That was certainly a busy term. As always, we Bennett Institute In Bennett School of Public Policya key initiative at Cambridge University. This means I’m reading a little bit more than usual and blogging less on proof. So this is a catch-up post.
I enjoyed it Housework wages By Emily Mullashi, a history of this aspect of feminism in the 1970s. That’s a campaign I didn’t really notice as a teenager at Callow in those decades. Second Sex, Female E-Officer and Women’s room. The author is based in the US and the book covers his work in Italy and the UK, but my sense is that there was more energy in the US. This book does a good job of slogans subtly eliciting the tensions that wages for household chores were created. Did that mean literally paying for unpaid jobs involving all households? If so, where did the money come from? And is it desirable to bring care of your own home into the financial economy? Or was it a way to draw attention to structural dismissals of the importance of domestic work? If so, why focus on such restrictive slogans? Of course, I am all in favor of measuring the value of unpaid jobs because they are all evaluated in policy decisions and the measurements are usually financial. But monetizing your home is a completely different matter. The story is told through a biographical approach to movement leaders, and the book is a fun read and captures the taste, energy, exhilaration and legitimate rage of feminism in the 1970s.
Stefan Zweig’s Journey As expected – the essay about his trip in the 1930s was a somewhat depressing read. But that ends with a rather nice respect for the calmness of English due to the love of our garden. “It’s that time, or 30 minutes, that they’re spending 30 minutes or an hour every day in a company of flour, trees, fruit, or eternal company in nature, and they seem to be completely deterred from events and external issues. They can’t understand, or at least not accessible.” (Respect the length of the sentence.) It appears we’ve returned to the realm of “settling and keeping carrying.”
I was looking forward to it WorldBuilders: Technology and New Geopolitics By Bruno Mathers, as I have read some interesting reviews. I’m sad to say I felt it was impossible to follow it and give up. “It was still possible to separate two geographical areas under the control of Washington and Moscow during the Cold War. It can be said that natural elements still exist. Neutral spaces created something like a separation between these two spheres. After some readings, I think I understand this. The argument is that the same complete separation between systems cannot be achieved in a digital (not physical) environment. But if this is correct, I disagree. In any case, I don’t know if the difficulty is over-translation or a challenging writing style to begin with, but this was not for me.
Otherwise, it includes many non-work readings, including long flights and back to Stanford. I recommend Anne Patchett Tom LakeIan Rankin Midnight and blueand The moon in Siena By Hisham Mathal. As a dedicated notebook writer (and a stationery fetishist at Generai), I thoroughly enjoyed it Notebook: History of the idea of pipesr By Roland Allen.
