Geoff Gordon

@melancholyleftist.substack.com

153

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Critical, historically-oriented social scientist with interests in democratization, authoritarian regimes, development, state formation, and imperialism. UVA, LSE, New College of Florida alum

Posts Replies Media

My latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview is up! I spoke to Laura Robson about her book Human Capital, which examines how the desire to treat refugees as disposable migrant laborers has shaped the international refugee regime: newbooksnetwork.com/human-capital

Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023) - New Books Networknewbooksnetwork.com

All I have been able to think since the debate has been, why did anyone think that Biden was a good choice in the first place? I didn't buy any of the strategic arguments for nominating him in the first place. Ppl were like, "he'll just serve one term." And then what??? Nobody has any answers

My latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview has posted! I spoke to William Conroy about his recent articles on the necessity/contingency debate in racial capitalism research, spatializing social reproduction theory, and whether capitalism has an outside: newbooksnetwork.com/race-social-...

Race, Social Reproduction, and Capitalist Totality: A Conversation with William Conroy - New Books Networknewbooksnetwork.com

As a grad student I grew frustrated with trying to squeeze my comparative-historical research into the quasi-experimental straightjacket. Turns out I wasn't alone. I interviewed Damon Mayrl and Nick Wilson about their new edited volume After Positivism, which rethinks why and how to do CHA

Nicholas Hoover Wilson and Damon Mayrl, "After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology" (Columbia UP, 2024) - New Books Networknewbooksnetwork.com

So much state capacity research is about trying to find *the indicator* that measures *what the state really is (and absolutely nothing else).* This just strikes me as kind of silly now. Like, you don't encounter *just states* in the wild, you encounter complex social formations w/ porous boundaries

The biggest problem I have with the methods education that I received is how case and variable selection are portrayed as starting points, b/c you have to do a *ton* of research to decide on how to identify the boundaries of your cases, categorize them, and decide what you even have a case of

Conjunctures are just critical junctures for Marxists (or, critical junctures are just conjunctures for normies)

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Geoff Gordon

Thank you Chris for the shout-out. People often say that we must have nation-states because this is how the world is already organized, but *in fact* every state is ethnically mixed, and no state has complete control of their territory. The nation-state is an ideal, not a reality.

Very tiring to argue with people who think ethnostates are “the way the world works” given that in fact it doesn’t and attempts to realise them as an ideal invariably lead to to oppression of people who don’t fit. @pochoaespejo.bsky.social is very good on this, recommended.

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Geoff Gordon

Our (@derekcrim.bsky.social) book *The End of College Football*--a polemic against the exploitation and harm of the sport grounded in interviews with former players--is available to preorder on the @uncpress.bsky.social website for 30% off with code 01UNCP30. uncpress.org/book/9781469...

Some news. Our (@derekcrim.bsky.social and I) book *The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game* now has a cover and is available for preorder in all formats. Please do that. www.amazon.com/End-College-... @uncpress.bsky.social

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Geoff Gordon

ah yes, the special kind of cognitive impairment that only ever negatively affects your ability to remember to pay alimony. you know the one.

It's not that he made up a story about brain worms. It's that he made up a story about brain worms to argue cognitive impairment to avoid paying alimony to his former wife, who then committed suicide. www.mediaite.com/news/rfk-jr-...

RFK Jr. Claims a Worm Ate Part of His Brain and Then Diedwww.mediaite.com Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed in a 2012 deposition that medical scans revealed a "dead parasite" in his brain. The New York Times' Susanne Craig reported on Wednesda...

One thing that I struggle with when I write (especially if it's about something that has been marinating for a long time) is the hidden expectation that I will get everything down all at once. It leads to disappointment and self-judgment when that inevitably doesn't happen.

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Geoff Gordon

Reply to

Jay Ulfelder

So much talk of violent protests, but as I wade through 1,000s of news stories and social media posts, virtually all of the violence I'm seeing is directed at the people protesting against genocide and calling for Palestinian liberation.

I want to write Agnew's "The Territorial Trap" but focusing on comparative politics

It's so interesting to me that right-wing political ads for congressional campaigns in my area don't mention the Republican Party at all. In fact, in one ad Rand Paul (endorsing a candidate in this district) starts by saying "both parties are attacking America."

"That guy knows how to FIRE A GUN, he should be in CONGRESS" -- People in a normal, healthy democracy

Geographers (esp urban geographers) are having methodological conversations about how to do comparative social science that political scientists and sociologists should really be paying attention to. Lots of interesting proposals for how to do comparison without the illusion of experimental control

The major fault line in comparative social science is between people who think States and Social Revolutions is bad because it tries too hard to be positivist(/quasi-experimental), and people who think it is bad because it's not positivist enough

Sociologists and political scientists can learn a lot from geographers about how to do comparative research in a way that challenges established theories and categories. Jennifer Robinson's "Comparative Urbanism" synthesizes a range of perspectives to generate a compelling approach to comparatison

I really want to write a review essay about some recent books in sociology, political science, and geography that radically rethink how to do comparative social science. I don't know what venue would be interested in such an article from a nobody like me though. Any thoughts?

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Geoff Gordon

We're all becoming desensitized. This is how it happens. The former US president is ***threatening another coup if he loses and it's not even news***.

Buried down in the “updates” like we’re learning he’s in Iowa this week

I also keep wondering why I still give a shit considering that I've given up on having an academic career. It's because I had to figure all of this shit out for myself because the experimental straightjacket that I was forced into was a poor fit for the questions I wanted to explore.

Rethinking Comparison (Simmons and Smith, eds. -- polisci) After Positivism (Mayrl and Wilson eds. -- soc) Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies (Robinson -- geo) A lot of interesting overlaps and tensions between books that don't explicitly speak to each other

I feel like the 1984-esque giant poster that says "Say Hello, Say Yes, Say Thank You" in the stairwell leading to the employees' lounge at the store that I work at would have made the perfect cover art for The Double Shift

As somebody who is working in retail while looking for a white-collar job, @jasonread.bsky.social's The Double Shift really spoke to me. I see the affective composition of labor everywhere! I can feel myself being interpellated when I'm being 'trained' at work or cruising LinkedIn for job openings

Somebody needs to do a digital ethnography of the affective composition of abstract labor on LinkedIn. Everybody encourages you to be authentic, as long as you're authentically entrepreneurial, 'flexible,' and dedicated to making yourself the best all-purpose commodity you can be. Super alienating.

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Geoff Gordon

Good Lord what a horror story. The guy whose identity he stole ended up, amongst many other things, getting imprisoned and also involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for continuing to (truthfully) claim who he was.

Former UI Hospital employee had been using fake identity for 35 yearswww.thegazette.com A former University of Iowa Hospital employee pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he had been living under another man’s identity since 1988, causing the other man to be falsely imprisoned for ident...

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Geoff Gordon

Reply to

ApocalypticaNow

yuuup. i think you can make a strong case the actual boomer-vintage of hippies (as opposed to like, "hippies" meaning anything to the left of barack obama to the DC people) were overall a reactionary movement.

Maroon 5, "She Will Be Loved" Bro does not have the pipes for that kind of song. And the passive voice drives me a little crazy. She will be loved by whom??

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Geoff Gordon

Can’t believe they let someone drive their Cybertruck right into the newsroom

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Geoff Gordon