. We're about to burn what's left our welfare system as a tribute to the gods of debt, but few people stop and actually think what debt actually means and why it should possess such a strange power that millions of people should go poor and die because of it. So in that sense, I would say it's a canonical book. At the very least, it's a canonical subject, and surprisingly (as Graeber himself even notes) one without a ton of literature in anthropology and sociology. "McNally delivers a tour de force analysis of global capital from the upper registers of derivatives trading down to popular fables of African monsters … Monsters of the Market is one of the best books I’ve read in years and it will definitely stimulate thinking about the nature of globalization, the labor theory of value and the relationship between commodities and speculative objects, collective fantasy, and other nebulous problems confronting historical materialism in the future." —Mark Worrell, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books Speaking of sorry states, how about the incestuous state of leftist book blurbs. ;D Can I just say that, even though it is an amazing book, ReORIENT has to be the LAMEST title I've ever come across. |
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Feb 8, 2013 7:23:04 GMT -5
It's unusually for leftists not to just stab each other in the back....for the sheer pleasure of it. Although, I guess I created some good Karma for myself as I just received some love in the pages of Theory, Culture and Society.
|
|
|
|
Post by chrissh on Feb 8, 2013 10:12:20 GMT -5
I gave this to my dad for Christmas. Is it canonical or just a decent read? Depends on what you mean by 'canonical.' Graeber is writing for a popular audience, so his tone has less gravitas than your typical academic screed (or less B.S. depending on how you look at it). It's certainly not perfect. Sometimes he hits on insights that I wish he would elaborate on. For example, he spends an entire chapter debunking the myth that money commodities came about from the need to simplify bartering markets. This is a worthy cause to spend time on. But he also briefly mentions how, in the ancient world, rulers would actually force a market on their subjects by foisting a currency on them and then demanding it back as taxes. This is a fascinating tidbit, and anyone who's spent any time reading Marx can see the parallels to "primitive/original accumulation" -- a set of social processes that appear to be natural, even eternal, were actually forced on people through violent means. But unfortunately, Graeber doesn't really expand on it. But despite minor flaws, it's an extremely worthwhile book that seems all the more pertinent and urgent now. Shortly after I got it, I had dinner with some extended family of mine. Somebody asked me what I was reading, so I began to talk about the book. Someone else chimed in with, "Someone should give that book to Congress, what with the mess they're leaving us in!" Everyone laughed. I just sat there and smiled weakly. We're about to burn what's left our welfare system as a tribute to the gods of debt, but few people stop and actually think what debt actually means and why it should possess such a strange power that millions of people should go poor and die because of it. So in that sense, I would say it's a canonical book. At the very least, it's a canonical subject, and surprisingly (as Graeber himself even notes) one without a ton of literature in anthropology and sociology. Yeah good, thanks. I wandered if it fit into this thread or the greater IE List of Texts. That's great if it's substantial and intelligible to a popular audience. |
|
|
|
Post by davidmgt on Feb 9, 2013 12:43:38 GMT -5
Bourdeau's work on the types of capital is certainly interesting, in particular his conceptualization of social capital. Berger and Luckman is also huge - it is amazing how much of their work forms the basis for organizational studies research even in business schools.
In terms of Granovetter's work, I have a definite soft spot for his whole embeddedness/markets as social phenomena frameworks as it was among the first things I read in grad school that helped me move away from my ultra rational, market-focused approach that I developed as an Economic/Statistics major. Needless to say more than a few folks with Business and/or Econ backgrounds were stunned in realizing that factors such as power, social ties and intangible capital can shape markets and society.
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Feb 9, 2013 21:09:07 GMT -5
Well said, makes sense
|
|
