Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Edgerton, David. 2007. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

The essence of David Edgerton’s treatise is how “…our future-oriented rhetoric has underestimated the past, and overestimated the power of the present” (Edgerton 2007, 206). The book is full of examples where later technology proves either less effective or more detrimental than earlier versions. He pulls examples from war, economics, national relations, and other fields of technological implementation. He compares outcomes in such areas as the effects of time, production requirements, and maintenance needs.

Edgerton also examines the methods of invention. Like many scholars, he rejects the image of the lone scientist or engineer in a basement or garage toiling away until one day, eureka!, some grand new thing emerges. In reality, invention is a group effort in some social setting. Even the likes of Edison, Jobs, and Gates had colluders and predecessors they gained insights and direct help from. The flood of tech that evolves from ‘break through discoveries’ may bring into question if they make life better or not. For example, are we better off with 24/7 connectivity? Are we more informed through the social media of our day than our parents were reading newspapers or watching the evening news? For those of us who have to go to work at a specific place, has life improved in our daily commutes on an ever more congested roadway? With our new approach to remote work and its loss of work-related in-person community, are we not now feeling more isolated?

There are movements for a return to old tech. Things we think of as modern have been around for a long time. We certainly put more value on some things like wood furniture that are individually created by a craftsman than we do on the same thing mass produced. By putting more value on it, I mean we pay more for it. Food seems to taste better when it’s locally provided straight from the farm as opposed to frozen and shipped in from a distance. The caution is to judge carefully the right tool for the job. For example, do we really have to get a new phone every time there is an update? How many landfills are now burgeoning with the hazardous materials included with the millions of perfectly functioning discarded phones? We should all consider when simpler and older is better, or at least good enough.
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Bibliography
​Martin, John Levi. 2017. Thinking Through Methods: A Social Science Primer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago.
 
Review by Michael Beach

As the name implies, this is a methodology work. Specifically, John Levi Martin explores how social science is conducted from a practical ‘how to’ sense. In the empirical sciences one might reduce variables and examine outcomes. In sociology the study subjects are human beings in a given social setting. The variables are countless. One cannot isolate the subject, people, from their natural environment. If one does attempt to remove the subject from normal life by say bringing them to a formal location like a university, the information would likely be less true.

Sociology then is a combination of examining and interviewing people, then looking for patterns. Martin spends a considerable amount of space looking at question formulation and interview arrangement to get as close to truth as possible as it relates to whatever one is attempting to learn something about through research. He notes the ethics of studying people, and procedures to ensure both the subjects are protected while still getting useful information. Martin also approaches how to glean information from all sorts of documents, from official publications such as laws, to personal official information such as tax returns, to private personal information such as journals. He then walks the reader through ways of coding information within observations, interviews, and documents to see patterns that relate to the research topic at hand.

The book is clearly aimed at research specialists in the field of Sociology. Despite all the help, Martin admits that there is a tension between decided what to research originally, and how that aim changes as one gathers information. The researcher has to find ways to be careful to not approach a study with preconceived ends in mind, and at the same time not to allow data to take them too far away from a focused finding. 
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Bibliography
​Brenton, Tony, ed. 2017. Was Revolution Inevitable?: Turning Points of the Russian Revolution. London and New York: Oxford University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
This is an interesting volume. Each chapter has a different author. Each proposes a counter-factual ‘what if’ concerning pivotal moments in the history of the Russian revolution of the early 20th century. The individual authors are each historians whose academic scholarship have concentrated on Russia and the rise of the Soviet in particular.

Each of the cases are more or less persuasive. I think the strongest case was made by Orlando Figes in his chapter titled, “The ‘Harmless Drunk’: Lenin and the October Insurrection”. As the Tsarist hold was slipping and several parties were vying for power, it was by no means a given that the Bolsheviks would eventually take control of Russia. Lenin was living in exile in Germany for a number of years. As the revolution became stronger and more violent, he went back and forth between the two countries a number of times. In general, when the Red army gained ground he would come to Russia. When things seem to go the other way he fled back to Germany, or at least closer to it. Gains by the Red army did not equate to gains by the Bolsheviks, but they were at least sympathetic causes. As the royal household was falling and violence increased, Lenin entered Russia for the last time, but did so in cognito. He disguised himself as a drunk and meandered through the crowds until he could get to a safe house in the capital. Finges speculates what might have happened if any of the city police or White army guards had recognized him. They would surely have put him in jail. Though the Tsar would have fell out of power, both his brother and his son were likely to have formed a new Duma and held some sort of election before the Bolshevik party forcibly seized control over all the revolutionary factions. Lenin coming out of hiding and encouraging his party to put down other opposing parties through force likely is what caused the Tsar’s brother, a popular war hero, to recant and then get murdered along with the rest of the Romanov family. Any political leaders who originally were open to forming a new government quickly ceded when Lenin’s followers began to kill their political colleagues.

Personally, I’ve not explored this sort of historical approach before. In fact, Tony Brenton who authors one chapter and edits the volume, admits that most historians are loath to approach counter-factual musings. Each author acknowledges to what degree they believe their alternative may or may not have made any ultimate difference. Each gives reasons not just for how things might have changed, but also how it was just as likely, or even more so, that outcomes would have been no different.  My look at Russian history and politics is at a very amateur level. I’ve read a book or two and visited Siberia twice for work reasons many years ago. These arguments by scholars imminently more qualified to document and speculate make this small part of human history jump out for me.

Bibliography
Howe, Joshua P. 2014. Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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There are two curves that give reference to the title of this book. The first was developed by Charles David Keeling in 1958. This was his projection linking increased carbon dioxide levels measured in the atmosphere with increased temperatures globally. As the book notes, much of the science of what today is called climate change is connected in one way or another with that original dataset and its resulting graphical curve. Politically, being behind the curve in this sense relates to actions taken or deferred by various national and international organizations.

The other curve Joshua Howe is more focused on, is about the assumptions that are made within the scientific community. Essentially, many scientists find data such as that developed by Keeling, then share that data assuming it will speak for itself and everyone will recognize the need to act. This thinking is linear in that science ‘discovers’, society ‘accepts’ and technology ‘enables’ some sort of course correction. Instead what the science community finds is that unless the political discussion happens throughout, or even if it does, the data will seldom ‘speak for itself’. In fact, much of the data has been called into question by all sorts of communities, professional and societal. The fact that scientists must form consensus on issues such as global climate change brings pause to the non-scientific. To some, consensus means not all scientists, and it also means not proven. To those connected with science, consensus has always been a part of how facts are established.

In fact, Howe points out how this relationship within the science industry, and between science and the community at large, is a long held tension that has always existed. He argues that science as a community should accept a need for contextual social influence and communication to help ‘sell’ findings. Limiting findings to just the ‘facts’ of research data is not likely to get the sort of outcomes science advocates hope for. The controversies created by the case of the Keeling curve and climate change is a good example of how science and society as a whole need to find ways to co-produce information from the facts of data. Howe notes that in some ways the science community has come to learn this lesson, yet stumbles still happen. One need only look at recent controversies over COVID-19, shutdowns, masks, and vaccines to see how the tension still exists. 
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Bibliography
Fujii, Lee Ann. 2018. Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach. New York, London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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In the discipline of social science, the ability to conduct effective interviews of research subjects is a must. If any sort of validity can be given to research findings then some form of objective data extracted through interviews is one tool. Another is using data from interviews to help drive the direction of research. This book is a how-to from selecting research candidates, building relationships, and strategic approaches in the actual interviews, to how to interpret data.

In particular, the section of ferreting out data patterns I found particularly helpful. There are all sorts of ways to preset questions, but unless one is using a set survey tool, topics will present themselves that were not imagined ahead of time by either party in an interview. Applying an ethical approach to coding the unanticipated information is perhaps more important than information one is specifically seeking. Many a research project has changed course mid-stream as these kind of sociological interviews get conducted by researchers.

​At the end of the book there are four sample research approaches that were a part of real research projects. They are diverse. One is about a Rwandan prisoner, another is on a multi-generation resident of Maryland thought of as an ‘old timer’. The third example interview is of a clergyman in Northern Ireland who had lived through the sectarian violence with Britain. Finally, the attitudes of a sex worker attempting rehab in California wraps up the book, and the examples.