Culture's Vanities

Reviews / Votes

Bemoaning the ubiquitous commodification of culture in our age of globalization-and thus culture's waning power to effect social change-Steigerwald calls for a 'vigorous cosmopolitanism' that finds its strength not through amorphous 'cultural resistance,' but through concrete political struggles against exploitative global economic forces. Clear-headed and provocative, Culture's Vanities boldly recasts William Morris's aesthetic-democratic vision for our time. -- Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Global Politics, University of Hawai'i-Manoa Attention Wal-Mart shoppers, cultural populists, recovering ethnics, megachurchgoers, affirmative action officers, hip-hop entrepreneurs, celebrity intellectuals, and all others who hawk the debased cultural currency of standardized commodities and uprooted identities. In David Steigerwald, you have met your match. Whenever he hears the word 'culture' Steigerwald reaches for his wit-honed scalpel, and quickly disembowels a prevailing catch-word of the contemporary 'diversity' industry, one that has ironically obscured the increasingly homogeneous world of ephemeral goods and alienated experience fostered by global capitalism. A dyspeptic rant-and a marvelous one at that. -- Robert Westbrook, professor of history, University of Rochester; author of John Dewey and American Democracy Today culture reigns. It seems to explain everything and justify even more. But culture now seems to refer more to matters of consumer choice, light entertainment, or supposed traits of identity groups than the search for meaning and permanence in works of fine craftsmanship or the formation of real human bonds. The brilliance of Culture's Vanities is its irrevocable critique of the contemporary use of the culture concept-irrevocable because careful readers will never again encounter culture's misuse without hearing Steigerwald's sage corrective. A true note ringing out above the din, Steigerwald's study is both welcome and refreshing. We can only hope that the world has not lost itself so much to its vanities as to fail to acknowledge this study for the remarkable intellectual achievement and call to conscience it is. -- Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, professor of history, Syracuse University The author provides a well-written, insightful survey of workplace alienation and the loss of craft; the ironies of identity claims, multiculturalism, and 'managed diversity;' and the crisis of the black intellectual, with special attention to Cornel West. Stiegerwald's insistence that analysis by grounded in attention to actual existing conditions continues the discussion among leftist scholars about the direction of critical inquiry. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- G.M. Massey, University of Wyoming * CHOICE *