When Virginia Eubanks starts off Automating Inequality by describing 19th century poorhouses… I was surprised to find my own hometown included! With automated social welfare systems, she argues, we’ve created a ‘digital’ poorhouse that tracks and controls citizens, assessing their need and value before providing them with assistance. The book is…
When I picked it up, I assumed Ilana Gershon’s Down and Out in the New Economy would be about the gig economy. It’s not. Instead, Gershon observed job seminars and spoke with job seekers and hiring managers in the Bay Area, trying to figure out how workers respond to…
In No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents, Anne Alstott argues that those who choose to parent are ethically obliged to provide stable, continuous care until the child reaches adulthood. This benefits society—so what support does society owe parents who sacrifice their future security to…
Who doesn’t love a creepy wedding photo on the cover of a book? In Breaking the Marriage Idol, evangelical professor Kutter Callaway challenges American Christians to develop a new “theological anthropology,” or vision of who we are as people and what a good life looks like. Tearing down the…