![\"9780857855756\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2016\/12\/9780857855756.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\nStreet Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging<\/h3>\n
Crystal Abidin:<\/strong> The hallmark of a good piece of ethnographic writing is that it should be rich enough to enchant scholars for tens of years and accessible enough to captivate non-specialist readers after ten minutes of casual browsing. Brent Luvaas’ take on the global rise of amateur fashion blogging lends a critical perspective to a practice and ethic that has transcended multiple hierarchies through its networked capillaries. Having evolved from small amateur hobbyists to front-row media moguls at high-end fashion runways, Luvaas tracks how such street style models and photographers become critical tastemakers and gatekeepers, and how they have become dispersed but important stakeholders in glocal fashion circuits. His book mirrors the rhythm of an anthropologist’s foray into a new field site, as he takes reader through the process of situating fashion milieus that vary across whimsical alleys and laneways; identifying illusive street fashionistas who desire at once to convey a distinctive style while modeling after the aesthetic of successful predecessors; and developing his own style radar as his auto-ethnography compels him to practice and document as a street photographer. Alongside his rich theoretical insight regarding taste regimes and presentation of the self are intimate recounts of his methodological process as Luvaas presents the embodied tensions of an ethnographer who finds themselves in a field of thin solidarities, straddling between obscure fashion streets and prominent fashion blogs, between the amateur and the professional, between the flaneur and the exhibitionist. More crucially, Street Style<\/em> is the first in-depth ethnography to take seriously the apparent frivolity of fashion blogging, by being generous to the voices of diverse peoples for whom amateur fashion is aspiration, inspiration, passion, and struggle all at once.<\/p>\n David A. Banks:<\/strong>\u00a0If you had asked me last year, whether the world needed another book surveying the history and philosophy of urban design I would have said no. Peter Hall\u2019s definitive Cities of Tomorrow <\/em>(now on its 4th<\/sup> edition published in 2014), has been my go-to source for the history and geography of urban form all around the world. My Introduction to Urban Geography class did not read Hall\u2019s masterwork though because I assigned Wade Graham\u2019s Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas that Shape the World.<\/em> Wade does a masterful job of not only drawing connections between ideas but offering the reader small biographic glimpses into the actual people who defined the way cities look and behave. Wade describes the Japanese Metabolists Kiyonori Kikutake and Kisho Kurokawa making a splash at the Congr\u00e8s internationaux d’architecture moderne <\/em>(CIAM): \u201cThey were young\u2014Kurokawa a mere 26\u2014and confident, dressed in skinny suits and ties, with cigarettes hanging from their lips \u2026 [they discussed] Marxist theories, scientific parallels, and their own ideas [for] radical urban alternatives.\u201d Each chapter revolves around an idea expressed in a single word\u2014castles, corals, and habitats\u2014and the way Wade introduces each major player in that idea carries the reader forward, swept up in the kind of excitement that comes with world-changing conversation.<\/p>\n Jenny L. Davis:<\/strong> My recommended \u201cread\u201d for this year is not a book nor did it come out this year. Instead, it\u2019s a documentary that, though first released in 2015, came to Netflix in April 2016. No apologies. Rules were made to be broken. The documentary is called \u201cThe Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a lovely and simple film of profound importance. Guided by mathematics professor Marcus Du Sautoy<\/a>, viewers are treated to a brief history of the algorithm, a survey of its meanings and functions, and concrete examples of how algorithms operate in the contemporary (social)media environment. Recent years have seen conversations about data and algorithms loom large in both academic and public discourse, animated through echo-chambers<\/a>, black<\/a> boxes<\/a>, emotional contagion<\/a>, and curatorial processes<\/a>. Yet it is far from clear that those who engage in such conversations entirely understand the inner-workings of the phenomenon about which they speak. By answering \u201cwhat is an algorithm, and how does it work?\u201d the film infuses data centered discourse with a much needed knowledge base. Even if you already know what an algorithm is, this film teaches you how to talk about it in a way that anyone can understand. In its delicate balance of accessibility and complexity, \u201cThe Secret Rules of Modern Living\u201d is a keen example of public scholarship at its best.<\/p>\n Nathan Jurgenson:<\/strong> The discourse around the internet making us stupid and lonely and fake is maybe being done in bad faith. And that meme might be most pronounced in discussions about narcissism. While not centrally about the internet,\u00a0The Selfishness of Others<\/i>\u00a0takes on exactly the ulterior motives behind the need to diagnose others as narcissistic. One takeaway from this book is the\u00a0utterly dismal state of social psychological psychometric research.\u00a0Kristin Dombek describes the contradictory uses of narcissism (is it being full of self or empty of self?) and looks at why the concept is appealed to so often. She argues that seeing others as narcissists is often about being insecure in one\u2019s own condition of having a self. In this way, narcissism might be the condition, in others, of being entangled and dependent;\u00a0to be dependent on someone is often for that person to display what our culture describes as narcissistic. Importantly, Dombek describes past theoretical appeals to narcissism as understanding social structure: In 1979 Christopher Lasch\u00a0looked<\/a>\u00a0to the economy to explain a shallow performance of self esteem and in that same year Arlie Hochschild\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0an affective capitalism demanding a gendered performance of emotion and care. Meanwhile, modern narratives about narcissism look away from structure and instead blame the individuals themselves as flawed, defective, and less fully human. This is a familiar story for those who read those psychological concerns about the internet (for example<\/a>, from researchers like Sherry Turkle). From Dombek’s analysis, one might conclude that it\u2019s of no coincidence that the young people decried as shallow, fake, and narcissistic are also the ones being asked to pay more debt with fewer available jobs.<\/p>\n Marley-Vincent Lindsey:<\/strong> We live in the age of network; while a diverse array of networks exist, the prescriptive power of terming something \u201ca network,\u201d produces in the mind a natural image that moves between social networks, networking, and networks of letters or Twitter feeds. The term has become stable enough that academics and journalists can both write about \u201cthe network,\u201d without critically evaluating whether or not “the network” is the end of the story. Patrick Jagoda\u2019s\u00a0Network Aesthetics<\/i>\u00a0is best understood as a method of pushing against the naturalization of \u201cthe network.\u201d The discussion is timely, as many people in the wake of Trump have already turned on the network\u2019s propensity to keep us socially or factually isolated. But in Jagoda\u2019s hands, such arguments still homogenize the experience of the network. Instead, Jagoda suggests that we need to separate the network from discourses that imply it as a totalizing, controlling, sovereign force, and instead begin interrogating it as a space of contingency. His heterogeneous examples move us from the novel in the 1990s to Alternate Reality Games, which immerse players in a transmedia narrative, moving between text, phones, web, and physicality. Each discussion forces the reader to confront just how insufficient \u201cthe network\u201d is as an endpoint of analysis. In the wake of the Digital Humanities, and what Lara Putnam has recently coined the Digital Turn, many individuals within humanistic disciplines have found themselves increasingly on the defensive about the nature of their work. DH has offered an answer through methodological correctives that typically quantify, and subsequently produce networks of meaning through their efforts.<\/p>\n Gabi Schaffzin:<\/strong> I was lucky enough to sit in on a panel at the\u00a0Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts<\/a>‘ annual conference in Atlanta this past November which featured five papers about the BBC America sci-fi series,\u00a0Orphan Black<\/a><\/i>, as well as a talk by\u00a0Cosima Herter<\/a>, the science historian and consultant for the show. The series, which first premiered in March 2013, famously stars Tatiana Maslany as each member of a constantly expanding and shrinking group of clones\u2014all products of a science experiment. Maslany, who finally won an Emmy for her multi-faceted (literally) performance, seamlessly transitions from one character to the next, often causing the viewer to forget she is a one-woman clone army. But while she and her supporting cast are superb (do yourself a favor and look up videos of Jordan Gavaris as clone Sarah\u2019s brother, Felix), one of the best features of the show is the science. Herter has worked closely with her friend and show creator Graem Manson to make sure there is historical, political, economic, and scientific basis for almost everything that happens in each episode. As a result, the papers I heard at SLSA were diverse and in-depth: the phrases \u201cmolecules as slaves\u201d and \u201cgrey market investments\u201d, Christine Rosen\u2019s\u00a0Preaching Eugenics<\/i>, and the GynePunk collective (the \u201ccyborg witches<\/a>\u00a0of DIY gynecology”) were all mentioned. This show is about eugenics and consent and misogyny and so much more, all packed into an addictive serial format (with, sure, the occasional superfluous plot line). So as my \u201c2016 favorite\u201d, I\u2019m begging you to binge on seasons 1\u20134 so you\u2019re ready for the final season (I know!) next year.<\/p>\n Britney Summit-Gil:<\/strong> Part of my research in media studies is playing with the idea of what a \u201ctext\u201d is. As a unit of analysis, I think text is useful because it can be small and discrete like a television show or massive and messy like\u2026 well, me_irl<\/a>. I generally think of a text as some cultural object that is bounded in a way that makes it internally coherent, and I expand or shrink that definition as needed for a given project. But me_irl pushes the limits of even this wishy-washy definition. To call it internally coherent is probably folly. But it is highly intertextual<\/a>, weaving together a complex discourse that requires a great deal of familiarity with past posts, current events and pop culture, and the nature of the audience itself. It\u2019s what Barthes would call a writerly text<\/a> in which the burden of meaning-making is placed on the reader. It upsets linear narrative and clear-cut description, favoring vague referentiality and inside jokes so convoluted that going a day or two without checking me_irl will leave you completely out of the loop. This fast-paced, chaotic, unpredictable circulation of discourse has led to massive upheavals<\/a> in the community, which continue to resonate today. For such a silly subreddit, it takes a lot of work to understand what\u2019s going on a lot of the time, which is part of the joy, or jouissance<\/em><\/a> as Barthes called it, of me_irl. I think it has been particularly important to me in the past few months of the campaign and subsequent election as an oasis of humor that is at times purely playful<\/a> and others quite gloomy<\/a>. Each day, once I catch up with the continually-unfolding trash fire that is news and politics, I slip over to me_irl and catch up on the latest controversy over a user\u2019s broken promise to get the script from Bee Movie printed on their ass. There is no jouissance<\/em> in piecing together contemporary politics, so I get my fix by puzzling through layers of references<\/a> in an effort to understand some meme that doesn\u2019t make sense. Yet. I mean me too thanks<\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nDream Cities: Seven Urban\u00a0Ideas that Shape the World<\/h3>\n
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms<\/h3>\n
\n<\/p>\nThe Selfishness of Others<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/h3>\nNetwork Aesthetics<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nOrphan Black<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nme_irl<\/h3>\n