Announcing a new book, coming soon.
We are excited to announce a new forthcoming book: Cleaning Amsterdam: Praxiography as Method, written by Annemarie Mol and Mandy de Wilde. The book will be published later this year, in both an English and a Dutch version. The title of the latter is Amsterdam Schoonmaken: Over Praxiografie als Methode.
Cleaning Amsterdam is about the good in everyday practices: about what counts as good here and there; about how situations come to be evaluated as good or not good; about the ways in which variants of the good are incorporated in ways of doing things; about attempts to encourage good behaviour; and about controlling versus caring ways of realising the good. The book does not discuss these issues in general, but through examples. Those examples focus on a specific kind of good, namely cleanliness; in a particular setting, the public spaces of the city of Amsterdam (with an occasional detour).
Throughout the book, a series of asides examine practicalities to do with researching the good, under the heading ‘method’. In Cleaning Amsterdam method is not caught in rules, the authors refrain from telling readers how to proceed when doing research. Instead, they offer astute reflections and challenge readers to always think for themselves.
Chapters
1. Researching the good
2. Different varieties of clean and dirty
3. The dance between objective and subjective judgements
4. Cleaning: About conflicting practices
5. Keeping the city clean: Good behaviour and appropriate things
6. Control or care? Clean living together with plants and animals
7. A few notes to end with