The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Finding the cracks in globalisation
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends an outstanding analysis of global elites that punctures the illusion of their international immutability
books
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries
Kevin Funk, Indiana University Press, £27
WHY do we care so much about the poor? Why do we obsess about inequality from our privileged, superior positions of scholarship and journalism by wallowing in their misery?
It is of course a form of absolution, penance if you will, from within a liberal caste that has clearly lost its grip on the bedrock of sociology, namely: an analysis based on class struggle.
As author Kevin Funk notes, postmodern and postcolonial approaches with their focus on subaltern agency have largely displaced Marxist-inspired analysis as the standard-bearer for “radical” critique in the social sciences.
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