Synopses & Reviews
Named an "Outstanding Book" by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America
"Abramovitz introduces the reader to cutting edge socioeconomic analysis. . . . It is not possible to come away from Under Attack, Fighting Back with a sense that welfare is a simplistic topic or that the human consequences of adjustments in the existing system are inconsequential."
--Labor History
"This lively and informative book deserves to be widely read. It provides an excellent history of AFDC and the activities of various women's groups who have campaigned hard over the years for improvements in services to the poor."
--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
"Extraordinarily lucid and useful . . . "
--In These Times
In this short, eye-opening book, Mimi Abramovitz describes the heartless assault on impoverished single mothers in the name of "ending welfare dependency." Outlining the history of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Abramovitz shows how the manipulation of gender, race, and class have made welfare vulnerable to attack. This new edition brings a well-received work completely up to date with analysis of recent developments in welfare "reform" and activism.
Synopsis
Music industry insiders on the nature of fame
Our cultural darlings make music; we make them mythic. Every musical genre begets a community of listeners, performers, and critics, and quite often those categories are blurred. From the principled punk refusal of celebrity to hip-hop's celebration of its power, the music world is self-obsessed.
Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky assembles scholars, music writers, industry workers, and musicians, who offer a range of opinions and experience of the nature of fame. The collection focuses on commerce, the crowd, performance and image, history and memory, and romance. Contributors discuss black women icons, love-songs, the legacy of the blues, the image of the tortured rock star, MTV, the politics of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the joy of line-dancing, and more.
The contributors are James Bernard, Anthony DeCurtis, Katherine Dieckmann, Chuck Eddy, Paul Gilroy, Daniel Glass, Lawrence Grossberg, Jessica Hagedorn, Kathleen Hanna, James Hannaham, Dave Hickey, Jon Langford, Greil Marcus, Angela McRobbie, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky), Barbara O'Dair, Ann Powers, Toshi Reagon, Simon Reynolds, Robert Santelli, Jon Savage, Danyel Smith, Arlene Stein, Deena Weinstein, and Ellen Willis.
Synopsis
Our cultural darlings make music; we make them mythic. Every musical genre begets a community of listeners, performers, and critics, and quite often those categories are blurred. From the principled punk refusal of celebrity to hip-hop's celebration of its power, the music world is self-obsessed.
Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky assembles scholars, music writers, industry workers, and musicians, who offer a range of opinions and experience of the nature of fame. The collection focuses on commerce, the crowd, performance and image, history and memory, and romance. Contributors discuss black women icons, love-songs, the legacy of the blues, the image of the tortured rock star, MTV, the politics of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the joy of line-dancing, and more.
The contributors are James Bernard, Anthony DeCurtis, Katherine Dieckmann, Chuck Eddy, Paul Gilroy, Daniel Glass, Lawrence Grossberg, Jessica Hagedorn, Kathleen Hanna, James Hannaham, Dave Hickey, Jon Langford, Greil Marcus, Angela McRobbie, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky), Barbara O'Dair, Ann Powers, Toshi Reagon, Simon Reynolds, Robert Santelli, Jon Savage, Danyel Smith, Arlene Stein, Deena Weinstein, and Ellen Willis.
About the Author
Mimi Abramovitz is a professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work and author of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (1988), as well as many articles on women, poverty, and social policy for professional journals and the popular press.
Table of Contents
Introduction : all this useless beauty / Greil Marcus -- Lost in the supermarket : myth and commerce in the music business / Anthony DeCurtis -- Thinking with music / Angela McRobbie -- Concealing the hunger / Jon Langford -- Art versus commerce : deconstructing a (useful) romantic illusion / Deena Weinstein -- Re : creation / Evelyn McDonnell -- Bela Lugosi's dead and I don't feel so good either : goth and the glorification of suffering in rock music / James Hannaham -- MTV killed the music video star / Katherine Dieckmann -- Same as it ever was? rock culture. Same as it ever was! rock theory. / Lawrence Grossberg -- On not playing dead / Kathleen Hanna -- Cinderella at the headbanger's ball / Chuck Eddy -- The sound of the crowd / Jon Savage -- Crowds and freedom / Ellen Willis -- Dark carnival / Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky that subliminal kid) -- Love only knows / Dave Hickey -- I'll have to say I love you in a song / Ann Powers -- Freedom songs, love songs / Toshi Reagon -- Ecstasy is a science : techno-romanticism / Simon Reynolds -- Between a hard rock and a velvet Elvis : fatal attractions in rock iconography / Ralph Rugoff -- Rock against romance : gender, rock 'n' roll, and resistance / Arlene Stein -- Keeping time / Karen Kelly -- The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum : myth, memory, and history / Robert Santelli -- Across the great divide : rock critics, rock women / Barbara O'Dair -- Music for gangsters and (other) chameleons / Jessica Hagedorn -- Analogues of mourning, mourning the analog / Paul Gilroy.