Real Love: In Pursuit of Cultural Justice

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.