​1) Consumption and Neoliberal Lives

(Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson and Mark Hudson)

 

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=consumption--9781509535378

 

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526110213/

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2) The American Gene:

(Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson and Gregory Chernomas)

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http://www.routledge.com/9781032945989

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Brief Intro:

Donald Trump Wants to Make Eugenics Great Again. Let’s Not (Scientific American)

“…I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” Donald Trump

 

Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherited flaws of ability and character used to explain a remarkably wide variety of inequalities. 

 

Providing an important a critique of that biodeterminist history and how the Human Genome Project has inspired some contemporary scientists and economists to follow a similar path of ascribing socioeconomic outcomes to genetic inheritance, The American Gene details new research that suggests that the social and economic environment can affect how genes express themselves in specific human traits and social outcomes. Using the three cases of the American white working class, Black Americans and American women, the authors demonstrate that relying on nature as an explanation is seriously flawed – showing that the socioeconomic inheritance created by the conditions in which these populations worked and lived offer a far better explanation than nature for the stratified results. 

 

The particular group of supposed inferiors has changed over the years. For Malthus, it was the working class. For Galton and the Social Darwinists it was both poor whites and inferior “races.” For Murray it was African Americans. For Plomin it was the recipients of unfortunate genetics. Similarly, the science used to justify these natural inequalities has also changed with the times. Malthus used little more than crude observation to justify the lack of moral fibre among the lower classes. Galton employed, indeed pioneered, the fledgling techniques of statistical analysis. Murray employed the more advanced statistical techniques of the day, which are currently combined with the availability of genetic data by researchers like Reich and Plomin.

 

However, what all these theories have in common is a belief in a causal relationship that runs from natural inheritance to complex traits to economic outcomes. There is an equally long tradition of scholarship, to which we clearly subscribe, that argues that this is a fundamentally flawed causal relationship. The cause of problematic complex traits, from poor health to worse educational achievement to lower incomes, stems from the structural inequality in the U.S. political economy.

 

This book is the story of an American history rife with unnecessary misery and the waste of human potential, along with the liberating effect of understanding the degree to which its citizens are the product of social inheritance and the potential power of a nurturing economy and society that equality promises.

 

 

 

 

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