"What Is a Person?"

New from Oxford University Press: What Is a Person?: Untapped Insights from Africa by Nancy S. Jecker and Caesar A. Atuire.

About the book, from the publisher:

What makes us 'persons' in the moral sense, beings with a certain dignity and worth? Philosophers Nancy S. Jecker and Caesar A. Atuire explore this question by bringing African and Western philosophies into conversation. They start by characterizing the differences in the contemporary scene in Africa and the West, proposing that these differences were not always present, are hardly inevitable, and can and should be bridged. They then introduce the concept of Emergent Personhood, a new philosophy of personhood that combines insights from Africa and the West. It holds that beings with superlative worth emerge through social relational processes involving human beings, yet they are more than the sum of these relationships. Persons have an identity of their own and exhibit superlative moral worth, a remarkable feature not present at the base. Emergent Personhood justifies personhood for all human beings from birth to death. It also gives strong support to personhood for a wide range of animals, soils, rocks, and ecosystems.

Focusing on human personhood, Jecker and Atuire argue that high moral status is stable across the lifespan and reaches a terminus with death's declaration, which ends the human-human associations that enable personhood to arise. They conclude with a turn to nonhuman personhood, considering personhood for artificial intelligence, animals, non-living nature, and extra-terrestrial life and lands.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Revolution Within"

New from Stanford University Press: The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt by Yasmin Moll.

About the book, from the publisher:

The New Preachers of Egypt—so named because of their novel preaching styles, which incorporate everything from melodrama to music to self-help—came to prominence on the world's first Islamic television channel on the cusp of the Arab Spring uprisings. They promoted an innovative and inclusive Islamic piety that millions of young middle-class viewers found radical and compelling—but were scorned as neoliberal by leftists, as stealth Islamists by secularists, and as too Westernized by other Muslim preachers. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with the New Preachers, their producers, and followers in Cairo, Yasmin Moll shows how Islamic media and the social life of theology mattered to contestations over the shape of a New Egypt. These mass-mediated fractures within Islamic Revivalism were happening at a time of both revolutionary possibility and authoritarian entrenchment. The New Preachers' Islamic media inspired a "revolution within" that transcended the country's divisions and anticipated the ethos of creativity, solidarity, and coexistence that soon would mark Tahrir Square, the ethical epicenter of the 2011 uprising. Vividly written and boldly theorized, The Revolution Within challenges conventional accounts of the 2011 revolution and its aftermath as a struggle between secular and religious forces, reconsidering what makes a practice virtuous, a public Islamic, a way of life Godly.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Combination of All Forms of Struggle"

New from Columbia University Press: The Combination of All Forms of Struggle: Insurgent Legitimation and State Response to FARC by Alexandra Rachel Phelan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the course of a decades-long armed conflict, the Colombian state took a variety of approaches toward its insurgent opponent, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Successive governments swung between pursuing negotiations and responding with military counterinsurgency measures. FARC, for its part, proclaimed its commitment to “the combination of all forms of struggle”: seeking legitimation through both political and military means.

Investigating the relationship between FARC and the Colombian state from the outbreak of conflict in 1964 to the signing of the final peace agreement in 2016, Alexandra Rachel Phelan offers new insight into the dynamics of insurgencies. In such conflicts, both states and insurgents seek to assert their legitimacy, which has crucial implications for any prospective resolution. Phelan examines how FARC adopted different means of legitimation as part of its overall political and military strategy and how these strategies influenced government responses. She argues that the case of Colombia demonstrates that insurgents are more likely to engage in negotiations when the state recognizes their political legitimacy than when it demands their defeat. During a protracted conflict, when it is unclear that the state can win by military strength alone, offering incentives for political settlements can minimize―and perhaps even end―fighting. Drawing on interviews with former and active FARC leaders and Colombian government officials, as well as access to key primary documents, this book sheds new light on the Colombian conflict and provides rich theoretical understanding of the role of legitimacy in counterinsurgency more broadly.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Abortion Rights Backlash"

New from Oxford University Press: Abortion Rights Backlash: The Struggle for Democracy in Europe and the Americas by Alison Brysk.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reproductive rights are fundamental for the life, freedom, health, and safety of over half the world's population. Yet reproductive freedoms are under attack worldwide, even where women have achieved political rights and workplace participation. According to the World Health Organization, about a third of pregnancies end in abortion--but about half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths each year. Why are abortion rights backsliding, even in developed democracies? Why do some modern societies progress toward reproductive freedoms, while others regress or stagnate? And what can the struggle for reproductive rights teach us about broader movements for human rights and gender justice?

In Abortion Rights Backlash, Alison Brysk shows how threats to reproductive rights stem from a gendered political struggle over declining democracy, national identity, and widening inequality due to globalization. Formerly dominant groups facing social and economic crisis promote reactionary nationalist ideologies built around patriarchy, race, and religion as they seek to control population politics. Brysk demonstrates that this is a global phenomenon, comparing the diverging experiences of the politics of abortion in Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (California vs. Texas). Timely and pathbreaking in its global perspective and feminist analysis, Abortion Rights Backlash transforms our understanding of human rights, the future of democracy, and the struggle for gender justice worldwide.

Visit Alison Brysk's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Identities Matter"

New from Oxford University Press: Identities Matter: The Politics of Immigration and Incorporation by Angela Ju.

About the book, from the publisher:

Grandchildren of immigrants belonging to groups that have achieved high socioeconomic status choose which identities to leverage in the host country's political arena. The scholarship about political incorporation often assumes that immigrant groups and their descendants find it in their best interest to pursue mainstream political incorporation. Those immigrants who belong to ethnic minority groups might choose to engage politically in a number of ways, depending on their racial or economic status; Identities Matter: The Politics of Immigration and Incorporation looks at how descendants of minoritized groups who have achieved, generally speaking, high socioeconomic status choose to identify politically in their adopted nations. Contrary to many expectations about political and social incorporation of immigrants, it finds that assimilation is not necessarily advantageous for groups who are from or associated with countries that are more economically developed than their host country. When this is the case, these immigrant communities may choose to strategically associate themselves with the heritage country over the one in which they reside.

The book draws on original research among third-generation Japanese and Jewish Brazilians to determine the seemingly paradoxical ways in which the descendants of immigrants choose which identities to emphasize in the political arena. It shows that immigrant communities' strategies of political incorporation and social integration are framed within where they fall in existing ethno-racial and socioeconomic hierarchies, and that perceptions of discrimination drive third-generation descendants to vote in line with their ethnic interests. One particularly interesting finding is that in Brazil, a country that suffers from high levels of political corruption, Japanese Brazilian politicians are often incentivized to emphasize their Japanese-ness over their Brazilian-ness to convey to voters that they are more honest as political candidates than their "more Brazilian" opponents. Finally, ethnic community-based organizations allow these groups to leverage their identities transnationally.

Visit Angela Ju's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State by Kirstine Taylor.

About the book, from the publisher:

The story of how the American South became the most incarcerated region in the world’s most incarcerated nation.

Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State examines the evolution of southern criminal punishment from Jim Crow to the dawn of mass incarceration, charting this definitive era of carceral transformation and expansion in the southern United States. The demise of the county chain gang, the professionalization of police, and the construction of large-scale prisons were among the sweeping changes that forever altered the southern landscape and bolstered the region’s capacity to punish. What prompted this southern revolution in criminal punishment?

Kirstine Taylor argues that the crisis in the cotton fields and the arrival of Sunbelt capitalism in the south’s rising metropolises prompted lawmakers to build expansive, modern criminal punishment systems in response to Brown v. Board of Education and the Black freedom movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. Taking us inside industry-hunting expeditions, school desegregation battles, the sit-in movement, prisoners’ labor unions, and policy commissions, Taylor tells the story of how a modernizing south became the most incarcerated region in the globe’s most incarcerated nation.

Visit Kirstine Taylor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Postal Intelligence"

New from Cornell University Press: Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Rachel Midura.

About the book, from the publisher:

Postal Intelligence connects and situates histories of the post and government intelligence alongside print technology and state power in the wider context of the early modern communications revolution. In the sixteenth century, postal services became central to domestic governance and foreign policy enterprises, extended government reach and surveillance, and offered new control over the public sphere.

Rachel Midura focuses on the Tassis family, members of which served as official postmasters to the dukes of Milan, the pope, Spanish kings, and Holy Roman emperors. Using administrative records and family correspondence, she follows the Tassis family, their agents, and their rivals as their influence expanded from northern Italy across Europe. Postal Intelligence shows how postmasters and postmistresses were key players in early modern diplomacy, commerce, and journalism, whose ultimate success depended on both administrative ingenuity and strategic ambiguity.

Visit Rachel Midura's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England"

New from Oxford University Press: Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England by Hillary Taylor.

About the book, from the publisher:

What was the interrelation between language, power, and socio-economic inequality in England, c. 1550-1750? Early modern England was a hierarchical society that placed considerable emphasis on order; language was bound up with the various structures of authority that made up the polity. Members of the labouring population were expected to accept their place, defer to their superiors, and refrain from 'murmuring' about a host of issues. While some early modern labouring people fulfilled these expectations, others did not; because of their defiance, the latter were more likely to make their way into the historical record, and historians have previously used the evidence that they generated to reconstruct various forms of resistance and negotiation involved in everyday social relations.

Hillary Taylor instead considers the limits that class power placed on popular expression, and with what implications. Using a wide variety of sources, Taylor examines how members of the early modern English labouring population could be made to speak in ways that reflected and even seemed to justify their subordinated positions--both in their eyes and those of their social superiors. By reconstructing how class power structured and limited popular expression, this study not only presents a new interpretation of how inequality was normalized over the course of the period, but also sheds new light on the constraints that labouring people overcame when they engaged in individual or collective acts of defiance against their 'betters.' It revives domination and subordination as objects of inquiry and demonstrates the ways in which language--at the levels of ideology and social practice--reflected, reproduced, and naturalized inequality over the course of the early modern period.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Terrorism News Beat"

New from the University of Michigan Press: The Terrorism News Beat: Professionalism, Profit, and the Press by Aaron M. Hoffman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Critics of terrorism news coverage often describe it as a sensationalized and intimidating area of reporting. However, this characterization offers a misleading guide to the coverage of terrorist threats and attacks, counterterrorism, and community responses to terrorism that appears in U.S. newspapers. Counterterrorism—not terrorist threats or attacks—is the most reported-on subject in newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Rather than focusing on accounts of terrorist attacks, militarized counterterrorism, or counterterrorism failures, journalists more often cover counterterrorism successes, criminal justice, and diplomatic or community responses to terrorism.

The Terrorism News Beat engages thinking about terrorism and the news media from the fields of political science, communication, criminology, economics, and sociology using multimethod research involving more than 2,500 newspaper articles published between 1997 and 2018. Chapters analyze the terrorism news beat’s subject matter, language, and coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Olympic Park bombing, 9/11 attacks, DC Sniper case, and Dallas Police shooting. When it comes to language use, Hoffman finds that, rather than giving into the temptation to convey the news in lurid detail, journalists are minimalists. The language used to depict events on the terrorism beat is typically moderate and extreme words like “torture” appear only as necessary. The Terrorism News Beat shows that contrary to claims of sensationalism, the tone of terrorism coverage becomes even more sober during terrorism crises than it is during non-crisis periods and meets journalistic standards for quality.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bad Christians and Hanging Toads"

New from Cornell University Press: Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525–1675 by Rochelle Rojas.

About the book, from the publisher:

Bad Christians and Hanging Toads tells riveting stories of witchcraft in everyday life in early modern Navarra. Belief in witchcraft not only emerged in moments of mass panic but was woven into the fabric of village life. Some villagers believed witches sickened crops and cows with poisonous powders, others thought they engaged in diabolism and perverted sex, and still others believed they lovingly raised toads used to commit evil deeds. Most villagers, however, simply saw witches as those with reputations of being mala cristianas―bad Christians. Rochelle Rojas illuminates the social webs of accusations and the pathways of village gossip that created the conditions for the witch beliefs and trials of the period.

While studies of witchcraft in Spain tend to focus on the inquisitorial trials and witch panic of 1609–14, Bad Christians and Hanging Toads turns to witch trials conducted by the region's secular judiciary, Navarra's royal tribunals, tracing the prosecution of accused witches over 150 years. Using detailed evidence from trial records and neighbors' testimonies, Rojas vividly brings to life the women and men crafted as witches by their neighbors and the authorities and guides readers through the judicial process, from accusations and the examination of the evidence to sentencing and punishment.

By privileging the voices of villagers throughout, Bad Christians and Hanging Toads demonstrates that the inner logic of early modern European witchcraft trials can be understood only by examining of the local, everyday aspects of witch belief.

--Marshal Zeringue