In a world increasingly beset by ethnocultural conflicts, the pursuit of cultural rights has taken on new urgency. Claims for cultural justice affect economic distribution as much as they do address demands for recognition from marginalized groups. It is this vital connection between economic life and cultural expression that Andrew Ross, one of our preeminent social critics, explores in Real Love. From the consequences of cyberspace for work and play to the uses and abuses of genetics in the O.J. trial, from world scarcity to world music, Ross interrogates the cultural forms through which economic forces take their daily toll upon our labor, communities, and environment. In its relentless pursuit of cultural justice - an ideal comprised, in part, of doing justice to culture, pursuing justice through cultural means, and seeking justice for cultural claims - Real Love continues and expands the main concern of Ross's thought, namely the demonstration that, through rigorous research, the cultural critic can elucidate the complexity of everyday life. But even more than in his earlier work, Ross here examines the effects of debates about race, technology, ecology, and the arts on social and legal change. In particular, he focuses on how demands for certain forms of cultural justice often go hand in hand with injustices of other sorts and at other levels of social existence. Through close attention to the concrete details of daily life, strong argumentation, and a marvelous sense of the anecdotal, Ross shows why cultural politics are a real and inescapable part of any advocacy for social change.
Andrew Ross is Professor of American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including No-Collar, Fast Boat to China, No Respect, Strange Weather, and, from NYU Press, Anti-Americanism and Real Love.
"The collection of essays, speeches, pamphlets and photographs created by Young Lords members, primarily in New York and on the East Coast, includes the organization's 13-point platform and rules of discipline. The book covers the group's activism in education, health care, police injustice and gender equality."-, "The North Texan Alumni Magazine" "This definitive sourcebook (sic) compiled by Enck-Wanzer, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject, is a "tour de force". He provides a helpful and brief chronicle of the evolution of the Young Lords in his introduction and the foreword by Morales and Oliver is an inspiring personal retrospective... This reader brings together an impressive collection of primary source materials that let the Young Lords speak for themselves and transport the reader to another time and place."-National Institute for Latino Policy, Book Notes, "Offers a long-awaited introduction to the ideals and actions of this vibrant revolutionary organization. In so doing it opens a window on to the life of an entire community, and on a unique era of radical movement history. This carefully assembled collection promises to be "the" documentary sourcebook on the Young Lords Party for years to come." -Juan Flores, New York University
