at 5th of May 14:00-16:00, Pub 409

Welcome to enjoy discussions on four recently published books over coffee and snacks. Meet authors, editors and contributors of the volumes at this relaxed get-together. The event is open for all, including students, staff and everyone else curious about these fresh social science publications. No pre-registration required, just drop by! You can find more details of the books below.

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Affect, Alienation, and Politics in Therapeutic Culture: Capitalism on the Skin (Palgrave Macmillan 2022)

Suvi Salmenniemi

The book breaks new ground to scholarship on therapeutic culture by drawing on longstanding ethnographic work and by offering a new theoretical reading of therapeutic culture. It suggests that the therapeutic field serves as a key site in which a number of contradictions of capitalism are confronted and lived out. It shows that therapeutic engagements are inherently ambivalent and contradictory, as they can be articulated and engaged with in many different ways and harnessed for diverse, and often contradictory, political projects. The book takes issue with the interpretation of therapeutic culture as merely individualising, depoliticizing and working in congruence with neoliberalism, and shows that therapeutic engagements may also open up a space for contestation and critique of neoliberal capitalism, animate collective action for social change and articulate alternative forms of life and subjectivities.

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Appearance as Capital: The Normative Regulation of Aesthetic Capital Accumulation and Conversion (Emerald 2021)

Outi Sarpila, Iida Kukkonen, Tero Pajunen and Erica Åberg (Eds)

Open access: https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/doi/10.1108/9781800437081

In an era of hyper visuality, service-based labour markets, consumer culture, and times of uncertainty, physical appearance plays an increasingly important role in producing and reinforcing social inequalities. Taking a sociological approach, the authors of Appearance as Capital examine physical appearance as a normatively regulated form of capital and explore how it is possible to accumulate and convert capital based on physical appearance. The chapters examine how norms of accumulating and converting aesthetic capital intertwine with gender, age and other forms of capital and play a role in shaping inequalities.

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Feminist Politics in Neoconservative Russia: An Ethnography of Activism, Resistance and Resources (Bristol University Press 2022)

Inna Perheentupa

This is a nuanced and compelling analysis of grassroots feminist activism in Russia in the politically turbulent 2010s. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the author illustrates how a new generation of activists chose feminism as their main political beacon, and how they negotiated the challenges of authoritarian and conservative trends. As we witness a backlash against feminism on a global scale with the rise of neo-conservative governments, this highly relevant book decentres Western theory and concepts on feminism and social movements, offering significant insights into how resistance can mobilise and invent creative tactics to cope with an increasingly repressed space for independent political action.

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With Microbes (Mattering Press 2021)

Charlotte Brives, Matthäus Rest and Salla Sariola (Eds)

Open access: https://www.matteringpress.org/books/with-microbes

Without microbes, no other forms of life would be possible. But what does it mean to be with microbes? With Microbes sets microbes and the multiple ways they exist around, in and on humans at center stage. In this book, 24 social scientists and artists attune to microbes and describe their complicated relationships with humans and other beings. The book shows the multiplicity of these relationships and their dynamism, through detailed ethnographies of the relationships between humans, animals, plants, and microbes.