"Beyond Democracy, Toward Meritocracy"

New from Oxford University Press: Beyond Democracy, Toward Meritocracy: Freedom to Choose from Those Worth Choosing by John J. Park.

About the book, from the publisher:

The alarming and recent rise of populist leaders in democracies over the past twenty years―seen in countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States―has been accompanied by substantial increases in political corruption. A central question in political philosophy concerns the most morally legitimate form of government. The prevailing view in Western philosophy identifies democracy as that system. Yet a more legitimate model for Western societies emerges when the issue is examined through the lens of East Asian philosophy.

In this book, John J. Park introduces a Confucian-inspired hybrid system for the legislative branch, which fuses meritocracy with democracy. It's called prometheocracy, which is based on Prometheus, the mythological figure who gave fire and knowledge to the people. In this model, all legislators remain democratically elected through one person, one vote, but candidates must first meet specific merit-based requirements―such as passing a criminal background check, demonstrating relevant professional experience, and holding certain educational qualifications. Just as professions like medicine, law, engineering, and academia require specialized credentials, Park posits that the most consequential public offices should demand clear standards of competence. Drawing on philosophical reasoning and empirical research in the social sciences, Beyond Democracy, Toward Meritocracy challenges the dominant democratic paradigm in the West and argues that prometheocracy possesses greater moral legitimacy.

Beyond Democracy, Toward Meritocracy demonstrates that this system holds advantages over other major alternatives, including existing Confucian hybrid proposals and epistocracy. While many philosophers who support Confucian hybrid systems restrict their applicability to select Asian contexts, this work develops a model grounded explicitly in Western values and designed for Western societies. This contribution marks a significant development in comparative philosophy, presenting the book as a bridge between contemporary Confucian political theory and Western political thought.

Ultimately, Beyond Democracy, Toward Meritocracy argues that prometheocracy is the most morally legitimate form of legislative governance for the West.

Visit John J. Park's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Divine Season"

New from Princeton University Press: A Divine Season: Christian Nationalist Activism in Zambia by Naomi Haynes.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Zambian Pentecostal activists worked to transform their country into a self-styled “Christian nation”

In 2015, Zambia began an ambitious program to “actualize” the country’s constitutional declaration that it was a “Christian nation.” For Pentecostal Christian nationalist activists, this was a “divine season,” an opportunity to change their country by submitting it to God’s control. In this book, Naomi Haynes examines these efforts at national transformation, offering a careful ethnographic exploration of Christian nationalist theology, ritual, and policy initiatives. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, Haynes describes how activists promoted Zambia’s Christian identity, whether by writing books and newspaper articles, posting on social media, building new monuments, praying for the nation, or lobbying for constitutional changes.

By tracing Zambian Christian nationalism’s internal contradictions and tensions, Haynes charts its ultimate failure, which she ascribes in part to institutional opposition from the civil service and Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations. She also points to what she terms its fatal theological flaw, going beyond the usual secular analysis in anthropology to engage with theological critiques of Christian nationalism. The example of Zambia offers the most fully realized expression of Christian nationalism outside the West, demonstrating what this movement can look like when given free political rein. With this book, Haynes provides an instructive account of an increasingly influential global movement.

The Page 99 Test: Moving by the Spirit.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Pericles"

New from Reaktion Books: Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric by Paul Cartledge.

About the book, from the publisher:

A nuanced portrait of ancient Athens’s boldest statesman and his enduring cultural legacy.

Pericles, the Athenian statesman, was a towering figure of his era, renowned for promoting Athenian democracy, shaping the Athenian Empire, and championing the arts, notably through the Parthenon’s creation. Born to aristocracy, he was a fervent democrat, a masterful demagogue in the ancient sense, and an eccentric in his personal life. Paul Cartledge explores Pericles’ life, examines Athenian history, and provides an insightful account of Pericles’ political career, his role in Athens’s building program, his intellectual connections, and his love life. Cartledge further considers Pericles’ reputation in the theater and how he has been represented over the centuries from antiquity to the present day. This book is a nuanced, illuminating, and lively portrayal of a remarkable politician.

Paul Cartledge is the A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge. His many books include Democracy: A Life and Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Growth Machines"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Growth Machines: On the Hollow Joys of Consumption in the Desert of Economic Life by Mark Joseph Stelzner.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative look at America’s compulsion to consume and our obsession’s surprising—and strange—origins.

In a capitalist society, people sell their labor to purchase staples like food, shelter, and anxiety medication. That’s the equation of everyday economic life that we’ve always been told is true. Except, is it really that simple anymore? No matter how unmaterialistic you may think you are, odds are that deep within is a drive to consume because it feels good: books you won’t read, clothes you won’t like and might wear even less, a replacement phone whose novelty runs out as quickly as its upgrade hits the market. But what drives this impulse?

In Growth Machines, Mark Joseph Stelzner shows how today’s consumers are now programmed by a US economy intent on infinite growth to work for goods they’ve been convinced they need and conditioned to want. Stelzner establishes the gaps between economic thinking and economic reality, arguing that consumption is no longer just a reflection of needs, but rather, it reflects a need for transaction—in many cases, a treat we seek out because it feels good. We work not only to be able to consume the essentials for living, but also to consume for consumption's sake. Yet such consumption doesn’t make us happier. Stelzner traces this strange nature of consumption to an environmental source: an economy that demands growth. To keep its economy pumping, the US must keep Americans consuming. This makes Stelzner’s book an uncomfortable reflection on how we internalize our economy. To be an American is to consume; to consume is what makes America.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Refugees Together and Citizens Apart"

New from Oxford University Press: Refugees Together and Citizens Apart: Control, Emotions, and Politics at the Palestinian Margins by Silvia Pasquetti.

About the book, from the publisher:

Grounded in long-term ethnography, Refugees Together and Citizens Apart examines how dispossessed Palestinians experience and seek to resist Israeli coercive differentiation through the study of two areas with intertwined histories of forced displacement: the segregated Palestinian districts of Lyd (renamed Lod), and the Jalazone refugee camp in the West Bank. This book brings together the securitized policing that Palestinians experience today in Lyd and the layers of militarism, humanitarianism, and Palestinian Authority rule that Palestinians are forced to negotiate in Jalazone. Melding Palestine Studies and Bourdieusian sociology of settler colonialism, the book connects coercive control, collective emotions, and political life, and argues that how coercive control is exercised, by whom, and against whom matters for how dispossessed Palestinians strive to (re)build affective and political worlds locally and globally.

Refugees Together and Citizens Apart compares the emotional climate of fear, distrust, stigma, and frustration at communal frailty in Lyd's segregated Palestinian districts with the defiant defensive togetherness in Jalazone, examining how these two emotional climates are conducive to different forms of political life. The book supplements the comparative lens with a cross-border perspective attentive not only to the historical but also familial and social ties between the two localities. Crossing Israeli borders of coercive control, this book highlights the role of legal status, place, and class in structures, experiences, and refusals of coercive differentiation. Along the way, it illuminates how the violent dismemberment of the Palestinian body politic is reproduced and the collective struggle for liberation articulated at the Palestinian margins.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Language of Terrorists"

New from Columbia University Press: The Language of Terrorists: Distinguishing Trolls from Violent Extremists by Julia Ebner.

About the book, from the publisher:

If someone posts a death threat or a violent manifesto online, will they cross over from words to deeds? Explicit threats, intimidation campaigns, and incitements to violence are no rarity among white nationalists, incels, and other racist and misogynist extremists. Yet it is often difficult to determine whether they pose genuine risks, since the boundaries between trolling and true violent intent can be blurry. How can we tell the difference between online bluster and terrorist threats?

Julia Ebner―an internationally acclaimed expert on online radicalization―offers a fresh approach, showing how language patterns reveal the potential for political violence. She investigates the psychological underpinnings of texts by terrorists such as Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof, Elliot Rodger, and Brenton Tarrant, offering statistical and qualitative contrasts with nonviolent political writing. Ebner finds striking similarities among their manifestos, including the fusion of personal identity with the group, visceral othering of outgroups, narratives of existential conflict, and the glorification of violence. Following these trails, she demonstrates that perpetrators of extremist violence inadvertently give away their intentions in what they say. Featuring vivid writing and actionable conclusions, The Language of Terrorists presents a new model of violent threat detection that can address pressing challenges faced by the international security and intelligence communities.

Visit Julia Ebner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fakers"

New from Oxford University Press: Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line by Rory Cormac.

About the book, from the publisher:

Intrigue, espionage, and deception. The truth behind 8,000 once top-secret files, so explosive their authors never dreamed they would be released.

Fakers reveals the rise and fall of the mavericks running Britain's Cold War forgery empire. Their secret mission was audacious: to disrupt and discredit adversaries across the world using phantom groups, fake sources, and counterfeit documents.

The leader was a remarkable character, wrestling with personal and professional dilemmas: Hans Welser. An Austrian refugee and one-time MI5 suspect interned behind barbed wire, Welser was a great survivor who rose to become special operations adviser to the Foreign Office, working hand in glove with MI6. His second in command was an eccentric, hard drinking, and high-flying journalist-turned-propagandist called John Rayner. Brought out of semi-retirement, for one final posting. Their team of bowler-hatted refugees, voluble ex-journalists, trailblazing women, and licentious literary sorts navigated loyalty and betrayal — both professionally and romantically — from the diplomats' attic, in the most sensitive part of the Foreign Office's secret propaganda department.

The newly declassified files expose an array of plots, some comically absurd and others dangerously controversial. The forgery empire impersonated everything from hippies and ghosts to Islamists and ballet composers in their campaign to smear hostile politicians, stir tensions among adversaries, and even stymie the career of a contentious British historian. All took place against a high stakes backdrop — both overseas as states competed beneath the looming threat of nuclear war and in the corridors of power at home where grey-suited bureaucrats circled, keen to shut down the team for good.

With timely insight into how propaganda works and how to respond to disinformation, Fakers is a thrilling journey into a secret world where nothing was as it seemed.

The Page 99 Test: Disrupt and Deny.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In a Land of Strangers"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: In a Land of Strangers: Northern Teachers in the Slave South by Michael T. Bernath.

About the book, from the publisher:

What makes the American South distinctive? Is it the location, the culture, the mindset—or a story Americans learned to tell about themselves? In a Land of Strangers contends that the idea of a “distinctive” South did not crystallize out of the Civil War or politics alone; instead, it took shape decades earlier through the everyday observations of thousands of Northern teachers who lived and worked there from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War. Young, white, educated, and marked as outsiders, these men and women occupied an unusual position of trust within Southern households, classrooms, and plantations, granting them rare, intimate access to the inner workings of slaveholding society.

Michael T. Bernath offers the first full-length study of this vast group of teachers—the most sustained point of contact between North and South in the antebellum era. Bewildered, curious, and constantly translating the South for themselves and audiences back home, these educators described a strange and profoundly different place in their diaries and letters. Collectively, they fixed a shared image of the South in the national imagination. In this book, Bernath reshapes our understanding of sectional identity, American culture, and why the idea of a distinctive South endures.

The Page 99 Test: Confederate Minds.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Joy to the World"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Joy to the World: The Performance of Collective Pleasure by Gary Alan Fine.

About the book, from the publisher:

A celebration and exploration of the idea of pleasure and the unique role it serves in bringing individuals and communities together.

There are innumerable ways to take pleasure in life: a bite of cake in the late afternoon, a walk in the warm springtime air after a long winter, a listen to the opening chords of your favorite song. But each of these pleasures is transformed by the presence of others. In Joy to the World, sociologist Gary Alan Fine takes up one of the major themes of his lifetime of work: pleasure. Fine gives us the conceptual basis for a sociology of pleasure: a joyous view of the world that, at times, inspires us, through expectations of interaction, shared cultures, and routine practices that make life worth living in community.

Fine focuses on the impact of group relations as the platform for satisfaction, emphasizing the power of communities of practice. While pleasures may be enjoyed alone, the pleasure that occurs in social spaces performs a unique function in our personal and social lives; they help us understand ourselves as individuals who are part of a group. What is pleasurably transgressive in one context might seem inappropriate, cruel, or just plain nonsensical in another, and these shades of difference serve to solidify the bonds of the group.

Joy to the World urges us to understand what draws us together as well as to appreciate what drives us apart. Our joys, as well as our challenges, help us to be a part of a caring, conscientious, committed community.

The Page 99 Test: Players and Pawns.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The People’s Justice"

New from Princeton University Press: The People’s Justice: Revolutionary Law and the Founding of the French Republic by Carla Hesse.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major new interpretation of the French Revolution that brings to life the criminal tribunals at the heart of the Republic’s political culture

In The People’s Justice, Carla Hesse offers a sweeping reappraisal of political violence in the French Revolution. From Charles Dickens to Hannah Arendt, the Revolution of 1789–1799 in France has been depicted as the bloodiest of the eighteenth-century democratic revolutions. Through extensive new archival research, Hesse shows that, to the contrary, what set the French Revolution apart was neither the scale nor the intensity of its violence but rather the ubiquity of its political tribunals and the use of novel forms of criminal law and procedure as a means of adjudicating political conflict.

More than 5,000 political trials were prosecuted by the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris alone, and, with an acquittal rate of more than 50 percent, these were neither perfunctory nor foregone in their outcomes. They had a repressive function, to be sure, but more importantly, they played a critical role in founding a republic in France and in shaping its social and political norms. Through jury deliberation, public witnessing, and media coverage, these political trials legitimated a republic and the revolutionary struggle that brought it into being. They were animated less by class warfare, factional hatreds, or utopian ideology than by a patriotic, albeit tragic, effort to hold fellow citizens accountable. Over the course of the last two centuries, France, of course, has successfully established itself as a constitutional regime, but this constitutional tradition is still rooted in and haunted by its revolutionary past. Since 1793, the French Republic has, to some extent or another, kept itself alive by keeping itself perpetually on trial.

--Marshal Zeringue