Geoff Gordon

Why would I want to be my own boss? Bosses suck.

Apologies for my chihuahua's contributions to the program!

My first podcast interview of 2025 is available now: I spoke to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025). Mark has been a pioneer of critical research on policing for decades, so it was an honor to interview him newbooksnetwork.com/pacification

It's like the national Democratic Party is now the Florida Democratic Party. Half expect them to nominate Charlie Crist next time around. Or Liz Cheney. That'll show 'em.

But I've already made it so much farther than somebody with my background should have. My inner critic has it exactly backwards: statistically, I am an overachiever, even if it may not look like it from the outside, with no knowledge of my life story.

I'm continuing to work on myself. I'm not where I want to be career-wise (to put it mildly), and I want to try to publish something to get my ideas out there. To achieve these goals I need to tackle some maladaptive cognitive tendencies and behavioral patterns that I've developed over the years.

So yes, I have self-sabotaging tendencies and maladaptive coping strategies. How could I not? But I've made huge progress in losing weight, kicking alcohol, bringing my blood pressure and cholesterol down to 'normal' levels, and taking fitness and nutrition seriously in the last few years.

...had serious mental health problems (borderline personality disorder). No statistical model would ever predict that I would have a college degree (much less a PhD), am able to hold down a full-time job, am in a very healthy marriage, and am sober.

My inner critic's biggest theme is that I'm an underachiever. The fact that I self-sabotaged my way out of academia certainly feeds this narrative, but it goes back a lot farther, to when I struggled in school despite being the 'smart' kid.

But I'm the child of two alcoholics, one of whom...

Breathtakingly bad take. Unfortunately the lesson that most people in the foreign policy bubble learned from the Iraq War was 'those tribalistic fanatical Arabs aren't ready for democracy,' as if that's what the US actually tried to establish there.

My latest NBN interview is up: I spoke to the political theorist Begum Adalet about three recent articles that she has written about infrastructure, racialization, and the politics of development newbooksnetwork.com/infrastructu... We spoke about how the green revolution shaped racial formation...

Cool, looking forward to reading it!

Finally, we spoke about the continuities in material practices and discourses of development between settler and overseas colonies in US history. You can find the episode on Spotify and elsewhere under New Books in Critical Theory. You can also find links to the articles in the link above.

...in Turkey. We also spoke about conceiving of anti-colonialism as a multi-scalar endeavor involving more than just formal sovereignty, for example including reconstruction of the built environment (at the urban level) and freedom from colonial codes of behavior and dress at the scale of the body.

My latest NBN interview is up: I spoke to the political theorist Begum Adalet about three recent articles that she has written about infrastructure, racialization, and the politics of development newbooksnetwork.com/infrastructu... We spoke about how the green revolution shaped racial formation...

I really enjoyed this interview, and look forward to reading the book. Gender needs to be at the center of conversations about nation-building: newbooksnetwork.com/the-states-s...

Feeling good after a solid writing session. May you all tell your inner critics to stfu!

It's LIVE: Political Sociology has its first Starter Pack! Follow us all here: go.bsky.app/QaLr2JG

We spoke about how narratives that portray the rise of finance as a response to (or cause of) the decline of manufacturing overlook the constitutive interconnnections between finance, production, circulation, and consumption. Financialization narratives risk truncating the critique of capitalism.

My latest NBN interview is now available: I spoke to Nick Bernards about his new book Fictions of Financialization (Pluto): newbooksnetwork.com/fictions-of-... The interview is also available on Spotify and other platforms under the New Books in Critical Theory heading

*I'm trying...and struggling...to navigate post-academic life

*I have a couple of writing projects that I am struggling to bring to fruition

*beyond nerd stuff, I like European soccer, NBA, spy and mystery novels (esp historical and/or international), and pretending I don't watch too much tv

I've got some new followers, and picked up some random people before this, so a quick intro

*I have a PhD in polisci (comparative) and wrote a diss on Turkey

*I'm interested in Marxism, state space, security, imperialism

*I'm a podcast host for the New Books Network

We spoke about how the focus on the growth of the financial sector leads to a truncated and politically limited critique of contemporary capitalism. The problem with finance is that it makes more capitalism possible, not that 'financialized' capitalism is somehow worse than what came before it.

Fictions of Financialization For decades, many people on the left have decried the finance sector as the main culprit for the toxic effects of capitalism. Financialization is commonly in...

Just had a great chat with Nick Bernards about his new book Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism (Pluto) for the New Books Network. www.plutobooks.com/978074534889... The interview should be available in a few days

Sounds really interesting, can't wait to read it!

"Are you fucking serious???" -- me at each new appointment that Trump announces

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Has anyone in psychology written about how attachment styles affect advisor relationships in higher ed? My relationship with my first advisor was definitely a classic case of anxious style (me) and avoidant style (them)...and it was not a good combination at all. Suspect it's a common dynamic.

Opportunity economy was horrible messaging. That kind of shit might have worked during the 90s but felt pretty out of touch for 2024.

Who do I vote for if I want to make all MLMs illegal? Amway and crypto, gone