"Religious Change in Post-Mao China"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Religious Change in Post-Mao China: Toward a New Sociology of Religion by Yanfei Sun.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping examination of how the religious landscape has changed in post-Mao China.

In Religious Change in Post-Mao China, sociologist Yanfei Sun examines the transformation of major religions and the broader religious ecology in China in the wake of the death of Mao Zedong. Drawing on two decades of research that integrates ethnographic, historical, and comparative methods, this book explores the remarkable rise of Protestantism, the challenges faced by Catholicism, the revival of Chinese popular religion, the complex dynamics of Chinese Buddhism, and the unrealized potential of new religious movements. Why do some religions thrive and others struggle in post-Mao China? Sun describes both the internal institutional factors that allow some religions to flourish and the wider sociopolitical context that supports or discourages religious expansion. She thereby introduces an ambitious theoretical framework—one whose applicability extends beyond China, offering a template for analyzing religious dynamics in other parts of the world.

A must-read for scholars of religious studies, sociology, and China studies, Religious Change in Post-Mao China not only provides critical insights into China’s evolving religious landscape but also offers a powerful lens for examining the forces behind religious change, both past and present.

Visit Yanfei Sun's homepage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making Ireland Modern"

New from Oxford University Press: Making Ireland Modern: The Transformation of Society and Culture by Enda Delaney.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative and original reinterpretation of modern Irish history.

There is a widespread misconception that Ireland became 'modern' much later than its neighbours, in the 1960s and 1970s. This is grounded in several enduring stereotypes and caricatures: of Ireland as a 'timeless' and unchanging 'land of saints and scholars'; of its society and culture in the long nineteenth century as puritanical, regressive, or archaic; of Gaelic language and culture as 'backward' or inward-looking in contrast to a 'modern' English counterpart; and of the island as natural and rural in the face of the urban and technological 'progress' of modernity.

Drawing on an extensive range of sources, from poetry and novels to contemporary historical documents, acclaimed historian Enda Delaney here offers a reinterpretation of Ireland's encounter with modernity that corrects these stereotypes. By situating the island's history between 1780 and 1916 within its broader European, global, and colonial contexts, he demonstrates that Ireland's pathway to modernity was not inevitable, belated, or uni-directional: over a complex and centuries-long process it was made modern, and in its own distinctive way. This was related to, but distinct from, Ireland's complicated colonial relationship with Britain, and played out in the broader contexts of globalisation and the rise of capitalism. And at the heart of this history are the Irish people themselves, both those who lived on the island and the millions of those who left during this period and made their lives in Britain, America, Australia, and beyond, who made sense of modernity in a variety of conflicting ways and, in so doing, sought to shape their own destinies and adapt the 'old' ways of doing things in the face of relentless waves of 'progress'. Changes in values, consciousness, and beliefs interacted with broader social, political, and cultural revolutions to create a distinctive experience of becoming modern.

The result is a bold and wide-ranging new history of modern Ireland that restores agency to those who lived and made its history, raising important and timely questions about modernity, globalisation, modern history, and post-colonialism.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beauty and the Nation"

New from Columbia University Press: Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam by Christina E. Firpo.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the interwar years, Vietnamese society witnessed a rapid change in the way women looked. Rejecting the model of a sequestered maiden with blackened teeth and long hair, they embraced a vivid palette of colors―and a colorful lifestyle to match. Before the war, Vietnam would have seemed like an unlikely place for a beauty industry to thrive. Virtuous young women were expected to hide their natural beauty, not manipulate it with makeup or flaunt it at a beauty contest. Yet ordinary women began seeking out the latest fashions―to great public consternation.

Christina E. Firpo explores the development of beauty culture in this period, showing how women’s faces and bodies became contested sites for envisioning what it meant to be Vietnamese in the modern world. She considers dress patterns, lip-lining tutorials, hairstyles, physiques, and beauty pageants alongside new technologies of media, transportation, and leisure and the anxieties they provoked. The everyday decisions women made about their appearance, Firpo argues, were ways to stake a claim to the roles they wanted to play in the new society taking shape around them. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Beauty and the Nation offers fresh insight into the tumultuous political, economic, social, and cultural changes that swept across Vietnam during this crucial period.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The World Bank and the Cold War in Latin America"

New from Stanford University Press: The World Bank and the Cold War in Latin America: The Argentine Challenge by Claudia Kedar.

About the book, from the publisher:

Established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, the World Bank soon emerged as a central pillar of the postwar order, and the world's leading development institution. This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the World Bank's pivotal role in the Cold War in Latin America through an examination of its interactions with Argentina—one of Latin America's largest economies, and a heavy borrower of the World Bank. In doing so, it unveils the surprisingly complex interplay between the World Bank's bureaucratic goals, US administrations, and Argentina's efforts to serve its own national interests. Drawing on a multi-archival corpus of primary sources, including newly declassified documents from the World Bank archives, the author examines the Bank's often-counterintuitive responses to major economic and political challenges posed by Argentina, including populism, developmentalism, economic nationalism, authoritarianism, human rights violations, and the "Lost Decade" of the 1980s. Showing how the World Bank ranged from full alignment with US interests to neutrality and subtle dissent, the book reveals the integral influence of the Bank as a Cold War actor. Raising vital questions about the role of international organizations in developing countries, this book reframes our understanding of the economic Cold War in Latin America and beyond.

Visit Claudia Kedar's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Governing the Excluded"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory by Alex Diamond.

About the book, from the publisher:

An on-the-ground description of Colombia’s peace process as lived by the rural populations most affected by it.

The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Briceño suffered from a bloody conflict, the village has more recently become central to the nation’s hopes for peace. In Governing the Excluded, sociologist Alex Diamond shares a closer look at Briceño and offers unique insight not only into the contemporary Colombian state but to how people across the Global South are struggling to maintain rural livelihoods amid economic dispossession.

Governing the Excluded describes a landmark peace process between the Colombian government and the radical FARC guerrillas from the perspective of Colombian farmers, drawing links between economic transformation, drug economies, and armed conflict. Exclusion from global markets for traditional crops like coffee first pushed farmers to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine. This ushered in an era of violent conflict for control of the illicit economy, while farmers continued to be priced out of legal markets. In exchange for peace and state protection, farmers ultimately agreed to sacrifice profitable coca. But with its disappearance, they now find themselves dependent on the state: for machinery to maintain the roads they need to get legal harvests to market, municipal jobs that are the only decent work available, and for public resources to subsidize food crops with razor-thin profit margins. Ongoing economic struggles in the legal sector make the state’s newfound authority tenuous, as some villagers replant coca, abandon the village for uncertain urban futures, or join a rearmed guerrilla group.

Informed by deep ethnographic research and firsthand stories from Briceño residents, Governing the Excluded shows that when it comes to the forces driving dispossession—be they international corporate megaprojects, global food prices, or national initiatives to replace coca cultivation—state authority goes only so far as its ability to sustain local livelihoods.

Visit Alex Diamond's wesbite.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Elites and Democracy"

New from Princeton University Press: Elites and Democracy by Hugo Drochon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why elites always rule democracies—and why recognizing that reality can help us respond to the crisis of democracy today

A central paradox of democracies is that they are always ruled by elites. What can democracy mean in this context? Today, it is often said that a populist revolt against elites is driving democratic politics throughout the West. But in Elites and Democracy, Hugo Drochon argues that democracy is more accurately and usefully understood as a perpetual struggle among competing elites—between rising elites and ruling elites. Real political change comes from the interaction between social movements and elite political institutions such as parties. But, although true democracy—the rule of the people—may never be achieved, striving towards it can bring about worthwhile democratic results.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels put forward “elite” theories of democracy and gave us terms such as the “ruling class” and “elites” itself. Drawing on their work and tracing the history of democratic thought through figures such as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, C. Wright Mills, and Raymond Aron, Elites and Democracy reveals that this fundamentally elitist basis of democracy—democracy understood as competition between elites—was there all along. The challenge is to think it anew.

Moving away from procedural or principled conceptions of democracy, Elites and Democracy develops a dynamic theory of democracy, one grounded in movement. With current politics defined by a populist backlash against elites, dynamic democracy offers the tools we urgently need to understand our contemporary predicament and to act upon it.

The Page 99 Test: Nietzsche's Great Politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Foundations of Re-Enchantment"

New from Oxford University Press: The Foundations of Re-Enchantment: Freemasonry, Theosophy, and the Occult Revival by Christopher Coome.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1875, in a small apartment in New York City, a handful of freemasons and spiritualists met in secret. After hours spent debating advances in science and the spiritual mysteries of the Orient, the assembled guests settled on an idea. What the 19th century needed most, they concluded, was an institution dedicated to exploring the untamed borderlands between scientific and religious thought. Two weeks later, the Theosophical Society was born, inspiring a trans-continental occult revival that fundamentally transformed the religious margins of Western society.

The movement that followed was an explosive mix of creativity, spiritual longing, and pseudo-scientific mischief. Piggybacking on the idealist zeal of the fin de siècle, major occult sodalities grew like ripples: the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn, a magical order created by Rev. A. F. A Woodford, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Mathers; the Anthroposophical Society, created by the Austrian clairvoyant, Rudolf Steiner; and the Ordo Templi Orientis, an institution most famous for its association with Aleister Crowley. These were some of the most delightfully bizarre, magnetic, and intellectually pyrotechnic individuals of the 19th century, and their antics, both intellectual and personal, make for some of the most engaging moments in the development of contemporary spirituality.

However, behind all these societies there was another organization: Freemasonry. Seemingly hidden behind the glare of the occult revival, Freemasonry provided many of the variables of fin de siècle occultism: syncretism, initiation, hidden superiors, and reverence for ancient mystery cults. From Helena Blavatsky to Aleister Crowley, each of the leading occultists stated their supreme debt to the Masons and their mysteries. In The Foundations of Re-Enchantment, Christopher Coome tells an immersive and compelling story of this remarkable emergence of occult organizations at the turn of the 19th century.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Invention of Order"

New from Duke University Press: The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space by Don Thomas Deere.

About the book, from the publisher:

In The Invention of Order, Don Thomas Deere retraces the colonial origins of spatial organization in the Americas and the Caribbean and its lasting impact on modern structures of knowledge, power, race, gender as well as understandings of global modernity. The coloniality of space dispossessed Indigenous, African, and mixed populations as it constructed new systems of control and movement. Deere demonstrates how these developments manifested, among other forms, in urban grid patterns imposed during the development of Spanish colonial cities as well as totalizing trade routes crisscrossing the Atlantic. Drawing on a range of thinkers including Enrique Dussel, Édouard Glissant, and Sylvia Wynter, Deere reveals how movement—who travels, who settles, and who is excluded—becomes an essential component of control under colonial rule. Against the violence of spatial reordering, Deere outlines how novel forms of resistance and insurgency geographies still take hold, particularly in the Caribbean, where landscapes remain excessive, eruptive, and uncaptured by the order of modernity.

Don Thomas Deere is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Texas A&M University.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dark Concrete"

New from Cornell University Press: Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis by Kimberley Johnson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dark Concrete is about how the Black Power movement reshaped urban politics in the United States―from expectations to practices. Although the national and international dimensions of the Black Power movement are often focused on, Kimberley Johnson looks at the movement at the local level, highlighting Newark and East Orange, New Jersey, and Oakland and East Palo Alto, California, and three policy areas: housing, education, and policing. She examines how Black Power Urbanism had its own local meanings as it was defined by local activists, neighborhood residents, parents, tenants, and others who sought to repair cities and particularly black neighborhoods that were shattered due to urban renewal and highway construction, as well as ongoing political and economic disinvestment. Dark Concrete depicts how local conditions influenced the emergence of the Black Power movement and, in turn, the ways in which these local movements reshaped urban politics, institutions, and place.

Kimberley Johnson is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is a political scientist whose work focuses on contemporary American politics, historical political development, and urban studies. She is the author of Reforming Jim Crow and Governing the American State.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hard at Work"

New from Oxford University Press: Hard at Work: Job Quality, Wellbeing, and the Global Economy by Francis Green.

About the book, from the publisher:

More than three billion people are at work across the globe, and it takes up a huge chunk of the time humans spend on this planet. Policymakers say they want to see "more and better jobs" or "decent work for all" but are good jobs expanding, and if so for whom? Or are bad jobs taking over?

In Hard at Work, Francis Green presents a new, up-to-date account of job quality to understand the immense variety and range of jobs, as well as the evolution of these jobs in the twenty-first century. Drawing on economics, industrial relations, sociology, psychology, and ergonomics, as well as new data sources from countries around the world, Green constructs a unified and interdisciplinary conceptual framework that illustrates the impacts of job quality on our health and wellbeing. He finds that while some work environments can be meaningful, well-paced, safe, well-paid, and supportive, others can be tightly controlled, low-paid, dangerous, insecure, and fast-paced. With this broad picture of job quality, Green turns to various issues that impact workers--the failure to improve job quality and workers' wellbeing at work despite long-term economic growth, the declining share of labor income, the general increase in work demands, and the prospects for job quality in the new automated world of work.

Original and authoritative, Hard at Work provides a global and comprehensive understanding of job quality that raises important questions for this emerging field.

Visit Francis Green's website.

--Marshal Zeringue