Keeping Good Time

Avery Gordon, Angela Davis

Avery Gordon's first book, Ghostly Matters, was widely acclaimed as a work of striking sociological imagination and social theory. Keeping Good Time, her much anticipated second book, brings together essays by Gordon that were 'written to be read aloud'. Her eloquent voice in this book further establishes her place among literary sociological writers of a new generation. Keeping Good Time explores the meaning of being a politically engaged scholar during deeply troubled times. The book's essays consider the role of education during war time, the costs of imprisonment and repression, the power of utopianism in an age of globalization, the complexities of gendered racism, the politics of culture, and the practice of theory as it emerges from everyday life.

Introduction Keeping Good Time; Part I Education During Wartime; Chapter 1 Wartime Research: The Front Lines; Chapter 2 War Machines and Washing Machines; Chapter 3 On Education During Wartime; Chapter 4 War on Iraq?; Part II Face Up to What's Killing You; Chapter 5 Going Inside: The Prison Research Visit; Chapter 6 We the People; Chapter 7 Globalism and the Prison Industrial Complex: An Interview with Angela Davis; Chapter 8 "Face Up to What's Killing You": Fear and the Prison Industrial Complex; Chapter 9 A Love Story; Part III Making a Difference; Chapter 10 Alternative Graduation; Chapter 11 Sociology After Reconstruction; Chapter 12 Twenty-Two Theses on Social Constructionism; Chapter 13 Theory and Justice; Chapter 14 Making a Difference: Women's Studies in the Academy; Chapter 15 Theses on Teaching Marx; Chapter 16 Some Thoughts on the Utopian; Chapter 17 An Anthropology of Marxism; Part IV No Alibis; Chapter 18 State of the Art; Chapter 19 Will this Election Matter?; Chapter 20 Corporate Multiculturalism; Chapter 21 More on Positive and Negative Images: The Case of Kara Walker, Artist; Chapter 22 The Sledgehammer and the Dagger: A Conversation Between Leon Golub and Avery Gordon; Chapter 23 Wish Upon a Star; Chapter 24 "No Alibis": A Community Radio Collaboration; Chapter 25 Something More Powerful Than Skepticism;