The Love of Books in the UK. Remediation and attachment in the digital age.

Sociology Seminar: 29th October 2024
Speaker: Dr María Angélica Thumala Olave, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Edinburgh
Chair: Professor Patrick Baert, Professor of Social Theory, University of Cambridge
Abstract: The humanistic stance towards print and the sacralisation of the codex have been critiqued by media and book historians as normative, nostalgic, elitist and oppressive. In spite of the historical variations in its forms and uses, the codex defines how present-day readers conceive of and sensually apprehend books. The codex is the template with which e-books are evaluated by both print and digital readers. Just as the construction of the e-book emulates the print book, the aesthetic experience of e-books is closely tied to the affordances of the codex.
Using interviews and Mass Observation material Dr Thumala will consider the kinds of attachment that emerge between readers and the reading they do on electronic devices. She will develop a cultural sociology of reading which builds on theories of attachment and iconicity to interpret the twofold response to e-books among committed book lovers of a range of ages and backgrounds: the strengthening of attachment to reading as a practice and the rejection of e-books’ material features. One of the arguments is that the preference for print is not the nostalgic reaffirmation of print’s aura but the outcome of the subjective experience of print books’ iconic power.
María Angélica Thumala Olave is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research brings together the sociology of religion, the sociology of the self and cultural sociology, to interpret accounts of self and the justification of action in a global perspective. She is the author of the edited volume The cultural sociology of reading. The meanings of reading and books across the world. (2022, Palgrave Macmillan Cultural Sociology Series) and is writing a monograph entitled The Love of Books. Attachment to a changing cultural object.