Lexington Books
Pages: 228
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-1395-1 • Hardback • February 2016 • $115.00 • (£88.00)
978-1-4985-1396-8 • eBook • February 2016 • $109.00 • (£84.00)
Joel Wendland is assistant professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Theory: Space, Signs, and Bodies
Chapter 2: Myth-busting: Writing Collective Identities in Space
Chapter 3: Cultural Literacy, Resources, and Social Spaces
Chapter 4: Space and the Overdetermination of “Choice”
Chapter 5: Oral Narratives and Constructing Spatial Selves
Conclusion: Cathedrals, Prisons, and Revolution
Bibliography
This is a wonderful and insightful study that instantaneously establishes Joel Wendland as a leader in the field.
— Gerald Horne, University of Houston
In The Collectivity of Life Joel Wendland offers a brilliant new take on the crucial American myth of individual self-fashioning. He demonstrates how attending to material spaces allows us to see that so-called self-made people always emerge from a complex, collective process embedded in particular places and communities. In contrast to the statistically disproven claims that any individual can make it, Wendland shows how social movement organizers like Septima Clark, Ella Baker and Cesar Chavez model leadership empowered not by personal ambition or exceptional skill, but by rich connection to the collective power of ordinary folks. It is that collective striving for social and economic justice, not emulation of the lucky few successes who pretend to have made it on their own, that will provide the antidote to the vicious income inequality afflicting the US and most of the world today.
— T.V. Reed, Washington State University