Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays

engaging, neither bogging down in methodological or theoretical exegesis. That said, it is an approach to case selection that suggests convenience more than rigor. The upshot is that central concepts like ‘‘wisdom,’’ ‘‘knowledge,’’ and ‘‘truth’’ are used more or less interchangeably, skimming past how these ideas may share a root ancestor but branch into distinct species. While chapters on Linnaeus and ultra-clean labs are clearly focused on the coordinated production of truth, other chapters blur the evaluative criterion of ‘‘truth’’ with experiential phenomena. The chapters on Delphi and spiritual pilgrimage, and the example of artisanal mezcal production in the book’s ‘‘Coda,’’ all examine ways that places cultivate a sense of authenticity and psychic fulfillment, but not truth, per se. While the different place-based outputs across the chapters certainly share a family resemblance, it is not always clear that they are about the same process or phenomenon. All the spots that Gieryn examined are in the business of cultivating belief. But maybe ‘‘belief-spots’’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Such quibbles aside, Gieryn’s explicit theoretical ambitions are modest here. He professes no desire to dig deep into philosophical speculation about the nature of truth and wisdom. Instead, the goal is to nudge constructivists beyond an overly subjectivist and too-flexible conception of the truth by showing how it can become sedimented into physical places, material objects, and the stories we tell about them: ‘‘there is something compelling about particular locations, the materials encrusted there, the stories told about the place—something insistent that ‘makes us believe’ . . . whether we happen to be looking for truth or not’’ (pp. 171– 72). As such, this book can and should have an appeal far beyond academic readers. I highly recommended it to my father-in-law, for example, a human with no background in the social sciences beyond a curious mind and a broad interest in well-written books by smart people. Although very different kinds of work, my hunch is that the same non-academic readers who find a book like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens so compelling will greatly enjoy Gieryn’s social scientific odyssey.