Andrew Ross
Encyclopedia
Andrew Ross is currently a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University
. A writer for Artforum
, The Nation
and The Village Voice
, he is also the author and/or editor of numerous books. Much of his writing focuses on labor, the urban environment, and the organization of work, from the Western world of business
and high-technology to conditions of offshore labor in the Global South. Making use of social theory as well as ethnography, his writing questions the human and environmental cost of economic growth
, has an activist
, alternative globalization approach, and emphasizes principles of sustainability.
in 1978, he worked in the North Sea oil
fields. His graduate studies were undertaken at the University of Kent at Canterbury
, Indiana University
, and the University of California, Berkeley
. He joined the faculty at Princeton University
in 1985, and left in 1993 to become Director of the Graduate Program in American Studies at NYU. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship
in 2001-2. His doctoral dissertation, about modern American poetry, was published as The Failure of Modernism in 1986. Several subsequent books (No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture; Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits; and The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society) established his reputation as one of the leading practitioners of cultural studies, particularly in the fields of popular culture, ecology, and the history of technology.
, and wrote The Celebration Chronicles, based on his participant observation of the town's residents, the first ethnography of a New Urbanist community.
Two further books were based on field work with workers: No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs, about employees in Internet companies during the New Economy boom and bust, and Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade, about skilled Chinese employees of foreign firms in Shanghai and other Yangtze Delta cities. The latter book, written on the ground in China, is a frank alternative to Thomas Friedman
's pro-outsourcing views on corporate globalization. In 2009, Ross published Nice Work if You Can Get it: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, an analysis of changing patterns in the nature of creative work and contingent employment. In several of his books, Ross has pioneered a method he calls Scholarly Reporting, which is a blend of ethnography and investigative journalism.
In Richard Posner's 2003 study, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Ross was ranked among the top 100 public intellectuals in the U.S. From 1986 to 2000, Ross served on the editorial collective of Duke University
's Social Text
journal, which has published some of the most influential essays in social and cultural analysis. In 1996 he was one of the journal's editors who published a paper by Alan Sokal
professing to show connections between physics
and post-modern theory, and which was later revealed by Sokal to be a hoax meant to expose the low academic standards of "post-modernism" (see Sokal affair
).
His most recent book Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, draws on his fieldwork in Phoenix, Arizona. Focusing on areas such as water supply, metropolitan growth, renewable energy, downtown revitalization, immigration policy, and patterns of pollution, the book argues that urban managers have to base policy on combating environmental injustices in order to avoid replicating the condition of "eco-apartheid" that prevails in Phoenix and other major urban areas.
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. A writer for Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, he is also the author and/or editor of numerous books. Much of his writing focuses on labor, the urban environment, and the organization of work, from the Western world of business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
and high-technology to conditions of offshore labor in the Global South. Making use of social theory as well as ethnography, his writing questions the human and environmental cost of economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
, has an activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
, alternative globalization approach, and emphasizes principles of sustainability.
Life
Ross was born and educated in the lowlands of Scotland. After graduating from the University of AberdeenUniversity of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
in 1978, he worked in the North Sea oil
North Sea oil
North Sea oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons, comprising liquid oil and natural gas, produced from oil reservoirs beneath the North Sea.In the oil industry, the term "North Sea" often includes areas such as the Norwegian Sea and the area known as "West of Shetland", "the Atlantic Frontier" or "the...
fields. His graduate studies were undertaken at the University of Kent at Canterbury
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
, Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
, and the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He joined the faculty at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1985, and left in 1993 to become Director of the Graduate Program in American Studies at NYU. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 2001-2. His doctoral dissertation, about modern American poetry, was published as The Failure of Modernism in 1986. Several subsequent books (No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture; Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits; and The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society) established his reputation as one of the leading practitioners of cultural studies, particularly in the fields of popular culture, ecology, and the history of technology.
Writer
Increasingly, his writing focused on urban sociology, labor, and the organization of work. A scholar and activist associated with the anti-sweatshop movement, he published No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers in 1998 and Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor in 2002. In 1997, he took up residence for a year in Disney's new town of Celebration, FloridaCelebration, Florida
Celebration is a census-designated place and a master-planned community in Osceola County, Florida, United States, located near Walt Disney World Resort and originally developed by The Walt Disney Company...
, and wrote The Celebration Chronicles, based on his participant observation of the town's residents, the first ethnography of a New Urbanist community.
Two further books were based on field work with workers: No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs, about employees in Internet companies during the New Economy boom and bust, and Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade, about skilled Chinese employees of foreign firms in Shanghai and other Yangtze Delta cities. The latter book, written on the ground in China, is a frank alternative to Thomas Friedman
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Lauren Friedman is an American journalist, columnist and author. He writes a twice-weekly column for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs including global trade, the Middle East, and environmental issues and has won the Pulitzer Prize three times.-Personal...
's pro-outsourcing views on corporate globalization. In 2009, Ross published Nice Work if You Can Get it: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, an analysis of changing patterns in the nature of creative work and contingent employment. In several of his books, Ross has pioneered a method he calls Scholarly Reporting, which is a blend of ethnography and investigative journalism.
In Richard Posner's 2003 study, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Ross was ranked among the top 100 public intellectuals in the U.S. From 1986 to 2000, Ross served on the editorial collective of Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
's Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
journal, which has published some of the most influential essays in social and cultural analysis. In 1996 he was one of the journal's editors who published a paper by Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
professing to show connections between physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and post-modern theory, and which was later revealed by Sokal to be a hoax meant to expose the low academic standards of "post-modernism" (see Sokal affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
).
Late years
He has been active in the academic labor movement since the late 1990s, both in the national AAUP, and at NYU as a vocal supporter of the graduate student union, and as a founding member of Faculty Democracy. In 2007, his co-edited volume, The University Against Itself, documented and analyzed the long strike at NYU in 2005 by GSOC-UAW (The Graduate Student Organizing Committee).His most recent book Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, draws on his fieldwork in Phoenix, Arizona. Focusing on areas such as water supply, metropolitan growth, renewable energy, downtown revitalization, immigration policy, and patterns of pollution, the book argues that urban managers have to base policy on combating environmental injustices in order to avoid replicating the condition of "eco-apartheid" that prevails in Phoenix and other major urban areas.
External links
- Interview with Andrew Ross about Celebration, Florida and the Disney Corporation on NPR Radio, August 10th, 1999.
- Book TV, "Nice Work if you Can Get It." May 13, 2009.
- Interview with Andrew Ross about Fast Boat to China on April 17, 2006 in the WFMU (New Jersey) Radio Archives
- Lovink, Geert. "Organic Intellectual Work: Interview with Andrew Ross," nettime, July 11, 2007.
- Williams, Jeffrey J. "Andrew Ross's Second Act: The cultural-studies theorist becomes a scholarly reporter of work and labor," The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 31, 2009.
- Ross, Andrew. "Life and Labor in the Era of Climate Justice," talk at Universita’ di Bologna, November 25, 2010. Referenced December 7, 2010.