Synopses & Reviews
Stripper chic is in these days: you can watch celebrities “strippercize” on Oprah or do it yourself at your local gym, but this popular face of stripping hides another side of the industry, one that is far less glamorous. In
Strip Club, Kim Price-Glynn takes us behind the scenes at The Lion's Den, a rundown club where women are compelled to strip out of economic need rather than as a means of liberation, and a place where strippers' stories often reflect drudgery and dismay.
Strip Club reveals the intimate working lives of not just the women up on stage, but also the patrons and other workers who make the place run: the owner-manager, bartenders, deejays, doormen, bouncers, housemoms, and cocktail waitresses.
Price-Glynn spent fourteen months at The Lion's Den working as a cocktail waitress. Her uncommonly deep access reveals a conflict-ridden workplace fueled by competing interests and agendas and stereotypical ideas about women, men, sexuality, race, labor, and economic value. Full of rich insights into the world of a single club, Price-Glynn argues that the club environment reproduces gender inequalities through the everyday interactions of customers and workers as well as the broader organizational structure and culture of the modern day workplace. Taking a novel approach to this controversial and often misunderstood industry, Price-Glynn draws a fascinating portrait of life and work inside the strip club.
Review
"Price-Glynn contrasts the aspirations of the strippers with the club's design, rules, expectations, and practices, all of which served to exploit their labor. She argues that without listening to sex workers and addressing their abuse and lack of power, feminists will never take the real battle- the one against structural oppression- to the ring."
“Reads like a novel with a detailed cast of characters! With stripper poles an increasingly ubiquitous fixture in the media, there remains surprisingly little scholarship written about the day-to-day lives of people working in strip bars. Price‒Glynn reveals the grit beneath the pop‒video clichè in Strip Club, offering the reader an insider’s gaze on the employees of the Lion’s Den. Strip Club exposes a taken for granted sexism we need to be reminded of in our Girls Gone Wild culture.”
“The second I entered The Lion’s Den, passing the doorman through darkened hallways toward a parquet dancing stage, Price‒Glynn’s rich description brought me into the dilapidated and ironically profitable (for some) world of the strip club. Her deeply affecting observations make us keenly aware of the social practices that perpetuate gross inequalities. Her ethnography is both brutally honest, and sociologically sophisticated in its examination of both the fragility and tenacity of social rankings based on gender, sex, and social class.”
Review
“Reads like a novel with a detailed cast of characters! With stripper poles an increasingly ubiquitous fixture in the media, there remains surprisingly little scholarship written about the day-to-day lives of people working in strip bars. Price‒Glynn reveals the grit beneath the pop‒video clichè in Strip Club, offering the reader an insiders gaze on the employees of the Lions Den. Strip Club exposes a taken for granted sexism we need to be reminded of in our Girls Gone Wild culture.”
-Bernadette Barton,author of Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers
Review
“The second I entered The Lions Den, passing the doorman through darkened hallways toward a parquet dancing stage, Price‒Glynns rich description brought me into the dilapidated and ironically profitable (for some) world of the strip club. Her deeply affecting observations make us keenly aware of the social practices that perpetuate gross inequalities. Her ethnography is both brutally honest, and sociologically sophisticated in its examination of both the fragility and tenacity of social rankings based on gender, sex, and social class.”
-Lisa Jean Moore,co‒editor of The Body Reader:Essential Social and Cultural Readings
Review
"Democratic constitutional engineering is tricky, yet consequential, nowadays more than ever. I can hardly think of a better proof of this double assertion than the one provided by the latest book by Giovanni Sartori, possibly the most astute and passionate student of constitutional engineering . . . Mine is an invitation to read the book, indeed to unwrap and savor it. Rarely has constitutional engineering been more salient to the future of expanding democracy."-G. DiPalma,The Review of Politics
Review
"Delightfully written, this monograph will be a staple of courses on comparative constitutional design . . . I can think of no better example of contemporary political "engineering" than this, and it is precisely this product of research that students of comparative politics must attempt." -Peter C. Ordeshook,Political Science Quarterly
Review
"Despite the seemingly endless volume of literature on democratic institutions, no text even comes close to formulating the kind of comprehensive and critical synthesis one finds in this elegant new book by Sartori."-P. Vannicelli,Los Angeles Monthly
Review
"Giovanni Sartori, internationally recognized political scientist, has written a pathbreaking, highly innovative comparative study of state building." -The Commentator,
Review
"The last book of Giovanni Sartori is a beautiful work that ranks among his very best writings. It is very concise, for it deals only with essentials, and yet covers all the basics of his subject matter; and Sartori always takes a crystal-clear stand on the many controversies that he covers." -G. Bognetti,Il Sole/24 Ore
Synopsis
In
Strip Club, Kim Price‒Glynn takes us behind the scenes at a rundown club where women strip out of economic need, a place where strippers stories are not glamorous or liberating, but emotionally demanding and physically exhausting.
Strip Club reveals the intimate working lives of not just the women up on stage, but also the patrons and other workers who make the place run: the owner‒manager, bartenders, dejays, doormen, bouncers, housemoms, and cocktail waitresses.
Price‒Glynn spent fourteen months at The Lions Den working as a cocktail waitress, and her uncommonly deep access reveals a conflict‒ridden workplace, similar to any other workplace, one where gender inequalities are reproduced through the everyday interactions of customers and workers. Taking a novel approach to this controversial and often misunderstood industry, Price‒Glynn draws a fascinating portrait of life and work inside the strip club.
Synopsis
The second edition of this pathbreaking, highly innovative comparative study in state-building by a major political scientist is a fully updated examination of the problems of making democratic government work.
Sartori begins by assessing electoral systems. He attacks the conventional wisdom that their influence cannot be predicted and also disputes the view that proportional representation is always best and will deliver 'consensus democracy'. He argues that the double-ballot formulas deserve more consideration for their ability to facilitate governability in adverse circumstances.
His comparative assessment of presidential and semi-presidential systems and the variety of formulas that are categorized, sometimes misleadingly, as parliamentary, looks at the conditions that allow a political form to perform as intended.
He concludes with a detailed proposal for a new type of government: alternating presidentialism. This meets the need for strong parliamentary control and efficient government, with safeguards against both parliamentary obstructionism and government by decree, and so could help to avoid political paralysis in Latin America, in the post-communist countries of Europe and in countries with dysfunctional parliamentary systems such as Italy and Israel.
About the Author
Giovanni Sartori holds the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at Columbia University and is the author of numerous books, including Parties and Party Systems and, more recently, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, which have been translated and published in fifteen countries. As the English second edition of this work appears, Comparative Constitutional Engineering has also been published in Brazil, Chile, Japan, Italy, Mexico and Turkey