"The Tolerance Generation"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Tolerance Generation: Growing Up Online in the Anti-Bullying Era by Sarah Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:

Draws directly on insights from teens to reframe our understanding of bullying in the age of social media and why anti-bullying campaigns have been unsuccessful in combating it.

Fitting in and standing out in high school is an eternal rite of passage for youth. Increasingly, these struggles to establish and maintain hierarchies are labeled under the umbrella of “bullying.” This form of conflict is considered such a significant problem that all fifty states have passed anti-bullying legislation, and many schools engage in prevention programs. Despite these efforts, bullying rates haven’t decreased. Why is that? Today’s teens face a unique challenge: social media.

In The Tolerance Generation, sociologist Sarah Miller explores how youth grapple with bullying in the digital age and the industry designed to prevent it. Based on two school years with students at a Northeastern high school, Miller calls “Township,” the book chronicles how adolescents navigate conflict in an increasingly digital society, all while their educators promote tolerance. Charting teens’ lives as they are affected not only by bullying, but also by sexting exposures, school shooting threats, and viral cancel culture, their stories illustrate the amplifying pressures social media places on youth and why bullying prevention efforts fail to help them. The school’s anti-bullying campaigns are engineered to address individual instances of explicit conflict, but not to change the culture that contributes to and constitutes bullying, nor to help students who are most likely to be targeted. Miller captures school practices that fail to address bullying as a systemic problem, while she shows how students’ online lives are inextricable from a culture of exclusion and harm.

However, by following teens on a variety of platforms, she also documents another realm, where adolescents develop their own bullying prevention strategies using the very tools adults blame for bullying. Here, youth harness digital culture to go beyond tolerance, using social media as a site for education, conflict resolution, and resistance. Ultimately, Miller establishes that to prevent bullying, schools must address the structural factors that marginalize students and offer tools for creating a true culture of care that supports youth both at school and online.

Visit Sarah Miller's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Reinventing Caste"

New from Stanford University Press: Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India by Ashish Koul.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book reveals that caste, usually assumed to be a feature of Hindu society, was in fact a trans-religious phenomenon in colonial India, as it is today. Even in an Islamic religious milieu that was supposedly more egalitarian than hierarchical Hinduism, colonial Indian subjects thought and acted in terms of caste. Through a focus on one agrarian Muslim caste known as Arains, Ashish Koul shows how some Indian Muslims transmuted caste and emplaced it within their understanding of Islam. During this time, Arain Muslims were derogatively called mali― gardener―instead of what they wished to be seen as―respectable landholders. Seeking to refute such negative portrayals, a group of elite Arains came together to develop a new Islamic vocabulary for caste.

Using primary sources in English and Urdu, Koul analyzes the intricacies of caste, religion, and politics among Muslims in colonial India. By asserting that being Arain was a way of being a true Muslim, elite Arains were able to intervene in significant debates about Muslim identity, colonial law, and political representation. Reinventing Caste shows that in order to understand why caste persists among South Asians, we must examine how caste consciousness has been entrenched within multiple religious traditions.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Texan Crucible"

New from the University of Texas Press: Texan Crucible: How the Irish, Germans, and Czechs Became Anglo by Marian J. Barber.

About the book, from the publisher:

A history of European immigrants in Texas and how they redefined racial identity.

While the creation of a Black-White racial binary was foundational to most of the United States, nineteenth-century Texas developed a unique tripartite system that acknowledged the role of individuals of Mexican ancestry in a region that was Spanish, Mexican, and an independent nation before becoming a US (and briefly Confederate) state. Yet this framework was fraught, struggling to accommodate new arrivals from beyond North America, in particular the Irish, Germans, and Czechs. Texan Crucible tells the story of these immigrants and how they became Anglo.

Marian Barber reveals the ways language, religion, alcohol use, and attitudes toward slavery distinguished these newcomers to Texas from those arriving from the eastern United States and how they nevertheless created thriving, influential communities. Their status was shaped by events inside and far beyond Texas, including an 1887 prohibition fight, the Civil War, and two world wars that encouraged them to erase their distinctiveness. As segregation was formally outlawed and civil rights activism grew, understandings of race shifted, cementing these groups’ status as Anglo. Texan Crucible recovers the histories of German, Irish, and Czech immigrants and unveils the social construction of racial difference underpinning Texan identity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Riptides"

New from Oxford University Press: Riptides: How the Spread of Racial Policies Fuels Volatility in American States by Periloux C. Peay.

About the book, from the publisher:

How does state-level policymaking contribute to the perpetual state of racial volatility in America? Riptides examines racialized policy diffusion through a unique framework that captures what motivates the speed and spread of racially progressive and regressive policies. It argues that the nation is locked in a constant competition between racial factions seeking to either preserve or dismantle racial hierarchies. States have, over time, developed and maintained policy cultures that reflect their commitment to and alignment in that competition over racial progress. The most innovative and influential states typically are among those with the broadest influence over the state policy landscape, and they have chosen sides in the policy conflict between white supremacists and transformative egalitarians. They parlay their broader influence into efforts to shape and reshape the racial policy condition in their states and beyond. Once innovated, racialized policies become highly contagious, as progressive and regressive policies diffuse simultaneously across a network of persistent, yet fragile, state-to-state relationships.

This book uses a novel social network analysis approach to map and analyze the spread of racially progressive and regressive policies from state to state to capture the political, social, and racial dynamics that have informed racialized policy innovation and diffusion processes since the Civil Rights Movement. In turn, it sheds light on how policy diffusion is a racialized process, how racialized policies diffuse, and how states use policy innovation and diffusion to shape and reshape the racial condition in America.

Visit Periloux C. Peay's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan"

New from Cornell University Press: Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024 by Xian Aubin Wang.

About the book, from the publisher:

Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan investigates decades of contentious relations between the Communist party-state of China and the Muslim community of southern Yunnan centered on the village of Shadian, site of an incident of state violence in 1975 that resulted in 1600 civilian deaths. Examining the causes and legacies of the Shadian massacre, Xian Aubin Wang draws on an extensive review of internal official documents, original written testimonies, and firsthand interviews with Muslim villagers.

By exploring interactions among Beijing, the Yunnan provincial government, county officials, CCP Muslim cadres, and Shadian villagers against the backdrop of the CCP's nationwide political campaigns since the early 1950s, Wang shows how Islam and Maoism influenced the ways that local villagers and party cadres saw and dealt with each other―and how these encounters shaped the developing conflict and its aftermath. Providing an in-depth account of Chinese religious groups living under the CCP, Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan reveals how religion and politics shaped Muslim villagers' responses to the party-state's efforts to control and secularize them.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Strangers and Kinsmen"

New from LSU Press: Strangers and Kinsmen: Portuguese Immigrants and the Spanish Caribbean, 1492–1650 by Brian Hamm.

About the book, from the publisher:

Within the global Spanish empire of the early modern era, the signifier portugués carried an expansive variety of associations. It could mean, depending on the observer, being either Spanish or foreign, Catholic or Jewish, useful or deleterious, loyal or treasonous. In Strangers and Kinsmen, historian Brian Hamm argues that discursive debates about what it meant to be “Portuguese,” to which Spaniards and Portuguese alike contributed, opened a wide range of Lusitanian potentialities that could either accelerate or hinder Portuguese integration within the Spanish Atlantic world. As a result, uncertainty followed Portuguese immigrants across the Atlantic and plagued Spanish officials who had to decide how to respond to an ever-increasing number of Portuguese arrivals. To find convincing answers, as Hamm shows, the Portuguese and Spanish looked to public behavior and personal reputation. The most convincing proof of Portuguese loyalty, piety, and utility came from consistent performances of virtuous actions by the Portuguese themselves. At the same time, public behaviors deemed suspicious, heretical, or treasonous could have the opposite effect, confirming in the minds of Spanish observers that the Portuguese were dangerous foreigners, potentially engaged in conspiratorial activities, who should be excluded. Because of the interpretative significance placed on public patterns of behavior, Portuguese immigrants gained significant opportunities to negotiate a more secure and accepted place in colonial society.

Strangers and Kinsmen recovers the complexity and heterogeneity of Lusitanian immigration to the early modern Spanish Indies. Prioritizing Portuguese immigrants frequently overlooked in previous studies, including pilots, soldiers, priests, and spies, Hamm’s detailed analysis expands scholarly understanding of the thousands of Portuguese who collectively strengthened and threatened Spanish imperialism from within one of the most geopolitically vital regions of the world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Women in Power"

New from Columbia University Press: Women in Power: Fighting for Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism (A Council on Foreign Relations Book) by Linda Robinson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Around the world, antidemocratic forces are taking aim at women leaders. Misogynistic authoritarianism has entered the mainstream, seeking to reverse decades of progress. Weaponized digital technologies have unleashed sexualized smears and violent threats. There is a deep connection between attacks on women and attacks on democracy―and female leaders can show us how to fight back.

Linda Robinson―an award-winning journalist and foreign policy expert―tells the powerful stories of the women on the frontlines of the battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Despite age-old obstacles and virulent new dangers, these remarkable leaders have strengthened their countries, expanded gender equality, and promoted policies that benefit all. Tsai Ing-wen crafted a strategy to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression while advancing social reforms. Estonia’s Kaja Kallas and Moldova’s Maia Sandu fought Russian hybrid warfare by pursuing European integration. Balkan leaders Vjosa Osmani and Nataša Pirc Musar bolstered their democracies against Serbian and Russian destabilization. Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados became a global champion for climate justice, rising above sexist attacks to achieve international financial reforms. Robinson distills the hard-won lessons of these and other recent leaders―including New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin, and Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands―providing a roadmap for countries facing existential threats. Timely and vivid, this book spotlights women’s leadership amid the global crisis of democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Contested Continent"

New from Oxford University Press: Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680 by Peter C. Mancall.

About the book, from the publisher:

The newest volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent recounts the origins of "America" and how it came to birth the United States.

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. In the newest volume in the series, Peter C. Mancall recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans.

The first volume of the Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent is also the most ambitiously far-ranging history of North America concentrating on the period from c. 1000 to 1680, from the arrival of Norse explorers to an explosion of revolts that underlined the stubborn struggle to master the continent some two centuries after Columbus's landfall. This history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies and includes the entire Atlantic basin. Mancall emphasizes the experiences of diverse peoples while, at the same time, telling a new story about the origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious diseases.

This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities for some and crushed the aspirations of others.

Visit Peter C. Mancall's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"We All Do the Time"

New from NYU Press: We All Do the Time: Who Cares for Incarcerated Women and Why It Matters by Holly Foster-Talbot.

About the book, from the publisher:

Breaks new ground by showing how women in prison and their families interact through prison boundaries

Although women make up only 7% of the overall prison population in the US, their numbers are rising faster than men's, and yet little research has been done on their lives behind bars. In We All Do the Time, Holly Foster-Talbot focuses on how incarcerated women maintain connections to their families and communities while inside prison and shows how these connections foster positive emotions and feelings of belonging with broader society, in line with re-integrative and rehabilitative ideals. She argues that generating inclusive emotions is a vital part of how imprisoned women and their families cope with and survive imprisonment.

Focusing on the experiences of over 300 women in minimum-security federal prison, Foster-Talbot demonstrates that women and their families navigate the prison-family interface through two key mechanisms: women’s intersectionally linked lives and their intergenerationally linked lives. Among core findings is that Latina and Black women suffer worse self-rated mental health in prison than white women, despite having more supportive family ties. If not for these ties, women’s racial and ethnic health disparities in prison would be even greater than they already are. This book also shows how the families and communities hit hardest by mass incarceration are also more heavily affected by resultant caring-related absences when women are incarcerated. Ultimately, Foster-Talbot argues that understanding these important connections behind bars are vital for prison programming and policy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Sleepless Ape"

New from Princeton University Press: The Sleepless Ape: The Story of Sleep in Human Evolution by David R. Samson.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the unique sleep habits of early humans fostered survival, innovation, and social evolution—and how this evolutionary legacy holds insights into how we sleep today

Despite sleep’s critical role in maintaining health and cognitive function, humans sleep less than any other primate. The Sleepless Ape reveals the reasons for this evolutionary paradox, showing how our unique sleep patterns evolved when our ancestors left the safety of the forest canopy for more dangerous ground, which led them to form more secure, social sleeping arrangements. As a result, early humans developed shorter, deeper, and more flexible sleep patterns that provided survival advantages and freed more time for crucial activities such as toolmaking, social interaction, and migration.

In this groundbreaking book, David Samson draws on his extensive fieldwork to explain how these sleep patterns contributed to our cognitive and social evolution. He delves into how the human brain adapted to achieve deeper, more restorative sleep, enabling advanced memory consolidation, fostering creativity, and contributing to our success as a species. Samson also addresses modern sleep challenges, demonstrating how an understanding of our evolutionary sleep heritage can help us to address sleep disorders and improve overall health and well-being. He tackles contentious issues such as co-sleeping, whether we should embrace paleo sleep or optimal sleep, and whether we are in fact suffering from an epidemic of too little sleep.

Blending the latest science with engaging storytelling by a leading expert, The Sleepless Ape shares compelling insights into how a fundamental yet overlooked aspect of human biology has shaped our evolutionary trajectory and continues to profoundly influence our daily lives.

Visit David R. Samson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue