Real Love: In Pursuit of Cultural Justice

by Andrew Ross

Examining the effects of debates about race, technology, ecology, and the arts on social and legal change, Ross shows why cultural politics are a real and inescapable part of any argument for social change.

264 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

About the author

Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a social activist. A contributor to The Nation, the Village Voice, New York Times, and Artforum, he is the author of many books, including, most recently, Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City and Nice Work if You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again I am left in awe of Andrew Ross's range and versatility, and see in his work my kind of vision for what cultural studies should be: oriented to activism and meeting just a few of academia's obligations to struggles for justice. Despite the dating of some of the cases (always a problem for cultural studies) all of the pieces retain political and intellectual power – even where the subjects are Clarence Thomas and O J Simpson (two of only three pieces not reworked for the collection). Only the detail of the essay about working in the IT sector has really dated – but the model of precarity (not a term we used 13 years ago) has held up, and is updated in and throughout last year's (2009's) Nice Work Of You Can Get It.

The stand-out essays are the political economy framed analysis of roots and dancehall reggae through the shifting frame of IMF policy impositions on Jamaica, but more powerfully the analysis and critique of the poltiics of scarcity (in late 2000's jargon read austerity) and the final paper drawing on the debate about economic and cultural justice best exemplified by exchanges between Nancy Fraser & Iris Marion Young. Marvellous, and weakened only slightly by the passage of time.