"The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism"

New from Oxford University Press: The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism: Knowledge Providers and Propagandists in the 'Third Reich' by Baijayanti Roy.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections that existed between some German scholars specializing on India, non-academic 'India experts,' Indian anti-colonialists and various organs of the Nazi state. It explores the ways in which different knowledge discourses pertaining to India, particularly its colonization and the anti-colonial movement, were used by these individuals for a number of German organisations to fulfil the demands of Nazi politics. This monograph also inspects the links between the knowledge providers and embodiments of National Socialist politics like the Nazi party and its affiliates. In this study, Baijayanti Roy aims to ascertain whether such political engagements were actually more rewarding for the scholars than their 'practical services' to the state in the form of strategic deployment of their knowledge of India.

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism offers case studies of four organisations which incorporated such complicated entanglements of knowledge and power: the India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie in Munich, the Special Department India of the German Foreign Ministry, the Seminar for Oriental languages and its successor institutions at the University of Berlin, and the Indian Legion of the German Army. The knowledge networks underlying these organisations were dominated by German Indologists, but non-specialist knowledge providers, both German and Indian were also included.

The Nazi regime expected all scholars and intellectuals to engage in Kulturpolitik (cultural politics), which entailed propagating the glories of the 'Reich' and its supreme leader as well as collecting 'politically valuable' knowledge within and outside Germany. For the four organizations concerned, this meant conducting pro-German and from around 1938, anti-British propaganda aimed at Indians.

Loosely following an analogy provided by Herbert Mehrtens in the context of natural sciences, this monograph posits that there were 'patterns of collaboration' between the knowledge providers and the representatives of the Nazi regime. At the core of these 'patterns' was, to borrow Mitchell Ash`s theory, an exchange of resources and capital in which scholars and experts offered their knowledge of Indian languages, history and culture to authorities like the Foreign Ministry, the SS and the Army. In return, they received increased professional opportunities, financial remuneration or in some cases, increased power and influence.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Pacific's New Navies"

New from Cambridge University Press: The Pacific's New Navies: An Ocean, its Wars, and the Making of US Sea Power by Thomas M. Jamison.

About the book, from the publisher:

The initial creation of the United States' ocean-going battlefleet – otherwise known as the 'New Navy' – was a result of the naval wars and arms races around the Pacific during the late-nineteenth century. Using a transnational methodology, Thomas Jamison spotlights how US Civil War-era innovations catalyzed naval development in the Pacific World, creating a sense that the US Navy was falling behind regional competitors. As the industrializing 'newly-made navies' of Chile, Peru, Japan, and China raced against each other, Pacific dynamism motivated investments in the US 'New Navy as a matter of security and civilizational prestige. In this provocative exploration into the making of modern US navalism, Jamison provides an analysis of competitive naval build-ups in the Pacific, of the interactions between peoples, ideas, and practices within it, and ultimately the emergence of the US as a major power.

Tommy Jamison is a military historian and Asst. Professor of Strategic Studies in the Defense Analysis Dept., Naval Postgraduate School.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Radical Solidarity"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence by Lisa G. Materson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Radical Solidarity tells the riveting story of Ruth Reynolds (1916–89), a white pacifist from South Dakota who became a stalwart ally of nationalist revolutionaries during Puerto Rico’s long struggle for independence. Reynolds dedicated her life to ending US control of the archipelago. She testified before Congress and the UN, organized fellow North Americans, investigated the brutal tactics used by the colonial state to quash independence sentiment, and was incarcerated as a political prisoner.

Lisa G. Materson introduces the concept of “radical solidarity” to describe Reynolds’s powerful model for globally engaged activism. Guided by her vision of allyship, Reynolds developed deep bonds with the Puerto Rican nationalist women with whom she was imprisoned, collaborated across ideological divides with revolutionary leaders, and established lasting relationships with civil rights lawyers, political exiles, and New Left activists. Her radical solidarity enabled her to remain a tireless champion for Puerto Rico’s independence through five decades of hope, disappointment, and political change. Her life reveals the price paid by those who supported an independent Puerto Rico and sheds light on the possibilities of working across differences in the face of US state-sanctioned violence and colonialism.

Visit Lisa G. Materson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Small Talk to Microaggression"

New from the University of Chicago Press: From Small Talk to Microaggression: A History of Scale by Michael Lempert.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative and eye-opening history of how we have studied and theorized social interaction.

In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, anthropologist Michael Lempert offers a conceptual history that explores how, why, and with what effects we have come to think of interactions as “scaled.” Focusing on the sciences of interaction in midcentury America, Lempert traces how they harnessed diverse tools and media technologies, from dictation machines to 16mm film, to study communication “microscopically.” In looking closely, many hoped to transform interaction: to improve efficiency, grow democracy, curb racism, and much else. Yet their descent into a microworld created troubles, with some critics charging that these scientists couldn’t see the proverbial forest for the trees. Exploring talk therapy and group dynamics studies, social psychology and management science, conversation analysis, “micropolitics,” and more, Lempert shows how scale became a defining problem across the behavioral sciences.

Ultimately, he argues, if we learn how our objects of study have been scaled in advance, we can better understand how we think and interact with them—and with each other—across disciplinary and ideological divides. Even as once-fierce debates over micro and macro have largely subsided, Lempert shows how scale lives on and continues to affect the ethics and politics of language and communication today.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Thanks for Nothing"

New from Oxford University Press: Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980 by Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1980, single mother families were five times more likely than two-parent families to be poor. Forty years later, single-mother families are still five times more likely to be poor. How can this be given the vast increases in education and employment achieved by American women over this period?

In Thanks for Nothing, Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever explore the contradictions that lie at the heart of single motherhood. Drawing on forty years of data from two large national surveys, they find that the mystery of single mothers' economic stagnation can be explained by changes in the kind of women most likely to become single mothers. In 1980, most single mothers were divorced women; forty years later, the majority are mothers who gave birth out of wedlock. On paper, divorced women look a lot like their married contemporaries, but with one income instead of two. Never-married mothers are a completely different population--they have less education, work less, and receive lower economic returns on their educational credentials when they do work. They're also far more likely to have grown up in underprivileged families. Ultimately, Wolfinger and McKeever find that some single mothers are doing better even as others have fallen through the cracks.

Providing an in-depth look into the economics of single motherhood, Thanks for Nothing offers the most detailed statistical portrait of single mothers to date and, importantly, provides concrete suggestions for how policymakers should respond to persisting inequalities among mothers.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Burying Mussolini"

New from Cornell University Press: Burying Mussolini: Ordinary Life in the Shadows of Fascism by Paolo Heywood.

About the book, from the publisher:

Burying Mussolini addresses the global resurgence in authoritarian and nationalist populism and its connection with valorizations of ordinary life. Predappio is the birthplace and burial site of Benito Mussolini and Italy's premier neo-fascist tourist site with hundreds of thousands of fascist sympathizers descending on the town annually. But, Paolo Heywood asks, what of the people who actually live there? What does 'ordinary life' look like in the shadow of Mussolini's grave?

As politicians, commentators, and social scientists seek to understand what lies behind new forms of political authoritarianism, and whether and how they resemble movements once thought consigned to the past, Burying Mussolini narrates how people in Predappio cope with the dark heritage of their home by carefully crafting a sense of 'ordinariness' that is itself inflected by ghosts of their fascist past.

Paolo Heywood is Associate Professor of anthropology at Durham University. He is the author of After Difference, editor of New Anthropologies of Italy, and the co-editor of Beyond Description.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Indicators of Democracy"

New from Stanford University Press: Indicators of Democracy: The Politics and Promise of Evaluation Expertise in Mexico by Diana Graizbord.

About the book, from the publisher:

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of elections and an overarching mission of serving the will and well-being of a country's citizens. But how do we hold politicians accountable for such a mission? How are we to understand the efficacy of the policies they put forth? In Indicators of Democracy Diana Graizbord exposes the complex, often-hidden world of the institutions that are meant to ensure democratic accountability and transparency. Taking the case of Mexico's National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), Graizbord provides a deep theory of what happens when democratic aspirations intersect with technocratic ambitions. Analyzing what it takes to establish and sustain monitoring and evaluation as a form of official state expertise, Graizbord is able to put forward the contours of technodemocracy―a democratic political project that hinges on the power of experts to shape politics in unexpected but profound ways.

Visit Diana Graizbord's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Supply Chain Justice"

New from Princeton University Press: Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control by Mary Bosworth.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the UK’s immigration detention and deportation system turns people into monetized, measurable units on a supply chain

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poorly paid, minimally trained staff to do so. In Supply Chain Justice, Mary Bosworth offers the first empirically grounded, scholarly analysis of the British detention and deportation system. Drawing on four years of extensive ethnographic research, Bosworth examines what keeps the system in place and whether it might be effectively challenged.

Told by a senior manager that “this is a logistics business,” Bosworth documents how the public and private sectors have built a supply chain in which people’s humanity is transformed both symbolically and tangibly through administrative processes and bureaucracy into monetized, measurable units. Like all logistics, the system has failure built into it. The contract does not seek to eradicate risk but rather to manage it, determining responsibility and apportioning a financial value to such “failures” as delay, escape, aborted flight or death in custody. Front-line workers and managers depoliticise and normalise their efforts by casting their duties in familiar bureaucratic terms, with targets, “service level agreements” and “key performance indicators.” Focusing on first-hand accounts from workers and lengthy observation and document analysis, Bosworth explores the impact of border logistics in order to ask what it would take to build inclusive infrastructures rather than those designed to exclude.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Multicultural Britain"

New from Oxford University Press: Multicultural Britain: A People's History by Kieran Connell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between the end of the Second World War and the early twenty-first century, Britain became multicultural. This vivid book tells that remarkable story. Kieran Connell, an historian of Irish and German heritage who grew up in Balsall Heath, inner-city Bir-mingham, takes readers into multicultural communities across Britain at key moments in their development.

Journeying far beyond London, Multicultural Britain ex-plores the messy contradictions of the country's transition into today's diverse society. It reveals the ordinary people who have forged Britain's multiculturalism; skewers public leaders, from Enoch Powell to Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, who have too often weaponized race for their own political ends; and shines a light on the shifting nature of British racism, revealing its enduring day-to-day impact on ethnic-minority groups.

Between postcolonial reckonings and immigration anxieties, how people live together in Brexit Britain remains an urgent question for our time. Connell's fresh, thought-provoking book unveils British multiculturalism not as a problematic idea, but as a rich and complex lived reality.

Visit Kieran Connell's website.

The Page 99 Test: Black Handsworth.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Democracy in Power"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States by Sandeep Vaheesan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Private money, public good, and the original fight for control of America’s energy industry.

Until the 1930s, financial interests dominated electrical power in the United States. That changed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal which restructured the industry. The government expanded public ownership, famously through the Tennessee Valley Authority, and promoted a new kind of utility: the rural electric cooperative that brought light and power to millions in the countryside. Since then, public and cooperative utilities have persisted as an alternative to shareholder control. Democracy in Power traces the rise of publicly governed utilities in the twentieth-century electrification of America.

Sandeep Vaheesan shows that the path to accountability in America’s power sector was beset by bureaucratic challenges and fierce private resistance. Through a detailed and critical examination of this evolution, Vaheesan offers a blueprint for a publicly led and managed path to decarbonization. Democracy in Power is at once an essential history, a deeply relevant accounting of successes and failures, and a guide on how to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Visit Sandeep Vaheesan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue