"Blame the Intern"

New from Princeton University Press: Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking into the Creative Economy by Alexandre Frenette.

About the book, from the publisher:

An inside look at the work lives of college interns and their uncertain path to paid employment

While generations of young adults used to spend their summers working as lifeguards or camp counselors, college students today are more likely to seek office experience as interns. Blame the Intern takes readers into the workspaces of the music industry to show how internships, especially unpaid ones, are problematic introductions to the working world that often provide little valuable training and are unlikely to lead to a job.

Since the 1980s, shifts in labor markets and careers have made employers less prone to invest in training entry-level employees who may quickly change jobs anyway. In recent decades, higher education has filled the gap, fueling an explosive growth of internships to facilitate the transition from college to a career. Drawing on in-depth interviews with interns, record label employees, and college personnel, as well as his own experiences as an unpaid intern at two music industry firms in New York City, Alexandre Frenette sheds light on who benefits from the intern economy, who suffers, and why. He finds that internships are rife with ambiguity because employers are neither trained nor greatly rewarded to mentor and colleges are ill-equipped to provide workplace guidance. As a result, there is little consensus about what interns should be doing or what benefits they should be gaining from their experience, which can often lead to inequality, exploitation, and disappointment.

Timely and provocative, Blame the Intern demonstrates how employers and institutions of higher learning are redefining what it means to break in—and reveals what happens when few can.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Governing Islam in Austria and Germany"

New from Oxford University Press: Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present by Farid Hafez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Governing Islam in Austria and Germany argues that the foundations of contemporary policies towards Islam in Austria and Germany are deeply rooted in colonial practices from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author Farid Hafez traces how colonial knowledge and governing techniques vis-à-vis Muslims--acquired during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the German Kaiserreich's rule over Tanzania and parts of Togo and Cameroon--shaped both the Nazi regime's approach to Muslims and postwar European policies. Hafez introduces the theory of Islampolitik, a concept that examines how modern European states regulate and govern their Muslim populations.

Islampolitik is not simply administrative or cultural policy; it is a mode of governance aimed at managing a constructed, racialized version of Muslim identity and Islam. Colonial legacies still inform the racial politics of religion in Europe, positioning Muslim populations as subjects of control. Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present offers a new methodological lens to analyze Austria and Germany's contemporary policies toward Muslims, uncovering the ways in which past imperial logics underpin state administration and religious education. Bridging colonial history, racial politics, and contemporary politics, Hafez shows how Muslim communities were not only managed but strategically incorporated into imperial and national frameworks.

Visit Farid Hafez's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Counterinsurgency Dilemma"

New from Stanford University Press: The Counterinsurgency Dilemma: Foreign Fighter Influence on Insurgencies in Afghanistan and Somalia by Tricia L. Bacon.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the wake of the Taliban's military defeat in 2001, foreign fighters played a critical role in assisting the Taliban to launch an insurgency against Coalition forces. Ten years later, by al-Qaida's own admission, the Taliban "almost didn't need" al-Qaida's non-Afghan fighters. Over time the Taliban grew sufficiently in strength that its need for foreign fighters―and foreign fighters' influence―virtually disappeared. Somalia shows a similar pattern. Foreign fighters initially played a prominent role in al-Shabaab, helping the group to launch an insurgency against Ethiopian forces, but their influence also declined as al-Shabaab became the dominant insurgent organization and built ties within Somali society. This is the first book to examine how foreign fighters gain and lose influence during insurgencies. Understanding foreign fighters' impact on conflicts is of increasing importance as the number of foreign fighters who have mobilized has grown in recent years, both in absolute numbers and in terms of the proportion of conflicts in which they are involved. In examining the conditions that contribute to the changes in their effect over time, Bacon explains how and why foreign fighter influence evolves within a conflict and which factors enable and constrain foreign fighter influence throughout an insurgency. Knowing how foreign fighters are situated vis-à-vis local insurgents, specifically the type of relationships they forge, should shape every aspect of counterinsurgency strategies to avoid counterproductive tactics, more effectively counter insurgent movements, and better protect civilians.

Visit Tricia Bacon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Your Data Will Be Used Against You"

New from NYU Press: Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Interrogates how digital self-surveillance can be turned against us by police, prosecutors, and political whims

For consumers living in a digitally-connected world, smart technologies have built an inescapable trap of digital self-surveillance. Smart cars, smart homes, smart watches, and smart medical devices track our most private activities and intimate patterns. While these devices allow users to receive personal insights by monitoring their every move, that data can be accessed by police and prosecutors looking to find incriminating clues. Digital technology exposes everyone, everywhere, all at once, and we have few laws to regulate it.

In Your Data Will Be Used Against You, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns us of how the rise of sensor-driven technology, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms. At the same time, that data will solve crimes, radically transforming how criminal cases are prosecuted. Ferguson explores how this proliferation of private data in combination with public surveillance networks promises new ways to solve previously unsolvable crimes, but also leaves us vulnerable to governmental overreach and abuse. He argues for legal interventions that address the threat of digital self-surveillance and provides concrete suggestions about how legislators, judges, and communities should respond.

As consumers, citizens, and potential subjects of surveillance, the questions in this book must be confronted now, before the trap of surveillance captures us completely. Providing a stark warning of the dangers of digital self-surveillance, Your Data Will be Used Against You is a defense of civil liberties against the growing threat of data-driven policing.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Governing Animals, Governing Humans"

New from Oxford University Press: Governing Animals, Governing Humans: Animal Protection Politics and the Government of Human―Animal Relations in European and Global Politics by Judith Renner.

About the book, from the publisher:

Governing Animals, Governing Humans explores how the global politics of animal protection works as the government of human-animal relations. Responding to recent calls by scholars coming from post-humanist, new materialist, or post-anthropocentric backgrounds who criticize the discipline's human-centred outlook it suggests a way how animals can be analyzed as targets of government by bringing into conversation Foucauldian scholarship within IR, political science and Critical Animal Studies (CAS).

Empirically, the book is driven by an interest to understand and theorize two contradicting global tendencies in regard to how humans relate to animals: on the one hand, a growing global concern for animals which has led to animal protection and animal welfare turning into issues of international relevance. On the other hand, the growing use and exploitation of animals as means of human convenience which manifests in the increase of the global trade in animal products, in the numbers of animals used worldwide and in the conditions under which these animals are kept. The book argues that whereas these tendencies seem to be conflicting on the first view, they are in fact closely intertwined as animal welfare, which has emerged as the dominant strategy of global animal protection, establishes the intensive production and use of animals along animal welfare standards as the primary practice of animal protection, coopts animals and humans into this strategy as subjects of animal welfare and animal consumption and thus governs human-animal relations along the seemingly contradicting but intertwined tendencies of animal protection and animal use.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Insecurity Politics"

New from Princeton University Press: Insecurity Politics: How Unstable Lives Lead to Populist Support by Lorenza Antonucci.

About the book, from the publisher:

The everyday realities of financial and work insecurity that drive right- and left-wing populism

In Insecurity Politics, Lorenza Antonucci examines the lived, everyday experiences that underpin political disaffection. Countering the reductive portrayals of populist voters as left-behind outsiders, Antonucci focuses on the ordinary, yet increasingly precarious, realities of work and financial instability as key to understanding the surge in populist support in both right- and left-wing politics. Drawing on robust comparative quantitative and qualitative analyses across nine European countries, Insecurity Politics describes the microlevel material and cultural dynamics that drive anti-establishment politics. It finds that dissatisfaction with work and a growing sense of financial insecurity fuel populist sentiments.

Antonucci maps the evolving landscape of insecurity in contemporary Europe, tracing its roots to structural transformations of welfare states and deep-seated cultural shifts. Proposing an original framework that combines cultural and economic explanations, the book shows how economic, social, and political factors shape receptivity to anti-establishment politics. Moving beyond conventional wisdom that attributes today’s populism to cultural backlash or globalization, Antonucci addresses a critical blind spot in current research. But Insecurity Politics offers more than a mere diagnosis; it also argues that a nuanced understanding of populist attitudes could inform a renewed political agenda—one more attuned to the complex realities of people's lives.

Visit Lorenza Antonucci's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Whispers in the Pews"

New from NYU Press: Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America by Amy D. McDowell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reveals how mundane social interactions in an evangelical church silence difference and reinforce right-wing conformity

Small talk, whether enjoyed or despised, is often thought of as trivial and largely useless. In certain situations, however, it can be surprisingly powerful. Whispers in the Pews offers a bottom-up explanation of Christian nationalism, revealing how cultural homogeneity within evangelical church communities is upheld by an active, manufactured effort to dodge reflective engagement with topics that could stir up diverging points of view.

Whispers in the Pews exposes how small talk is utilized to construct an appearance of social and political sameness in evangelical church communities. Based on an ethnography of a church that appeals to students, working class residents, and racial minorities alike in a politically divided Southern college town, McDowell showcases how churchgoers avoid consequential issues that could expose disagreements on border control, electoral politics, race and gender.

By confining themselves to blander topics, the church, which prides itself on inclusivity, positions itself as welcoming to all. But by creating an environment in which certain topics are discouraged from discussion, a façade is developed in which everyone is assumed to believe the same things, and any sort of debate is silenced. Whispers in the Pews shows that the presumption that everyone is of the same mind makes it difficult for churchgoers to articulate or contemplate progressive views, and by extension, advances the idea that differences of opinion are un-Christian, and therefore un-American.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Transnational Women's Liberation"

New from Oxford University Press: Transnational Women's Liberation: Feminist Activism in the US, UK, and France, 1967–79 by Tess Little.

About the book, from the publisher:

Across different cities, countries, and continents, the women's liberation movement grew from the grassroots, beginning with small discussion groups in the late 1960s to thousands marching in the streets less than a decade later. Political positions varied and methods of struggle were diverse, from consciousness-raising, street theatre, and squatting, to feminist bookshops, healthcare services, and refuges for women escaping domestic violence. But how did this informal, staunchly leaderless social movement grow across national borders? Did women's liberation activists in different countries see themselves as fighting in the same struggle?

Taking a case study of movements in the US, UK, and France, this history investigates the transnational reach of women's liberation. It brings together analyses of archival sources-from flyers, posters, and activist newsletters to personal correspondence and oral testimony, including interviews recorded by the author, now archived at the British Library. Chapters move from activist awakenings and movement origins in all three countries to different areas of activism: theorising, protest, healthcare, and the establishment of childcare, refuge, and rape crisis services.

Throughout, Tess Little traces the creation and travel of feminist texts, protest tactics, and organisational methods, examining the ways activists adapted ideas to new contexts. How did a sketch drawn by a woman in New York appear on Parisian t-shirts? How did a derelict house in Hounslow lead to the international establishment of refuges? How did a French abortion manifesto inspire women abroad to speak out? And where were connections with other countries not so significant?

This is a history of the movement of feminism between groups, cities, regions, countries, a history of the travel of ideas. But it is also a history of the movement itself: how the women's liberation movement worked, how it operated, where it came from, and what it was. It is, moreover, the history of feminism as movement: a certain kind of feminism which was put into practice through collective action.

Visit Tess Little's website.

Q&A with Tess Little.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Techno-Negative"

New from the University of Minnesota Press: Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical history of technology told through acts of resistance, not progress

The history of technology is often told as a history of progress, moving optimistically and inevitably from one emancipatory invention to the next. Techno-Negative turns this story on its head, taking us on a journey to the critical junctures where people have pointedly rejected and tried to undo, rather than adopt, new technologies. Beginning with Archimedes’s decision to destroy his own war machines, this book explores the will to negate technology as a deep―but persistently condemned―current in history.

As he presents a new theory of technological power, Thomas Dekeyser argues that technologies, never neutral, operate as “ontological policing,” drawing the boundaries of humanness as they are unequally leveraged by select groups. Looking beyond the Luddites to medieval monks banning tools, seventeenth-century loom burners, revolutionary lantern smashers, and computer arsonists, Dekeyser shows how people have long recognized and resisted the machine as a violent, sometimes deadly force implicated in defining who counts as human and whose lives (and ways of life) are worth saving.

Against the ubiquitous demands to reform or accelerate technological “advancement” that have failed to disrupt our present, Dekeyser proposes a spirited alternative: abolition. He challenges us to rethink the terms of our technological present and future. In a time when Big Tech grows increasingly enmeshed with authoritarian control, Techno-Negative is a conceptual declaration, and source of inspiration, for those searching for a new paradigm of technological politics.

Visit Thomas Dekeyser's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Nation Within"

New from Stanford University Press: A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan by Sayaka Chatani.

About the book, from the publisher:

The presence of hundreds of thousands ethnic Koreans in Japan, or "zainichi Koreans," is one of the visible legacies of Japanese colonialism. A surprising and influential group among zainichi Koreans that persists to this day is Chongryon, the only pro–North Korean diasporic group based in a capitalist society. Chongryon historically represented the central grassroots force seeking to liberate Koreans from Japan's imperial and neo-imperial influences. At the heart of the Chongryon community stands a political organization equipped with a central bureaucracy in Tokyo, with a headquarters in nearly every prefecture. Often called a de facto embassy of North Korea, the Chongryon organization has, in effect, functioned as a state within another state―operating hundreds of schools, banks, hospitals, business associations, publishing houses, and many other institutions across Japan.

Based on extensive archival research and nearly 250 original interviews collected with co-researcher KumHee Cho, who was raised within the Chongryon community, Sayaka Chatani offers a sweeping social history of this secretive, protective community in xenophobic Japanese society. Weaving together personal accounts and situating them in a multi-layered, transnational political context, the book offers a finely textured, intimate narrative of the community's tumultuous history and decolonial praxis. Through the stories of Chongryon, this book provides a bottom-up analysis of power politics among zainichi Koreans and reshapes our understanding of Japanese history, Korean history, and the Cold War in Asia.

Visit Sayaka Chatani's website.

--Marshal Zeringue