![]() ![]() ![]() Into this mix comes the latest work by US poet and essayist Eula Biss, best-known on this side of the ocean for On Immunity (2015), her book-length essay on the science and mythology of vaccination, a text still strikingly relevant in today’s pandemic-afflicted world. Driven as we have been by an American version of capitalism and individualism, where work is glorified (but not necessarily valued, especially monetarily) and leisure-time a self-indulgence, these writers suggest we have gone far astray. McCallum’s book was published in the US in September, the same month as Harvard philosopher Michael J Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, which contends that the mantra of individual striving, the notion that just rewards will come to those who, as Leo Varadkar might say, “get up early in the morning”, has taken a hammer to the idea of the common good. ![]() The most recent addition to my reading pile is Worked Over, in which sociologist Jamie K McCallum argues that Americans, in particular, have lost control of their work time, and that a reduction in working hours should now be a core tenet of social justice. ![]()
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