The Aleppo Cookbook: Celebrating the Lengendary Cuisine of Syria.by Matar, Marlene, Interlink

  

The Aleppo Cookbook: Celebrating the Lengendary Cuisine of Syria.

Matar, Marlene (author).
Dec. 2016. 352p. illus. Interlink, hardcover, $40 (9781566569866). 641.595.
 First published November 15, 2016 (Booklist).

Syria’s venerable cuisine draws together diverse strains of Middle Eastern traditions to form a rich amalgam. As the nation’s largest city, positioned close to Turkey and Lebanon, Aleppo is home to Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Jews, and other ethnic communities, each of which has contributed to its culinary traditions. Moreover, Aleppo was the western terminus of the ancient Silk Road, so even Chinese influences are detectable in its cooking. Professional chef and cooking instructor Matar offers detailed instructions for preparing multiple versions of kibbeh, the Middle East’s renowned ground-meat dish. Other recipes offer tasty ways to cook vegetables for serving both hot and cold. Rich, sweet desserts conclude the book. Recipes are easy to follow and rarely demand hard-to-find ingredients. It’s hard to imagine a cookbook that can make a reader weep, but poring over this book’s richly colored photographs of Syrians crowding souks amid a sumptuous array of foods and utensils, one can only mourn their probable ruin in Syria’s current civil war.

Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Harvard University Press.

Walter Benjamin’s status as one of the greatest philosophers and social theorists of his era is undisputed. During his life (1892-1940), Benjamin was a respected critic of culture and aesthetics, but it is only since his death that his writings on the meaning of art and truth – such as the famous essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ – have truly been widely appreciated in the English-speaking world, and his influence can still be felt today across fields as diverse as anthropology, art theory, and law. Nonetheless, there is great sadness in acknowledging his posthumous exalted status, given that he died tragically young at the age of 48, committing suicide while attempting to flee the Nazis in 1940. This new biography – Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life – maps his life from beginning to end, tracing the roots of his thought all the way from his early childhood to his seminal work as part of the esteemed ‘Frankfurt School’, and ultimately to his last months in Paris (largely spent writing his final major work – ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’) before his untimely death in Portbou, Catalonia.

Like most thinkers of his generation, WWI proved to be a formative time for Benjamin – he supported the anti-war stance of the radical leftists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg when war broke out in 1914. Moreover, soon after the opening of hostilities Benjamin was rocked by the suicide of two of his anti-war friends. This personal tragedy seems to have deeply affected him; the authors note that suicidal thoughts began to recur in Benjamin’s private writings in the years that followed.

The authors note that during this formative period the young Benjamin demonstrated a restless intellectual character; he constantly moved around, spending time at universities in Berlin, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Munich and Bern, before eventually gaining a position at Frankfurt. As a philosopher, during these early years he veered between Kant and Nietzsche, but as he matured as a thinker he moved more and more towards Marx, influenced in particular by Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness – perhaps the most important work in early Western Marxism – as well as by his interactions with the communist politician Karl Korsch and the playwright Bertold Brecht.


Sketches of Walter Benjamin. Credit: Renée CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Early on in the book, the authors – Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings – argue that in addition to being a brilliant thinker, he was also a writer of ‘immediately engaging and memorable prose’. However, they further remark: ‘Yet for all the brilliant immediacy of his writing, Benjamin the man remains elusive.’

Indeed, his Frankfurt School colleague Theodor Adorno once remarked that while he was in many ways a generous friend, Benjamin ‘hardly ever showed his cards’. Constructing an appropriate biography for such an elusive character is obviously a great challenge. Thankfully, the writers do not oppress the reader with dubious psychological interpretations of Benjamin’s actions; instead, at the crucial critical junctures that occur in his life – such as his turn towards Marxism – they simply draw attention to his own private and public writings, bringing his thoughts to life, yet allowing him to remain an appropriately ambiguous figure.

For instance, in the chapter on the ‘Metaphysics of Youth’ the authors reflect upon Benjamin’s Jewish upbringing. They note that although he was not a religious man, Benjamin’s Jewish identity lay ‘at the core of his being’. A certain duality is present in his thoughts and actions in this regard; for example, Benjamin opposed political Zionism, yet the prominent Zionist Gersholm Schloen remained one of his closest friends throughout his life (Benjamin even gave a parting gift to his friend, wishing him well, as Scholen emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s). Indeed, Benjamin’s private diaries and letters to friends during his university days illustrate the dialectical conflict he felt between his dual self-identities as a German Jew and as a cosmopolitan European – not to mention the intellectual and physical terror he felt as the Nazis began to march across Europe, eviscerating this pluralist ideal.

As a piece of text, the biography is very well written, featuring sparse, elegant prose – a lot is said, yet a lot is left to the imagination – and it is this characteristic that ultimately makes Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life such a great read. The reader is left with a real understanding of what makes Benjamin such a brilliantly enduring figure in the realm of European thought – yet the man himself remains elusive and enigmatic, as he was in life, even to his closest friends.

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Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea. Reuven Firestone. Oxford University Press.

Images in the media of aggressive Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlement building, the destruction of Arab houses and brutality against Palestinians at checkpoints, do much to inform perspectives on Israel’s attitudes to ‘holy war’. The book Holy War in Judaism provides a more complex and ambivalent survey of Jewish perspectives on military action by taking a closer look at this notion of ‘holy war’ in traditional Jewish texts and in Jewish history from ancient to modern times.

Throughout much of Jewish history, religious leaders recommended a life of Torah study and observance, delegating victory over Israel’s enemies to God in future messianic times. It seems that the notion of ‘holy war’, that is, the belief in divinely legitimised military action against one’s enemies, was limited to periods of political sovereignty and to religious fundamentalists. For most of the time and for most Jews, war was neither a reasonable option nor an action for which they would claim divine support. On the basis of the Jewish literary tradition and centuries of subjection to foreign imperialism, Jewish attitudes towards military action appear in a very different light: author Reuven Firestone states, “among the religious systems I have studied, Judaism has the least developed and least politicized ideology of holy war, and when it is invoked, it has always applied to an extremely limited geographical scope” (viii).



Reuven Firestone is Professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at the Reform-Jewish Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. He has written this book as a corollary to his earlier book Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. He traces the understanding of and actual engagement in war from the biblical period to contemporary Israel, with a close examination of the various interpretations of war by Jewish religious authorities of the respective time periods. Although the Hebrew Bible, the most revered Jewish religious text, lacks a specific term for ‘holy war’, references to divinely sanctioned military actions against so-called idolators and against Israel’s enemies are as prevalent here as they are in the literatures of other ancient Near Eastern people and other monotheistic religions (Christianity and Islam). At the same time, biblical texts stress that God supported Israel only as long as Israelites obeyed his commandments. In retrospect – the biblical texts were written long after the events they relate and exhibit the ideology of their later editors – the divine sanctioning of military action appears as one aspect of the belief in God’s determination of history.

In the following, three post-biblical Jewish military actions are presented as “Jewish holy war in practice”: the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ persecution of Judaism in the second century B.C.E. and the two Jewish revolts against Rome in the first and second centuries C.E. (ch. 2 and 3). Whereas the Maccabean revolt was successful, the latter two were not. All three were meant to recreate conditions in which Jewish religious obervance could be carried out unhindered by foreign (Hellenistic and Roman) imperialist rule. Firestone does not examine the sources pertaining to these revolts in much detail and does not point to the complex combination of religious and political motivations. He stresses that not all Jews supported these revolts and that many, or most, preferred quietist stances towards the foreign rule, even when it became oppressive. The survival of Judaism was the goal, but how this goal could be achieved was heavily disputed amongst Jewish leaders and intellectuals.

After the failed Bar Kokhba revolt in the first half of the second century C.E., Jews did not engage in military actions until the British Mandate period and the establishment of the State of Israel in the mid-twentieth century. Throughout late antique, medieval, and modern times rabbis took quietist stances, advocating Torah study and piety in the present and hoping for divine redemption in the future. This “quietist messianism” (62) condemned human military action as interfering with God’s plans. Firestone views this rabbinic “re-alignment of priorities” (x) as a watershed in Jewish history and thought: Rabbis “made it virtually impossible for holy war to be an operative catergory in Judaism” (4). Nevertheless, they did not adopt a pacifistic stance and “holy war” remained a theoretical concept discussed by medieval Jewish scholars such as Nachmanides and Maimonides. Firestone’s focus on Jewish religious thinkers seems to neglect the real historical and political context of foreign dominion and Diaspora existance, which made further Jewish rebellions virtually impossible throughout these time periods. It seems that rabbis adapted their religious thinking to the changed circumstances Jews found themselves in: for a religious and ethnic minority under foreign rule a quietist stance seems to be the wisest possible option.

The situation changed with Zionism and the eventual establishment of the State of Israel, when war against political enemies became a reality again. From the 1930s onwards some religious Zionist rabbis began to revive the issue of holy or commanded war. This terminology was applied to the Israeli War of Independence (1947-48), the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) on the basis of R. Abraham Kook’s teachings, which were reinterpreted by R. Tzvi Yehudah Kook, combining ultra-Orthodoxy with an “ideology of human activism inherent in modern nationalist movements” (283). Although the experience of the Holocaust constituted a turning-point in Jewish attitudes towards self-defense, many (ultra-) Orthodox rabbis continued to oppose human attempts to determine history by fighting against Israel’s enemies. They therefore advise their yeshiva students not to join the Israeli army which is a secular institution. The original Zionist leadership of the state was secular and would therefore not justify military actions as divinely commanded. The ‘holy war’ ideology and rhetoric has been revived only within the camps of fundamentalist religious Zionists, who became more outspoken after the successes of the 1967 and 1973 wars and stand behind the settlement building activities. Radical right wing groups such as Gush Emunim even view terrorist activities against Arabs as ‘holy war’ meant to advance the coming of messianic redemption. Firestone emphasizes at the end of his study that a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict can be implemented only when fundamentalist radicalism and ‘holy war’ ideology cease on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides

Holy War in Judaism is written in a very clear and explanatory style and is therefore also suitable for non-expert readers with an interest in Judaism, Israel, peace and violence, and holy war. Students and scholars of political and social sciences, history, and religious studies will benefit most from its detailed discussion of Jewish religious thinking on divinely sanctioned military action

Food Fights & Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste by Tom Nealon, Overlook .

Food Fights & Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste by Tom Nealon, Overlook Mar. 2017. 224p. illus. Overlook, hardcover, $30 (9781468314410). 641.
.

Tracing the history of culinary practice, Nealon uncovers some fascinating and significant relationships between food and seemingly disparate historical events. Diverse elements, from carp to chocolate to barbecue, each turn out to have significantly influenced historical eras and episodes. Recounting the history of plague, Nealon observes that seventeenth-century Paris largely escaped the devastation that depopulated London, Venice, Milan, and Rouen. This fortunate anomaly may well have arisen due to Parisians’ obsession with lemonade, as discarded fruit rinds acted as a natural insecticide. Nealon keeps his prose lighthearted, but never to the point of undermining his deep historical and cultural research. Those who’ve hosted less-than-successful dinner parties need not berate themselves. Nealon notes that table arguments between Robespierre and Danton set in motion some of the French Revolution’s most sanguinary chapters. Nealon’s ever-entertaining text wraps around lavish, copious illustration, drawn in large part from the collections of the British Library, and they deserve closest scrutiny.

The Two-State Solution: The UN Partition Resolution of Mandatory Palestine- Analysis and Sources.Ruth Gavison (ed). Bloomsbury Academic.

Ruth Gavison, the editor of this volume and founder of Metzilah – a Center advocating for the compatibility of Zionism, Judaism and liberal-democratic/ humanist thought – is a contentious national figure in Israel. As a staunch proponent for a two-state solution and a self-proclaimed Zionist, Gavison’s extensive and pertinent work as an academic, journalistic contributor, lawyer, civil-rights campaigner and politician has provoked rigorous criticism from both Israeli and international Right and Left.

With John Kerry resurrecting the partition debate from its shallow grave in the political arena, this book is a timely addition to academic views on partitioning, both historically and conceptually. Gavison uses this engaging edited volume as a flagship of historical revisionism, upon which to position public discussion over issues intrinsic to both Israeli and Palestinian identity, self-determination and ideology and to promote a re-reading of key historical debates over the 1947 UN Partition Plan and its enduring relevance to present debate over statehood in Palestine/ Eretz Yisrael. This collection of essays draws upon an impressively rich range of primary source data and boasts insights from a (perhaps insufficient) variety of scholars.The book, and the Center more broadly, seem overtly focussed on their communicative message, hoping to enlighten and expand the awareness of anyone with an interest, vested or otherwise, in the history and future of Israel and Palestine. The Center does however appear primarily concerned with the former, an agenda which is clearly articulated at the start of the book and is perfectly suitable given the goals and message of the Center, however it raises some issues regarding the academic impartiality of the book. Such a contrast is key for constructive and meaningful comparative analysis. Gavison’s commitment to discussing the ramifications of Jewish identity and Zionism and the necessity of conceptualizing and historicizing this in order to legitimise Israel’s state building activities is understandable and Gavison rightly calls for critical analysis, however she fails to extend this necessity regarding Palestinian voices, histories and futures.

In his chapter on the Zionist debates on partition, Itzhak Galnoor clearly delineates the parameters of his essay, providing a concise and insightful summary of the decision-making and political opportunity structure facing the Zionist movement from World War I onwards, particularly in regards to debates over the more tangible element of state-building; territory. Although somewhat repetitive of well-known historical events, the intended audience of this book (new readers and the public) should find this helpful, as the historical elements of this debate are oft obfuscated by scholarship which assumes an excessive level of pre-existing knowledge.

This essay confronts well the hedonistic calculus employed by Zionist civil-society regarding state formation, the conflict between expressive (or ideological) goals regarding the establishment of a Jewish state and the practical realities of being engaged with, and reliant on, colonial Britain. A more comprehensive analysis, rather than simply description, of the rationale behind internal Zionist fragmentation should have been given however as this could have shed new insight on the decision-making process. Galnoor closes his arguments by stating that “willingness to ignore all these shortcomings testifies that the Zionist decision to adopt the 1947 partition plan was based on giving priority to sovereignty over other goals, as well as over expressive values.” Such a conclusion departs from many a tract on early state-building activities by removing the ideological element and focussing on the pragmatism/ instrumentalism of the Zionist decision-making process.


Credit:papalars. CC BY-ND 2.0

Mustafa Kabha’s coverage of intra-Palestinian fragmentation provides important insights on a previously forlorn research area; that of conflictual, contradictory and complex decision-making within Palestinian groups attempting to produce a cohesive agenda and set of interests in the lead up to the Partition Plan. By exploring these factions, this chapter articulately offers an insightful and original account of how, and for what reason, Palestinian groups opposed the Partition Plan, and the enduring ramifications of this. For example, Kabha provides a detailed account of the disparity in territorial and population distribution in the proposals which led to rejection of the Peel Commissions recommendations, but also of the failure of the Mufti to accept Britain’s White Paper. Furthermore, and most interestingly due to lack of prior research, Kabha details the groups supporting Partition, claiming this was not a minority, but rather a quieter sub-group. This goes far towards dispelling myths regarding a comprehensive and unequivocal “Arab” rejection of the Partition Plan, and shows that there existed no such easily generalizable term which encompassed the fragmentation of, and conflict within, Palestinian-Arab organisations.

An important contribution of this chapter is that it highlights the hypocrisy of many politicians, academics and other interested parties involved in this debate in expecting Palestinians to accept a document (the Mandate) “which did not recognize them as people”. Moreover, Kabha concludes by drawing in wider issues related to Palestinian rights and freedoms, noting the importance of historical debates but stating that such historicization is clearly superseded by “international and moral conventions”; “Supposing that the civilian population did indeed flee from its places of residence, what are the rationales and justifications explaining the refusal to permit their return with the cessation of the battles?”

A more nuanced debate over the contrasting and often contradictory positions regarding the two-state solution is necessary in the editor’s introduction and concluding chapter. Thus, rather than a step forward for the revisionist work (or new historiography) in which this work is situated, this book appears to somewhat regress, disregarding the extensive research of esteemed historians such as Nur Masalah, Ilan Pappé and even to an extent, the less controversial figure; Benny Morris. Despite some commendable goals to link this book to present day issues regarding the two state solution, the majority of the analysis fails to do so. As such, the book is much too specific in its scope and as a purely historical analysis (as opposed to a book covering an enduring debate on partition), it would benefit from drawing in other important events of this time.

Central Station by Lavie Tidhar, , Tachyon

Central Station.  Tidhar, Lavie (author).
May 2016. 240p. Tachyon, paperback, $15.95 (9781616962142).

In the future, Earth has been ravaged by numerous wars, and many of its inhabitants have fled to the unknown frontier that is space. Connecting space and Earth is Central Station, a space hub that floats above the decrepit city of Tel Aviv. Humans, robots, and aliens alike contribute to the hustle and bustle of Central Station, and their stories are told in World Fantasy Award-winner Tidhar’s latest. Readers meet many different characters, but unfortunately, none seem fleshed out enough for the reader to connect with. Tidhar spends more time on the philosophy of the Conversation, a constant mental data stream to which everyone contributes, than on forming the characters, which makes for a challenging read. Still, the novel is thought-provoking about the future of reality and our constant need for data. Fans of Tidhar and other thought-provoking science fiction may enjoy this highly intellectual novel.

Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid. Ilan Pappé (ed.). Zed Books. 2015.

In October 2015, by upholding the convictions of a dozen activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, France’s Court of Cassation effectively held that advocating the boycott of Israeli products was illegal. Over the past ten years, the BDS Movement – which attempts to increase economic and political pressure on Israel ‘until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights’ – has gained attention from around the world. Similarly, the movement’s campaigns, which seek to echo the actions of anti-apartheid activists against white minority rule in South Africa, have garnered growing support. Yet, as shown by the French court’s decision, comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa remain controversial. In the midst of impassioned debates, Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid seeks to deepen the discussion of Israel as an ‘apartheid state of a special type’ (350).

Ilan Pappé, one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ and Professor of History at the University of Exeter, brings together political scientists, policymakers, journalists, lawyers and sociologists to compile a variety of substantive comparisons between the two situations. Within this comparative framework, the issues addressed include topics such as the historical roots of both regimes and the practice of indigenous femicide and its significance for apartheid racial elites, as well as the nature and organisation of protest groups in both segregation contexts. The book makes a compelling contribution to a topic that, while having been the focus of considerable media and activist attention, has rarely been examined as an academic issue.

The reader is warned in the introduction: none of the contributors question the validity of the comparison between modern-day Israel and apartheid South Africa. Rather, the book intends to offer a better study of the similarities and differences that characterise this comparison. The outcome is an original and in-depth contribution to the debate, which looks at different aspects of these political systems of segregation and expertly demonstrates how apartheid as a particular regime of ‘separateness’ is not solely specific to the South African context.
Image Credit: The West Bank Barrier (Wikipedia Public Domain)

The contributions are grouped within four subsections: ‘Historical Roots’, ‘The Boundaries of Comparison’, ‘Nuanced Comparisons’ and ‘Future Models and Perspectives’. While the historical and comparative breadth of the book in its entirety must be commended, the forward-looking ‘Future Models and Perspectives’ section is of particular importance as it succeeds in showing the lessons that can be learned from the successful anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Certainly, this is the most powerful message to be taken from the book: that there is room to explore an alternative, peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians. Events such as the summer 2014 operations in Gaza or the more recent stabbing attacks and ensuing retaliations only seem to add to the inextricability of the status quo. Chapters Eight and Nine of the book, however, offer very engaging and intriguing arguments in favour of a single-state solution.

In Steven Friedman’s section, the South African academic examines the belief held by many that an ethnic state is the only guarantee of security for Jewish Israelis. However, Friedman argues that the creation of such a state in a multi-ethnic environment would only result in increasing pressure and insecurity. While the South African experience should not be hailed as a model blueprint, one of the primary lessons to be learned is that a two-state solution cannot, and will not, ensure Jewish security. Well-meaning reforms that attempt to accommodate the multi-ethnic fabric of society will inevitably fail because ultimately the very essence of the state – its ethnic nature – will have to be reconsidered. Friedman offers the opinion that ‘[t]he replacement of the ethnic state by one shared by Israelis and Palestinians, built on mutual guarantees, is the only route to a peaceful Jewish life in the region’ (291).

A single-state solution to the conflict is also the conclusion reached by Virginia Tilley in her chapter on sovereignty. Tilley argues that the international legal framework of belligerent occupation is not relevant to the factual situation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). In fact, she argues that the international community’s calls to withdraw from the oPt, which are efforts to protect the rights of Palestinians (including their right to self-determination), may actually do more harm than good. Tilley brilliantly demonstrates that the facts are better identified as ‘settler colonialism’, and elaborates on the stalemate in which the Palestinians find themselves. On the one hand, the nature of the Israeli occupation – ‘settler colonialism’ – and its duration to date have rendered the option of Palestinian statehood ‘obsolete’ (321). On the other hand, the international community’s relentless affirmation that Israel is not a legitimate sovereign and should allow for the formation of a Palestinian state is, in effect, absolving Israel from respecting the rights of all citizens within the borders of the territory on which it exercises de facto sovereignty. While Tilley admits that the recognition of this settler colonial sovereignty is a painful normative shift, it would be a pragmatic acknowledgment of what is happening on the ground. Fully acknowledging this, and starting to frame the conversations along the lines of a single-state reality, would mean opening up discussions and finally finding new practical ways of pursuing justice.

Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid could well become essential reading for anyone interested in the intrinsic nature of the Israeli state’s colonial and segregationist system, as well as the lessons to be drawn from a comparison of the Israeli and South African contexts. The authors argue for the need to explicitly call Israel an apartheid state, and demonstrate how much there is to learn from the successful fight against apartheid in South Africa. In such a heated political and academic debate, this book is a welcome contribution: one which will surely bring about important animated discussions, including with regards to the possibilities of a single-state solution.

The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media. Catherine J. Turco. Columbia University Press. 2016.

‘Empowered workforce’, ‘flat organisation structures’: we’ve all heard the empty buzzwords and latest fads to improve office productivity. When new initiatives are implemented there is often little change at the coalface for employees and minimal rewards to a company’s bottom line. Refreshingly, Catherine J. Turco’s study of a US social marketing company (which retains anonymity throughout the book as ‘TechCo’) reveals a business operating in a radical manner through its use of social media to discuss decisions and plan work. Building on ten months of fieldwork diligently interviewing and observing workers both in and out the workplace, Turco vividly writes in The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media about the unique problems of pursuing radical openness, such as not having a Human Resources (HR) department and publishing details of executive pay packages.

What does it mean to be a ‘conversational firm’? TechCo uses multiple communication channels (chat forums, a wiki, large open meetings) to leverage collective wisdom from its hundreds of employees to confront market and internal challenges. A vocal culture pervades TechCo, in which employees feel emboldened to speak out. This is most notably demonstrated in employees posting ideas and critiquing others’ thoughts on the company’s 

collaborative web-based forum (the wiki). There, the lowest-rung employees comment on executives’ posts and proposals, whilst high echelon employees reciprocate.

It is critical to understand nonetheless that in a conversational firm such as TechCo, communication rights do not correlate to decision-making rights, and employees at TechCo in general understand and are happy with this arrangement. As one employee states: ‘Ideally, I want a decision to come from the top down but with input having been encouraged and elicited from throughout the chain.’ Interestingly, Turco proposes that this could be a quirk of middle-class millennials brought up to be vocal on instant messengers, but with a ‘highly structured upbringing designed to advance their personal and professional development’.
Image Credit: (verlaciudad CC BY SA 2.0)

Desire for structure is also the backdrop to an engrossing chapter in Turco’s study: the pursuit of operating without a HR department. When Turco met Eric and Anil (TechCo’s founders) for the first time, Anil declared, ‘I have a visceral hatred of HR.’ About six months before Turco commenced her fieldwork, TechCo hired a professional HR manager to build much-needed HR functionality. Eric and Anil did not compromise on their post-bureaucratic vision easily: TechCo operated until it was five years old with nearly 400 employees without a HR manager, department or formal processes. This meant employees were plagued by issues such as a lack of standardisation in performance reviews and no consistent maternity leave policy. TechCo’s open culture of surveys, meetings and wiki discussions eventually won the day in persuading Eric and Anil of the need for HR.

Although not fully acknowledged by Turco, there are areas where communication and decision-making rights can significantly overlap. This passage is particularly powerful as Turco explores different perspectives of TechCo’s growing pains. While ethnographies of workplaces can become hamstrung by focusing on one segment of a workforce (frequently either upper management or workers) in a bid to not appear as a ‘double-agent’, Turco avoids this false dilemma well in giving understanding to the hopes and fears of TechCo’s founders, management and general employees.

A particularly intriguing mode of distributing decision-making rights is the policy of ‘use good judgment’. Shortened to ‘UGJ’, this means the distribution of broad freedoms and avoidance of micro-management. UGJ has become applicable to many areas of employees’ work, whether it be answering calls from clients (usually a receiver of a call in a normal company would be given a script; instead, at TechCo, it is UGJ that is the defining mantra), taking as much holiday time off as desired or smaller (but delectable) liberties, such as free (and always available) beer in the office for employees to drink whenever they want.

However, two novel problems occur with this policy – the first being a disparity in decision-making between different employees over work matters (one person’s UGJ may well be the opposite of another’s UGJ), with managers using UGJ to pass off difficult decision-making to other employees. As one manager candidly admits: ‘UGJ is a way for people at my level to avoid making decisions.’ The second quandary is that some employees are able to live more UGJ than others: for example, engineers with prior technical experience were able to exercise UGJ to greater levels.

TechCo’s idiosyncratic environment also requires a very specific type of person to succeed (millennial, extrovert, thick-skinned, obsessive), making hiring a critical process. It is perhaps churlish, but I am fascinated to hear more insights on recruitment and integration from the TechCo hiring manager who explains: ‘We rarely hire people from other places, and when we do, their experience is discounted. I have to coach people not to talk about their experience.’ The frequently cult-like atmosphere of TechCo could potentially make transition from the wider world to TechCo life difficult, or perhaps not if young recruits have little experience and are therefore more malleable. This transition is certainly ripe for further exploration; equally, more questions could be asked of how work-life balance is managed, if at all, at TechCo. The reader sees hints at potential failure in achieving this balance with the failing maternity leave standardisation as well as the relegation of some employees to ‘second-class citizens’ – a term used directly by several TechCo employees – when it came to control over time and schedules. The latter phenomenon has occurred because some roles in TechCo allow for more flexibility over work schedules than others: customer support and entry-level sales reps cannot by the nature of their work get the same level of flexibility in vacations as engineers. The openness of the conversational firm makes this inequality hard to ignore as vacation requests are available for all TechCo personnel to see on the company wiki and employees discuss their vacation plans in TechCo chat rooms.

The book is an excellent addition to the field of publications like Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power their Organizations, gaining an empathetic understanding of how grand communication ideas like a conversational firm can affect employees in the smallest ways. Turco accompanies this emotional analysis with rigorous academic context, but this does not impede accessibility for more lay readers. A particular gem of the book is the methodological appendix at the end: here, the reader learns about the dilemmas of writing – for example, should TechCo ever be de-anonymised post-publishing? – and Turco brings to life her experience, whilst also briefly scraping away at the problem of integration for newcomers: ‘I am an introvert who craves structure and routine, and I was operating inside a company that privileged communication over control and had a unique tolerance for disorder and chaos.’

One of the great strengths of Turco’s book is emphasising the understated power of having a voice. One may not always have demands respected, but to have a voice, be listened to and consulted before a decision is made is important to people. Social media has given the opportunity to do this in the workplace, and in the wider world if used correctly. On the other hand, it can be a tool to buttress power and not engage, a prime example being Donald Trump’s use of Twitter as a broadcasting tool instead of engaging in conversational democracy. TechCo’s iconoclasts give some hope that conversation does not need to fizzle out, and that now more than ever there are more opportunities for it to occur – all that is required is the will to speak and listen.

The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield. Lewis Mates. Manchester University Press. 2016.

The period before the First World War has been termed the Great Labour Unrest, drawing attention to the wave of rank-and-file industrial militancy that fuelled a new working-class self-consciousness and, along with demands for Irish Home Rule and women’s suffrage, appeared to threaten the established social order. This period was crucial in the replacement of the Liberals by Labour in the two-party political system in the UK.

In The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-file Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield, Lewis Mates is concerned with examining the link between industrial militancy and the rise of the Labour Party through a study of the transformations that occurred in the politics of the Durham Miners Association (DMA) in the period before the First World War.

The Durham coalfield reached peak production in 1913, and 170,000 men were employed in the county’s mines. Together with the smaller Northumberland industry, it formed the Great Northern Coalfield, which had powered the industrial revolution. Durham represented an important prize for the proponents of an independent Labour parliamentary interest, and Mates’s book is essentially the story of how and why the DMA shifted its political allegiance from the Liberals to become a Labour heartland in the inter-war period.

The DMA was the product of the nineteenth-century struggle for trade union rights, but remained solid in its support for the Liberals. It was dominated at the turn of the twentieth century by John Wilson, who was concurrently a leader of the DMA and a Liberal MP. An ideological Liberal and admirer of William Gladstone, Wilson ruled the union ruthlessly, refusing to acknowledge any divergence of interest between miners and coal-owners. Consequently, the Durham coalfield was characterised by an industrial culture of ‘conciliation’ in which the union collaborated in frequent wage reductions when the market price for coal deteriorated.

Mates charts the unravelling of this settlement as a new generation of activists, notably in the Durham Forward Movement, asserted the need for an independent labour interest. They promoted this understanding through practical campaigns focused on legislation for the Eight Hour Day and the Minimum Wage and affiliation to the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain and the nascent Labour Party. Despite the high level of organisation embodied in the DMA and their later reputation for industrial solidarity, there was nothing natural about the unity of the mining workforce. The workforce was divided among hewers (responsible for getting the coal at the face), putters (responsible for transporting the coal from the face to the shaft) and datal hands (who worked on the surface): all would be affected differently by changes in industrial relations legislation. Common purpose was hard-won and fragile.
Image Credit: Durham Miners Gala 2014 (turloughmor CC BY 2.0)

The book displays an impressive grasp of sources and the text is exhaustively annotated. Mates mines the extant minutes of the DMA and its lodges (branches) and makes use of the extensive local newspaper coverage of the coal industry. It is striking how the local press provided a platform for antagonists to participate in detailed debates about wage rates, shift patterns and union organisation. The Durham Miners Gala with its vast attendances was also an arena in which competing ideologies fought for attention.

The book is partly a prolonged dialogue with Duncan Tanner’s influential revisionist book, Political Change and the Labour Party 1900-1918 (1990), which rejected class-based accounts of the rise of Labour and downplayed the ideological rupture with Liberalism. (The book also engages with Terry Austrin and Huw Beynon’s classic modern history of the DMA, Masters and Servants). The conclusion would have been improved by a consolidated reflection on the significance of Tanner’s work, which otherwise is scattered throughout the text. Mates emphasises the heterogeneous nature of the movement for change and the diversity of ideas that underpinned it, but suggests an ideological shift did occur during this period. However, he shows that class identity was not lying around waiting to be mobilised, but instead was created by the agency of activists who had to work hard to build credibility in the wider workforce.

Inevitably, however, this is a partial account of the processes leading to Labour’s hegemony in County Durham. Although much attention is given to the question of the DMA’s representation in parliament, much less is given to its practices in relation to local government, even though the Labour Party had captured control of Durham County Council by 1919. (It retains that control today.) For instance, Peter Lee, the colossus of the Durham labour movement in the inter-war period, who simultaneously occupied the position of leader of the DMA and chairman of Durham County Council, makes only fleeting appearances in the text compared to other activists such as Jack Lawson and Will Lawther, who later also became important Labour leaders. Although active in the Durham Forward Movement, Lee was heavily preoccupied with his ascent through local government and with questions of housing, education and public health. A fuller account of the period would need to pay attention to these changes.

The Great Labour Unrest is likely to appeal primarily to specialists in early-twentieth-century labour history as it assumes a level of knowledge, which on occasion tested this sympathetic reviewer. Moreover, it helps to have a detailed understanding of the geography of County Durham. The book also contributes to the recent proliferation of recent scholarship on the twentieth-century history of the Durham coalfield, including Hester Barron’s The 1926 Miners’ Lockout: Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield (2009), Robert Lee’s The Church of England and the Durham Coalfield, 1810-1926: Clergymen, Capitalists and Colliers (2007) and Beynon and Austrin’s biography of the powerful post-Second World War DMA leader, Sam Watson.

In 2016 County Durham returned an overwhelming vote for Brexit. At a time when talk of the interests of the working class is rising up the political agenda and membership of the Labour Party has increased dramatically while its standing in the opinion polls is falling, this account of the origins of a Labour region deserves attention.

1996 and the End of History. David Stubbs. Repeater Books. 2016.

I was born in 1996, not literally – that happened in 1981 – but metaphorically. As I approached the age of sixteen, and the cultural world began to coalesce, I became a draft version of the person I am today. This was my final year of formal education; I sat my GCSEs with little hope; and as the summer ended I would learn that I had failed most of them. This barely registered as a disappointment as, flush with money from my first full-time job, I ordered a fake ID from the back of Loaded magazine and hit the pubs and clubs with likeminded mates. Furthering education, or in my case restarting it, seemed utterly irrelevant. What did I, or anyone else for that matter, need with a proper education? Intelligence could be found by proxy on a Manic Street Preachers record. Aspiration to be anything else could be found in the music and lifestyle magazines of the era. Publications like NME, Melody Maker, Select and FHM promoted images of waifish rock stars, scantily clad beautiful women, affordable designer polo shirts, the latest gadgets and, despite my lack of interest, an inclusive football culture. The ill-defined ideals of ‘Cool Britannia’ were everywhere and our British chests thumped with pride, we embraced tolerance and looked towards a very bright future.

Writer and journalist David Stubbs’s latest book, 1996 and the End of History, is an accurate recap of the year’s heady optimism. By tying the political and cultural landscapes of the mid-nineties together, Stubbs offers an account that certainly, as one who lived in those times, dips into nostalgia but doesn’t cheapen the era, and in fact points to 1996 as a kind of doppelganger for other modern revolutionary years, like 1966 (Swinging London), 1969 (Summer of Love), and 1977 (the emergence of punk).

The book begins with New Labour leader Tony Blair who, for good or ill, was a defining figure of the mid-to-late-nineties and beyond. As the British Conservatives saw out their final moments in power after sixteen years of hard rule, Blair was basically PM-in-waiting. Stubbs peels back Blair’s popularity using Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle’s 1996 manifesto, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?, to uncover Blair’s policies as not the ‘revolution’ that was being touted, but just a continuation of Thatcherism. Of course, in hindsight this is all obvious. Yet, at the time, one was easily led into believing New Labour was an embodiment of the sunny disposition of the era, as if our very mindset had created them to rule over us. When set against the grey mulch of then Prime Minister John Major and the rest of the Conservatives, Blair’s arrival was a second coming, and if you believed it, it would last a lifetime.
Image Credit: (Andy Bullock CC BY 2.0)

Even though the main protagonists, Oasis, Blur and Pulp, were absent from the charts, Britpop was also at its peak in 1996. Despite not releasing an album that year, Oasis were a dominant force with massive sold-out shows at Knebworth and daily tabloid appearances from the Gallagher brothers. Off the back of the perky The Great Escape (1995), Blur would return in 1997 with the more lo-fi Blur. Pulp, a band that had been plugging away since the early 1980s, suddenly had their moment with class anthem, ‘Common People’, but a brooding, darker version of the band would emerge in 1998 with This is Hardcore. Stubbs nonetheless shows that an undercurrent of differing musical styles was also flowing freely beneath the piss-foam indie jangle of Britpop coattail surfers like Sleeper and Menswear, identifying a number of other worthy bands and artists such as Afghan Whigs, Stereolab, Aaliyah, LTJ Bukem, DJ Shadow and Tricky, whose music offered innovation and an alternative to Britpop.

Another alternative to boorish, laddish Britpop was the uncouth feminist pop of The Spice Girls, who emerged in the summer of 1996 with the song ‘Wannabe’, a brash, feisty anthem of female solidarity. Stubbs gives them due acceptance as a powerful and influential popular force that tied in with the emerging ladette culture where women could be as outspoken as men, and also drink them under the table. Yet Stubbs also comments on the failures of their ‘Girl Power’ manifesto. What should have been a revolution, or at the very least a re-evaluation of popular feminist discourse, was only a dusting of the mantle. The group’s proclamation that Maggie Thatcher was the first Spice Girl called into question their radical brand. In the eyes of The Spice Girls, all feminist battles had been fought and won, and their very existence was testament to this. Still, with the male dominance of pop music and guitar bands springing up daily, The Spice Girls, for a short while, offered some much-needed pop glamour.

The chapter on music is broad and revealing, yet still a question remains: why decline to mention the triumphs of bands such as Ash, The Bluetones, Placebo and The Lightning Seeds? Ash’s 1977 was an indie-punk victory that saw the band score hit singles throughout the year and grace the covers of Smash Hits, NME and Kerrang!. The Bluetones debut, Expecting to Fly, contained two of the best singles of the year: ‘Slight Return’ and ‘Cut Some Rug’. Placebo offered a much needed alternative to the laddish antics of Britpop, signified by the androgyny of singer, Brian Molko, and songs of depravity like ‘Nancy Boy’ and ‘Bruise Pristine’. Whilst The Lightning Seeds do get credit for ‘Three Lions’, the England Euro ‘96 theme, Dizzy Heights goes unmentioned along with the pop genius of the group’s creative force, Ian Broudie. Of course, this all falls into personal interpretation of the times, but these bands felt massive, and not for the first time have been sadly disregarded.

Speaking of music, it is both fitting that Stubbs gives Oasis a full chapter that outlines their utter dominance of the ‘90s, yet oddly hollow considering the music actually being released in 1996. Whilst they were still Britain’s biggest band, it was clear Oasis were on a slide. Drugs, booze, egotism, sheer exhaustion and Caribbean holidays with Johnny Depp all took their toll as well as living up to the initial hype of following the Beatles, when, as Stubbs points out, they had more in common with ‘70s stompers, Slade. In 1997, Oasis would release Be Here Now, and whilst it received acclaim at the time, most of us would have preferred to have been anywhere else after a few listens. Be Here Now was an immense disappointment, but the band’s slip into total irrelevance was already underway.

Stubbs also ventures into the comedy of the mid-nineties, which from memory seemed like dire times. Laddish entertainment shows like TFI Friday were dominant. The show’s host, Chris Evans, larked around the studio getting a laugh by humiliating anyone in his proximity. Yet Stubbs makes an excellent case for shows that were much loved at the time. Irish parochial comedy Father Ted receives a brilliant summarising, whilst sketch comedy The Fast Show is given credence for its wacky skits and lasting catchphrases. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s outstanding and surrealist comedy quiz show, Shooting Stars, baffles most, yet its format has been widely replicated. 1990s comedy was predominantly apolitical, to which Stubbs concludes that it simply matched the cheery mindset of the era. The political commentary that was so blunt in 1980s comedy was mostly absent in the nineties because politics – or at least the kind that we thought needed to be rallied against – was largely missing from the British consciousness during this time.

Even someone as adverse to football as myself felt excited by England’s 1996 European Championship prospects; it is to here and other prominent sporting events like Frank Bruno’s fight with ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson that Stubbs also turns. England’s campaign was soundtracked by The Lightning Seeds’s aforementioned anthem ‘Three Lions’, also featuring comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, and went on to define the glorious – and from what I recall, eternally sunny – summer of 1996. As the England team pulled themselves together, it really did feel like football was ‘coming home’, and if it had, the optimism of the year might have actually blown our heads clean off. However, I can still clearly recall defender Gareth Southgate’s look of disbelief as his penalty was saved, thus ousting England and ending a dream that seemed almost certain to come true. This should have been our reality check. Not everything can be this good.

Of course 1996 could never last. Faith was placed in all the wrong entities. 1997 and the decade’s subsequent years could never hope to match it. How did we ever let the triumphalism of 1996 get away? As Stubbs concludes, it was never ours for the taking. It was, and always is, a distraction. There was never any real revolution in politics or music or feminism or culture: it was only a continuation of the end of history, an ending that in the neoliberal mindset can never truly come. Alongside John Harris’s The Last Party, John Robb’s The Nineties and Rhian E. Jones’s Clampdown – all books that outline the ‘90s from various perspectives of politics, culture and gender – 1996 and the End of History is a quality addition to the critical reassessment of ‘90s Britain. Like the above, Stubbs revels in the idealism and optimism of the time, but concludes that, ultimately, it was a fool’s errand.

Platform Capitalism. Nick Srnicek. Polity. 2016.

Capitalism, when a crisis hits, tends to be restructured. New technologies, new organisational forms, new modes of exploitation, new types of jobs and new markets all emerge to create a new way of accumulating capital. Since the 2008 crisis, the dominant narrative in advanced capitalist countries has been one of change. In particular, there has been a renewed focus on the rise of technology: automation, the sharing economy, endless stories about the ‘Uber for X’ and, most recently, proclamations about the internet of things. These changes have received labels such as ‘paradigm shift’ from McKinsey and ‘fourth industrial revolution’ from the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and, in more ridiculous formulations, have been compared in importance to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. We have witnessed a massive proliferation of new terms: the gig economy, the sharing economy, the on-demand economy, the fourth industrial revolution, the surveillance economy, the app economy, the attention economy and so on. But what unites these divergent phenomena?

In essence, all are symptomatic of how twenty-first-century advanced capitalism is coming to be centred upon extracting and using a particular kind of raw material: data. And the business model which is adequate to this shift is the platform – digital infrastructures that intermediate between different groups. This is the key to its advantage over traditional business models when it comes to data, since a platform positions itself (1) between users, and (2) as the ground upon which their activities occur, thereby giving it privileged access to record them. Google, as the platform for searching, draws on vast amounts of search activity (which express the fluctuating desires of individuals). Uber, as the platform for taxis, draws on traffic data and the activities of drivers and riders. Facebook, as the platform for social networking, brings in a variety of intimate social interactions that can then be recorded. And as more and more industries move their interactions online (e.g. Uber shifting the taxi industry into a digital form or John Deere creating agricultural platforms), more and more businesses will be subject to platform development. Platforms are, as a result, far more than internet companies or tech companies since they can operate anywhere that digital interaction takes place.
Image Credit: (Pixabay CCO)

A first important aspect is that these digital platforms produce and are reliant upon ‘network effects’: the more users that use a platform, the more valuable that platform becomes for everyone else. Facebook, for example, has become the default social networking platform simply by virtue of the sheer number of people on it. If you want to join a platform for socialising, you join the platform where most of your friends and family already are. Likewise, the more users that search on Google, the better their search algorithms become, and the more useful it becomes to users. But this generates a cycle whereby more users beget more users, which leads to platforms’ having a natural tendency towards monopolisation. It also lends platforms a dynamic of ever-increasing access to more activities, and therefore to more data. Moreover, the ability to rapidly scale many platform businesses, by relying on pre-existing infrastructure and cheap marginal costs, means there are few natural limits to growth. One reason for Uber’s rapid growth, for instance, is that it does not need to build new factories – it just needs to rent more servers. Combined with network effects, this means that platforms can grow very big, very quickly.

This is exacerbated by a second dynamic of digital platforms: their insatiable appetite for data means that the most powerful platforms are also continuously expanding through new acquisitions. If collecting and analysing this raw material is the primary revenue source for these companies and gives them competitive advantages, there is an imperative to collect more and more. As one report notes, echoing colonialist ventures:


From a data-production perspective, activities are like lands waiting to be discovered. Whoever gets there first and holds them gets their resources – in this case, their data riches.

For many of these platforms, the quality of the data is of less interest than their quantity and diversity. Every action performed by a user, no matter how minute, is useful for reconfiguring algorithms and optimising processes. Such is the importance of data that many companies could make all of their software open-source and still maintain their dominant position due to their data. Unsurprisingly, then, these companies have been prolific purchasers and developers of assets that enable them to expand their capacity for gaining information. Mergers relating to big data, for instance, have doubled between 2008 and 2013, while globally, tech-related mergers and acquisitions rose to a record high in 2016. The vast cash glut of these companies and their frequent use of tax havens contributed to making this possible. A large surplus of capital sitting idle has enabled these companies to build and expand an infrastructure of data extraction.

The end result of these basic dynamics is a tendency for companies to grow big, to grow fast and to monopolise their core businesses. These consequences pose significant political challenges, particularly as these companies come to control the basic infrastructure of digital society. As our future becomes even more digitally-dependent, we must challenge the economic dynamics that lead to a vast centralising of power within the hands of a few massive platforms.
Note: Text includes selections from Platform Capitalism (Polity, 2016).

Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online. Emma Gannon. Ebury Press. 2016.

Digital technology has revolutionised the ways we navigate through life. We are living in an ever-connected world that has fuelled a perpetual quest for knowledge acquisition. An entire generation has now grown up with the Internet and Emma Gannon is one of these individuals. Writing in an autobiographical style, the author, born in 1989, shares her account of living and working under a digital spotlight.

Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online is written from the perspective of a young British woman living in the internet age, with a good integration of facts and figures to support her arguments. The book is both a personal memoir and a piece of discourse that encourages debate. As a fellow British-born millennial with an affinity to Twitter, I found the book very relatable. From becoming a professional at airbrushed selfies to forming a digital identity through social networking sites, the forthright and matter-of-fact way in which Emma delivers anecdotes from her life makes the book highly engaging from the start. Such personal insight enables the reader to feel more connected to the author. Most of all, I appreciated how the author finds a balance between discussing the risks of technology and highlighting the opportunities it can present to future generations.

Ultimately, Ctrl Alt Delete seeks to explore how technology and the Internet is forming and developing our social identity: ‘Everyone is looking at everyone else’s feeds to try to work out what the truth is about other people’s lives, but mainly worrying about creating their own online identity’ (81). Such a phenomenon has only developed over the past decade or so, mainly with the proliferation of social networking sites. Within this book, the author focuses her discussion on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Digital technology enables us to manipulate how we are perceived and the way in which we perceive others, and has an impact on our self-esteem, sense of worth and relationships with those around us. To illustrate these points, the author recounts the particular impact of online communications in her romantic encounters:


I clued myself up using online music forums and I could tell he was impressed. This soon started to become an obsession, faking my interests to grab his attention and affection […] I could also begin to easily fake things – and by things, I mean myself: my own personality (68).

Physical appearance can also be manipulated. In Chapter One, ‘Photoshopping Myself’, Gannon describes, at the age of 13, her endless obsession with editing photographs of herself: ‘I became more and more transfixed on making my online self look a certain way. By a ‘‘certain way’’ I mean more desirable in the context of what I thought society wanted. It started with the airbrushing of my face, the brightening of my eyes, the saturation of my skin’ (15).

I found this chapter particularly relevant to the pressures faced by today’s generation of young people. Although size zero models and airbrushing techniques are not new, technology has created an environment in which we are hounded by a constant stream of unobtainable perfection. With the press of a button via an app on our smartphones or through launching an extra tab on our computer’s web browser, we can immerse ourselves in the lives of total strangers. We can follow, in real-time, the most popular ‘trends’ on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. From hashtags that glamorise self-harm and anorexia to online abuse towards feminists and minority groups, the author is justified in voicing her concerns with social media. By addressing topics such as body image and online bullying – or ‘trolling’ – the author highlights some of the issues that policymakers are struggling to address. Without an ‘Internet Police’, what can be done to protect people when they go online?
Image Credit: (Pixabay CCO)

Despite the dangers posed by living in an ever-connected world, the author also presents a sense of optimism. The digital world can, in fact, be a force of good: from encouraging entrepreneurialism to providing marginalised groups with a platform to get their voices heard. Gannon spends much of the second half of the book presenting some of the opportunities afforded by technology: ‘The Internet allows a new kind of freedom where we don’t need to work the same nine-to-five office jobs any more because we are more connected than ever’ (172).

In Chapter Nine, the author describes the changing landscape in the context of employment. She cites two interesting statistics: 1) by the year 2020, 40 per cent of the workforce will consist of freelancers and independent consultants (174) (Source: Intuit); and 2) in a 2015 survey of 2,348 people aged 18-25, the most popular career choice was to become a ‘blogger’ (183).

Technology is not simply about structural change. We are, in fact, witnessing a shift in attitudes, behaviours and personal preferences within society. Millennials are beginning to rebel against the status quo. According to the author, jobs-for-life are becoming less desirable and the Internet has ‘killed hierarchy’ (174). Today’s generation are far more restless and agitated with the state of the world, and technology provides a platform to voice discontent and strive towards change.

Most significantly, the variety of jobs has diversified, creating a space for start-up companies and web-based business. In 2016, 70 per cent of marketers reported increased spending on social media, and 55,000 people have the term ‘influencer’ in their LinkedIn job titles (160). This poses an important question for the education sector: given the increased importance that employers are placing upon digital competencies, should there be a modification of the curriculum and the styles in which learning takes place? Should technology play a more integrated role in the classroom? The points made in Chapter Eight present a very convincing argument for such change.

Finally, the author discusses how social media has created ‘a new kind of democracy’ and provides a platform for ‘everyone to have a voice’ (233). Emma focuses her commentary on the rise in online feminist movements such as #HeForShe, #AskHerMore, #LikeAGirl and #EverydaySexism. The opportunity to build global communities and campaign for change is, ultimately, one of the great successes of social media.

Overall, Emma’s first publication provides some very interesting insights into the impact of technology on today’s generation – particularly young women in British society. Looking ahead, I would be keen to read about and compare the experiences of individuals from other nationalities, genders and ethnicities. It would also be interesting to further discuss some of the reasons behind a shift away from the jobs-for-life employment market. Could it be a change in personal preferences or an unwanted consequence of job insecurity in the labour market? Given the increase in fixed-term and temporary employment, zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, these are important considerations that must be addressed.

To conclude, Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online provides confirmation that we are living in an increasingly connected and digitised world. A holistic understanding of the online environment will, ultimately, help direct future policy. In turn, this will help us to address current challenges and capitalise upon the many opportunities afforded by digital technologies.