"Young and Undocumented"

New from NYU Press: Young and Undocumented: Political Belonging in Uncertain Times by Julia Albarracín.

About the book, from the publisher:

The experiences of DACA recipients

The children of immigrants who arrive in the United States each year sometimes grow up without any knowledge of their undocumented status and the risks it poses. In this timely and important book, Julia Albarracín explores the lives of undocumented immigrant youth with a focus on the unique experiences of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and DREAMers in the United States.

Drawing on interviews and legal research, Albarracín shows us how the precarity surrounding the youth’s DACA status impacts their sense of political identity and belonging, particularly as Republican politicians target legal protections provided to them under DACA and the DREAM Act. The author examines how changes in immigration policies expose undocumented youth to constant ups and downs, leaving them in a limbo between deportation and integration into society, and limiting their social, economic, and political opportunities for advancement.

Albarracín shows us how DREAMers confront―and fight to overcome―barriers in their lives. Young and Undocumented explores how undocumented youth in the United States navigate their identity in the only country they know as home, and how they come-of-age without a path to citizenship.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Free Gifts"

New from Princeton University Press: Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature by Alyssa Battistoni.

About the book, from the publisher:

A timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature

Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.

Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.

Visit Alyssa Battistoni's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Trade in War"

New from Cornell University Press: Trade in War: Economic Cooperation across Enemy Lines by Mariya Grinberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Trade in War is an urgent, insightful study of a puzzling wartime phenomenon: states doing business with their enemies.

Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Yet as history shows, states rarely choose either war or trade. In fact, they frequently engage in both at the same time.

To explain why states trade with their enemies, Mariya Grinberg examines the wartime commercial policies of major powers during the Crimean War, the two World Wars, and several post-1989 wars. She shows that in the face of two competing imperatives―preventing an enemy from increasing its military capabilities, and maintaining its own long-term security through economic exchange―states at war tailor wartime commercial policies around a product's characteristics and war expectations. If a product's conversion time into military capabilities exceeds the war's expected length, then trade in the product can occur, since the product will not have time to affect battlefield outcomes. If a state cannot afford to jeopardize the revenue provided by the traded product, trade in it can also occur.

Grinberg's findings reveal that economic cooperation can thrive even in the most hostile of times―and that interstate conflict might not be as easily deterred by high levels of economic interdependence as is commonly believed. Trade in War compels us to recognize that economic ties between states may be insufficient to stave off war.

Visit Mariya Grinberg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Faith and Fear"

New from Oxford University Press: Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War since 1945 by Gregory A. Daddis.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this groundbreaking reflection on America's relationship with war in the modern era, Gregory A. Daddis explores the deep-seated tension between faith in and fear of war that has shaped US grand strategy and helped militarize US foreign policy with great costs at home and abroad.

How have Americans conceptualized and understood the "promise and peril" of war since 1945? And how have their ideas and attitudes led to the ever-increasing militarization of US foreign policy since the end of World War II?

In a groundbreaking reassessment of the long Cold War era, historian Gregory A. Daddis argues that ever since the Second World War's fateful conclusion, faith in and fear of war became central to Americans' thinking about the world around them. With war pervading nearly all aspects of American society, an interplay between blind faith and existential fear framed US policymaking and grand strategy, often with tragic results. These inherent tensions--an unwavering trust and confidence in war coupled with a fear that nearly all national security threats, foreign or domestic, are existential ones--have shaped Americans' relationship with war that persists to the current day.

A sweeping history, Faith and Fear makes a forceful argument by examining the tensions between Americans' overreaching faith in war as a foreign policy tool and their overwhelming fear of war as a destructive force.

The Page 99 Test:Westmoreland's War.

The Page 99 Test: Withdrawal.

The Page 99 Test: Pulp Vietnam.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Waning Crescent"

New from Yale University Press: Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam by Faisal Devji.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor

Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam’s birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context: an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics had the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality.

Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms. Its existence as a civilizational and later ideological subject also deprived figures like God and the Prophet of their theological subjectivities while robbing the Muslim community of its political agency. Devji illuminates this history and explores its ramifications for the contemporary Muslim world.

The Page 99 Test: The Impossible Indian.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Everyday Futures"

New from Stanford University Press: Everyday Futures: Language as Survival for Indigenous Youth in Diaspora by Stephanie Canizales and Brendan H. O'Connor.

About the book, from the publisher:

Despite increasing attention on unaccompanied Central American youth migration to the United States, little empirical research has examined the crucial role of language in the incorporation process, particularly for Indigenous youth. Drawing on the perspectives of Maya (primarily K'iche')-speaking Guatemalan youth, Everyday Futures explores their experiences of language socialization in the broader Los Angeles immigrant community. Stephanie L. Canizales and Brendan H. O'Connor trace the factors that were most important to their quest for well-being and belonging across Guatemalan and American societies. Coming from contexts where Maya languages were stigmatized, these youth's migration journeys and early years after arrival were characterized by what they called "preparation" and "adaptation," processes through which they actively sought the linguistic and social expertise needed to promote their long-term survival in the US. While many faced struggles, some were able to achieve social and economic mobility, which instilled in them a sensibility of survival that enabled them to advocate for more recently arrived Maya youth and the maintenance of Maya language and culture. This book sheds important light on the dynamic process of "future-making" for Indigenous youth and yields rich insights into the role of language in creating hope in the diaspora.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Money Signal"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Money Signal: How Fundraising Matters in American Politics by Danielle M. Thomsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

A data-rich, eye-opening look at how, when, and why political fundraising is consequential.

Over the last two decades, the number of competitive congressional races has declined precipitously. Yet candidates and officeholders dial for more and more dollars each election, and they do so earlier and earlier in the campaign cycle.

In The Money Signal, Danielle M. Thomsen offers a new perspective on the role of money in politics. She shows that fundraising matters because it is widely used as an indicator of a candidate’s viability and strength, which shapes subsequent donations, dropout decisions, media attention, and rewards in office. Put simply, money is a focal point that candidates, donors, journalists, and party leaders rally around. For candidates, fundraising is a highly public form of self-presentation that pays dividends long before the election and well after the votes are cast.

Thomsen draws on comprehensive fundraising data that spans more than four decades, in addition to interviews, surveys of candidates and donors, newspaper coverage, committee assignments, and analysis of legislative success. The Money Signal highlights the numerous ways that dollars influence the perceptions and behavior of key actors and observers throughout the election cycle.

Visit Danielle M. Thomsen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Competing for Foreign Aid"

New from Oxford University Press: Competing for Foreign Aid: The Congressional Roots of Bureaucratic Fragmentation by Shannon P. Carcelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

Every year, the United States authorizes dozens of bureaucracies to craft and implement foreign policy. This fragmentation of authority can result in chaos and infighting when agencies fail to communicate or outright undermine each other. Conventional wisdom considers the president to be the primary actor in US foreign policy, overlooking the extent of this bureaucratic turmoil. Why does the US government create a foreign policy apparatus that is so fragmented as to undermine its own leadership?

In Competing for Foreign Aid, Shannon P. Carcelli argues that bureaucratic fragmentation is an unintended byproduct of the foreign policy-making process. To unpack the black box of foreign policy, Carcelli traces Congress's role in policy incoherence, infighting, and fragmentation in the realm of foreign aid policy. Rather than a centrally driven plan, she explains that foreign policy is better understood as an uneasy compromise between domestic interests that do not always align with ideological or economic preferences. Her theory proposes two factors that lead to fragmentation: congressional interest and disunity. Interestingly, as Carcelli shows, Congress is often the least capable of legislating effectively in the areas where its members care most about policy effectiveness. This is because congressional interest in foreign policy incentivizes micromanagement, territorial disputes, and favoritism.

Combining qualitative process-tracing with a quantitative analysis of legislative voting, Competing for Foreign Aid provides a deep dive into Congress's role in shaping--and often misshaping--the foreign aid bureaucracy.

Visit Shannon P. Carcelli's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kindergarten Panic"

New from Princeton University Press: Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality by Bailey A. Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

How school choice reproduces inequality by creating gendered and socioeconomic decision-making labor for parents

School choice policies have proliferated in recent years, with parents forced to navigate complex admission processes. In New York City, families have more options than ever before, but the search for the right school has proven to be time-consuming, painstaking, and anxiety-provoking work. In Kindergarten Panic, Bailey Brown examines the experiences of parents as they search for elementary schools, finding that socioeconomic inequalities and persistent disparities in resources, information access, and decision-making power contribute to broad variation in how families develop and manage their school-choice labor strategies. The labor that parents invest in searching for schools is unevenly distributed, and shaped by gender, socioeconomic background, and neighborhood contexts.

Drawing on interviews with more than a hundred parents of elementary school students in New York City, Brown shows how inequality manifests itself as parents and students deal with the uncertainties of the school choice process. By conceptualizing school decision making as labor, she makes visible the often-unseen work that goes into making educational decisions for children. Brown argues that recognizing school choice as labor both deepens our theoretical understanding of the challenges families confront and identifies vast disparities in parents’ labor across socioeconomic and gender divisions. If parents continue to be charged with searching for schools, we must take seriously how school choice policies reproduce the kind of inequality they are intended to reduce—and we must invest in providing equitable access to high-quality public schooling for all families.

Visit Bailey Brown's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bringing Law Home"

New from Stanford University Press: Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights by Katherine Eva Maich.

About the book, from the publisher:

The personal nature of domestic labor, and its location in the privacy of the employer's home, means that domestic workers have long struggled for equitable and consistent labor rights. The dominant discourse regards the home as separate from work, so envisioning what its legal regulation would look like is remarkably challenging. In Bringing Law Home, Katherine Eva Maich offers a uniquely comparative and historical study of labor struggles for domestic workers in New York City and Lima, Peru. She argues that if the home is to be a place of work then it must also be captured in the legal infrastructures that regulate work. Yet, even progressive labor laws for domestic workers in each city are stifled by historically entrenched patterns of gendered racialization and labor informality. Peruvian law extends to household workers only half of the labor protections afforded to other occupations. In New York City, the law grants negligible protections and deliberately eschews language around immigration. Maich finds that coloniality is deeply embedded in contemporary relations of service, revealing important distinctions in how we understand power, domination, and inequality in the home and the workplace.

Visit Katherine Eva Maich's website.

--Marshal Zeringue