Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

Review – Endangered Languages

Posted April 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Endangered Languages

Endangered Languages

by Evangelia Adamou

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 264
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times.

58% of the world’s languages—or, approximately 4,000 languages—are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In Endangered Languages, Evangelia Adamou, a specialist of endangered languages and a learner of her own community language, Nashta, offers a sobering look at language endangerment and what is truly lost when a language disappears from usage.

Combining recent advances from the Western scientific tradition—from the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language attrition, population genetics, and natural language processing—and insights from Indigenous epistemology, theory, and ethics, Adamou examines a wealth of issues surrounding endangered languages. She discusses where endangered languages are found, including how they are faring in a digital world, why these languages are no longer used, and how communities can reclaim languages and keep them strong. Adamou also explains the impact of language continuity on community and individual health and well-being, the importance of language transmission in cultural transmission, and why language rights are essentially human rights.

Drawing on varied examples from the Wampanoag Nation to Wales, Endangered Languages offers a powerful reminder of the crucial role every language has in the vitality and well-being of individuals, communities, and our world.

Endangered Languages, by Evangelia Adamou, is part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, so it’s essentially an introduction, a bit of a primer on what it means for a language to be endangered, what we might do about it, etc. As a Welsh person (who doesn’t speak Welsh), obviously I have a bit of a vested interest here: Welsh is the least endangered of the Celtic languages, but it isn’t for lack of trying on the part of our English rulers (see also: the Welsh Not,Ā Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, etc).

Welsh is a bit too successful for Adamou to spend much time on here, despite all that, though I think the revival efforts probably deserved a bit of a mention alongside the revival efforts for Breton, Cornish and Irish, including stuff like the Welsh Language Acts. To compare how Welsh is doing compared to other more endangered languages is pretty instructive — but there’s a limited amount of space in any one book, of course.

In the end, discussing endangered languages and how to protect them is surprisingly similar to discussing conservation, though of course it’s best not to stretch the similarity too far. I was interested to read about the fact that languages should be considered “dormant” rather than “extinct” now: I don’t know if I think that’s a nice way to look at it, or perhaps one which softens the tragedy of losing all native speakers of a language a little too much.

Anyway, an interesting introduction.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Cyborg

Posted October 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Cyborg

Cyborg

by Laura Forlano, Danya Glabau

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 222
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Forlano and Glabau offer critical cyborg literacy as a way of thinking through questions about the relationship between humanity and technology in areas such as engineering and computing, art and design, and health care and medicine, as well as the social sciences and humanities. Cyborg examines whether modern technologies make us all cyborgs — if we consider, for instance, the fact that we use daily technologies at work, have technologies embedded into our bodies in health care applications, or use technology to critically explore possibilities as artists, designers, activists, and creators. Lastly, Cyborg offers perspectives from critical race, feminist, and disability thinkers to help chart a path forward for cyborg theory in the twenty-first century.

This introduction to cyborg theory provides a critical vantage point for analyzing the claims around emerging technologies like automation, robots, and AI. Cyborg analyzes and reframes popular and scholarly conversations about cyborgs from the perspective of feminist cyborg theory. Drawing on their combined decades of training, teaching, and research in the social sciences, design, and engineering education, Laura Forlano and Danya Glabau introduce an approach called critical cyborg literacy. Critical cyborg literacy foregrounds power dynamics and pays attention to the ways that social and cultural factors such as gender, race, and disability shape how technology is imagined, developed, used, and resisted.

A concise introduction to cyborg theory that examines the way in which technology is situated, political, and embodied.

Danya Glabau and Laura Forlano’sĀ Cyborg is not really about the sci-fi concept of being a cyborg. It’s a bit more down-to-earth and in the present, looking at the roles of low-paid workers and the risk of being replaced by (or at least forced to work with machines), and also the situation that people with disabilities are in with using prosthetics, reliant on technology that could suddenly stop working, etc. It’s an accessible introduction to “cyborg theory”, though it feels like reading very academic literary theory in some of the language choices, which makes it a tad less accessible. (Although I have my MA, I am not a great fan of reading literary theory.)

It does briefly touch on cyborgs in fiction, mentioning Seven of Nine but nothing more up to date, and basically dismissing Seven of Nine as not being really useful to discuss cyborg theory. I think it might behoove them to go a bit further than Star Trek: Voyager, which finished over a decade ago at this point. Characters like Ann Leckie’s Breq and Martha Wells’ Murderbot are relevant, I think, and have a lot to engage with even if you agree that Seven of Nine isn’t a worthwhile locus for discussion about the concept of cyborgs. There’s a lot of very recent fiction with very thoughtful things to say about the line between humans and machines, and when you know that, it feels a bit disingenuous to go no further than Seven of Nine.

That said, also entirely possible that they don’t really know anything about modern SF writing, and seriously think that Seven of Nine is where it’s at. A lot of people don’t consider SF “serious enough”. So I’m not saying it’s necessarily deliberate as an omission (nor that they should definitely have looked at Murderbot and Breq in particular). It’s just telling when someone uses such an out of date reference point and acts like that says something important.

That all sounds pretty critical, but I did find this interesting, slim though it is.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Universal Basic Income

Posted September 27, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income

by Karl Widerquist

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 272
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

An accessible introduction to the simple (yet radical) premise that a small cash income, sufficient for basic needs, ought to be provided regularly and unconditionally to every citizen.

The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?

Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago through the two waves of support it received in the twentieth century to the third and largest wave of support it is experiencing now. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the world—making this volume an especially timely and necessary read.

Universal Basic IncomeĀ is part of a series from the MIT press, the “Essential Knowledge Series”, and this installment is by Karl Widerquist. The point of it is to act as a primer on the subject of Universal Basic Income (UBI), and be a bit of an advocate for it, based on what we know about similar programmes and test cases.

The evidence is (or was at the time of posting) not totally straightforward, because the true test of a UBI would be universality and unconditionality, and most trials have not been universal even within a small area, and may have contained conditions. Widerquist makes a good argument that the results we see are indicative of success, though, and that some aspects of the effects of a UBI might beĀ underreported in such a small study (while acknowledging that some are probably overreported).

There are quite a few acronyms flying around which I didn’t always find easy to remember, but mostly it’s a fairly straightforward explanation and manifesto. However, there were a few editing booboos, including an entire paragraph being repeated verbatim in a list, which was a bit annoying.

Rating: 3/5

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