"Worse than War"

New from Princeton University Press: Worse than War: The Global Costs of Violence by Anke Hoeffler and James D. Fearon.

About the book, from the publisher:

An empirically powerful account of why interpersonal violence across the globe exacts a far greater cumulative cost on society than war and terrorism combined

Civil wars, interstate wars, and terrorism receive a great deal of media and policy attention, for good reasons. By contrast, the major forms of interpersonal violence—homicide, intimate partner violence, and severe physical punishment of children—generally have a much lower profile.

In Worse than War, Anke Hoeffler and James Fearon assemble and analyze the data on the global prevalence and costs of collective and interpersonal violence. They show that interpersonal violence is vastly more widespread and imposes far greater societal costs than collective violence. Wars tend to be concentrated in a small number of countries, and often relatively small areas within them. By contrast, almost all countries have rates of homicide and nonfatal assault, particularly of women and children, that far exceed the global average rates of death and injury in wars and terrorism.

Hoeffler and Fearon argue that high rates of interpersonal violence are not simply fixed by culture or other structural factors. Evidence from a host of program evaluations, natural experiments, and longer-term social movements make it clear that rates of homicide, intimate partner violence, and severe physical punishment of children can be reduced if they are effectively targeted. Interventions that promote peace in civil war–torn countries are also possible, but the opportunities are few and increasingly far between. Drawing on ideas and methods from many fields—economics, political science, public health, psychology, sociology, and others—the authors show that money and policy efforts directed toward reducing interpersonal violence thus merit higher priority both within countries and by international donors.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Gods Are Wise"

New from Oxford University Press: The Gods Are Wise: Yorùbá Sacred Orature and Environmental Sustainability by Olúwábùnmi Tọ́pẹ́ Bernard.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book does not suggest the "ultimate solution" to global environmental problems or even imply that there is only one way of protecting the environment. Instead, Olúwábùnmi Tope Bernard presents a previously untapped exploration of the resources within the Yorùbá Òrìsà worship, sacred orature, ritual practices, and performances that promote environmental sustainability.

Antifragility is a significant theme in this book. It refers to a system's capability to not only be resilient or able to withstand volatility, but also benefit from that which stresses it. Before a system becomes antifragile, it must have undergone attacks which would make it resilient. Bernard explores Yorùbá literature, worldview, philosophy, religion, and measures taken to preserve the environment and keep it antifragile. In doing so, The Gods Are Wise expresses an aspiration that these measures and practices may be adopted by other religions and societies looking to pursue environmental preservation.

Olúwábùnmi Tọ́pẹ́ Bernard holds a Ph.D. in Yorùbá Language and Literature from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, where she has taught Yorùbá literature and culture for over 10 years. She has won many prestigious fellowships. Currently, she is part of a team working on an ERC-funded project at Ghent University, Belgium on Yorùbá Print Culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Deadly Divide"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border by Mary E. Mendoza.

About the book, from the publisher:

When most people picture the US-Mexico border, they think of walls, fences, concrete, and wire. But in this first history of how the environment influenced physical boundary-making between the two nations, Mary E. Mendoza focuses on how the natural world shaped ideas about race, gender, and security. In so doing, she unearths surprising origins of the modern-day immigration debate.

Mexican migrants have historically been seen by some in the US as invasive and less than human. But actual invasive pests are part of this story. Deadly Divide shows how cattle ticks, the body louse, foot-and-mouth disease, and the female Mexican fruit fly contributed to the to the ever-increasing racialization of Mexican migrants, which in turn led to increased policing, criminalization, and fears about immigrants infiltrating the US. As Mendoza follows the stories of migrants in relation to various species, Indigenous peoples, and officials on both sides of the border, she argues that the need for mobility overpowered both governments’ laws, fences, and agents. At the same time, the border’s symbolic power became a source of terror not only for migrants who try to cross into the US but for those who feel they cannot cross back, making the US a nation that suspends immigrants between two worlds.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making All the World America"

New from the University of Pennsylvania Press: Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery by Timothy Bowers Vasko.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative new account of the ideological framework undergirding early modern imperial expansion: the Doctrine of Discovery

Making All the World America offers a new account of the ideological framework undergirding early modern imperial expansion: the Doctrine of Discovery, which held that the first arrival of a European power among the lands and peoples of the Western Hemisphere granted the right to govern the regions that they claimed to have “discovered.”

While scholars have maintained that the doctrine operated through the suppression of Indigenous peoples, Timothy Bowers Vasko contends that, on the contrary, the doctrine’s ideological work actually depended on the recognition of Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Between 1492 and 1690, the Spanish and English architects of the doctrine sought to justify European-Christian empire through the incorporation of Indigenous peoples into colonial frameworks as religious, political, property-owning subjects. Examining the works of Peter Martyr, Thomas More, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Richard Hakluyt, and John Locke, among others, Vasko shows how these theorists leveraged and referenced knowledge of Indigenous societies and religious traditions in the Americas as a way of legitimizing imperial claims to the Americas. The doctrine’s reliance on this production of Native information enabled the emergence of a new class of Indigenous intellectuals such as Garcilaso de la Vega and Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who provided essential ethnographic material and exercised considerable influence on Western thought―especially the political theory of John Locke―in surprising and overlooked ways.

Providing a provocative explanation of impasses and frustrations within struggles for Indigenous rights and the critique of imperialism more broadly, Making All the World America shows how “the native” was not eliminated but rather produced by colonial power.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Comrades Estranged"

New from Stanford University Press: Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf by Alex Boodrookas.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1975, Kuwaiti workers orchestrated arguably the most powerful citizen-led movement for noncitizen rights in the history of the Persian Gulf. Their efforts built on decades of wide-ranging struggle over the meanings and outlines of citizenship. During the twentieth century, anticolonial nationalists, pro-democracy reformers, feminists, and labor organizers joined forces to fight for a more equitable citizenship regime. In so doing, they won a remarkable series of victories: political independence, constitutional rights, and oil nationalization, reshaping not just Kuwait, but the global petroleum order. Comrades Estranged reframes the history of labor activism, citizenship, and decolonization in Persian Gulf by centering the history of social movements—especially organized labor. Alex Boodrookas traces how workers and their allies shaped the world-historic transformations witnessed across the region: the consolidation of British sovereignty, formation of autocratic states, inrush of hydrocarbon wealth, onset of decolonization, and rise of both mass migration and mass politics. But unions failed to incorporate noncitizens into their movement, and as Boodrookas argues, this fatally undermined the movements' strength. The contradictions of nationalist and internationalist visions proved insurmountable. Comrades Estranged thus sheds light on both the power, and the limits, of citizenship and the nation-state as the framework for political action.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Luckless"

New from Oxford University Press: Luckless: The Idea of Luck in Ancient Greek Thought by Daniel Schillinger.

About the book, from the publisher:

What is luck? What is the significance of luck for our ethical and political lives? Could it be the case that luck is an intoxicating illusion, which threatens to obscure the true explanations of human action, excuse wrongdoing or cowardice, provoke powerful emotions, and cloud judgment?

Schillinger's original interpretation of the idea of luck in ancient Greek thought challenges both scholars of ancient Greek texts and theorists of luck in the present. While many contemporaries approach luck as something "out there" in the world that explains why some human beings flourish while others suffer or perish, Schillinger argues that luck is a psychological phenomenon: what we have in mind when we speak of "luck" are the intellectual and emotional reactions of human beings as they run up against the limits of their knowledge and power. Schillinger returns to the Greeks because they fully examined this phenomenon, revealing the roots of the idea of luck in the psyche, its (often confused) role in ethical judgments of praise and blame, and its salience as a rhetorical trope used by statesmen and demagogues. His analysis summons unfamiliar perspectives on these issues in ancient Greek thought―perspectives that are acutely skeptical and attuned to both the realities of politics and the complexities of the human soul.

Visit Daniel Schillinger's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Chains of Command"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy by Brian Callaci.

About the book, from the publisher:

A surprising look at the big business of owning small businesses and what America’s franchise economy means for its workers.

Walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the United States, and it will be identical to every other McDonald’s in the country. Yet, that particular store is almost certainly owned and operated by an “independent” franchisee. While McDonald’s presents an image of centralized uniformity to the consumer, it shows a different face to the small business owners operating its stores under its control and the workers preparing its product to its standards. How then does McDonald’s—and its big business peers—manage to be two things at once?

In this revelatory work, economist Brian Callaci shows how franchisors have altered the legal treatment of corporations in their favor through a decades-long crusade of lobbying and litigation. Their efforts subsequently unleashed a slew of legal and economic sins upon the US economy and labor force, allowing multinational corporations to control continent-spanning empires while outsourcing employment and scapegoating legal responsibilities onto small businesses. The result: the unfettered growth of some of America’s most recognizable businesses, at the aggregate expense of America’s workers.

Remarkable in both its scale and synthesis, Callaci’s story is the first chronicle of this business movement—initially resisted by US courts before experiencing a dramatic reversal of fortune after decades of campaigning by some of America’s most established entrepreneurs. An urgent and erudite history, Chains of Command reveals how the US labor market was tamed one small business at a time.

Visit Brian Callaci's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Occupation to Integration"

New from LSU Press: From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1955 by Drew Flanagan.

About the book, from the publisher:

After the collapse of the National Socialist regime in May 1945, France became one of four principal occupying powers in a defeated Germany. Within their zone of occupation along the Upper and Middle Rhine, French occupiers participated in the Allied project to remake German society. In the process, they confronted the long history of Franco-German rivalry in the region and their country’s diminished power in the wake of World War II.

From Occupation to Integration explores how French ideas about civilization and the civilizing process shaped the practice of occupation in the French Zone and the early stages of European integration. The French Zone was set apart from the other Allied zones by the occupiers’ belief that Nazi “barbarism” was deeply rooted in German culture and history. In seeking to transform the Germans along their border into acceptable partners for France within a united western Europe, the French occupiers applied aspects of France’s universal “civilizing” mission, adapting strategies and practices developed in the country’s overseas colonies to fit a European population.

Whether implementing counterinsurgency methods developed in French North Africa in the pacification and control of their zone or attempting to address what they perceived as the deep-rooted flaws of German culture through reeducation and propaganda, the French applied their civilizational thinking, using that vision to justify and guide the first postwar attempts at cross-border economic integration. Through both conflicts and cooperation with the German population, the French in occupied Germany negotiated a shared vision of western European civilization that they hoped would ensure French leadership in Europe.

In this engaging study, Drew Flanagan deftly details and analyzes the entanglement between the Europeanization of the French Zone and decolonization in France’s empire, prompting readers to consider the continued impact of colonial and imperial ideas and practices on contemporary Europe and the European Union.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Twilight of the Dons"

New from Princeton University Press: Twilight of the Dons: British Intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism by Colin Kidd.

About the book, from the publisher:

The rise to power and eventual fall from grace of the Oxbridge intellectual

After World War II, the academics of Oxford and Cambridge—the dons—formed an unusual kind of university-based, establishment-connected intelligentsia. Unlike intellectuals in other countries, often anti-establishment outsiders, the dons of Oxbridge enjoyed secure and even cosy connections with those in power. In Twilight of the Dons, Colin Kidd examines the golden age of Britain’s Oxford- and Cambridge-based intellectual elites—and how their influence waned when Oxbridge’s links to the establishment began to fray. Kidd explores a series of episodes and themes that range from the dons’ confrontations with student protesters in the 1960s to their reaction to the rise of Thatcherism in the 1980s. The cast of characters includes many of twentieth-century Britain’s most famous intellectuals—Elizabeth Anscombe, Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Leach, J. H. Plumb and Hugh Trevor-Roper, to name just a few.

Kidd describes the multiple important roles played by dons in World War II, the countercultural force of convert Catholicism and the strange phenomenon of Tory Marxism. He examines the dons’ attitudes towards America and France—as seen in their engagement in the debates over the Kennedy assassination and the awkward reception of Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology. When Oxbridge came under assault, it was first by a modernising, technocratic Left in the early 1960s, then by student radicals in the late 1960s and finally by the Thatcherite Right—in whose rise, Kidd shows, some dons were complicit. As deference to Oxbridge intelligentsia declined, a reassessment of the place of dons in British public life began.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rise of Christian Kingship in the Early Medieval West"

New from Oxford University Press: The Rise of Christian Kingship in the Early Medieval West by Conor O'Brien.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the course of the early Middle Ages, Christianity changed politics and politics changed Christianity. Christianity emerged in the pagan Roman Empire and early Christians, consequently, developed a 'secular' understanding of politics, where the religious identity of their ruler was irrelevant; by the time the synthesis of early medieval Christianity was achieved in the ninth-century Carolingian Empire, however, a new model of 'Christian kingship' had emerged, linking the legitimacy of a ruler to the quality of their Christianity. Conor O'Brien traces the slow, complex, and only ever partial way in which the concept of 'Christian kingship' arose in the Latin West over the five centuries up to 840.

Taking a comparative approach that is sensitive to regional variation and the interconnected nature of the post-imperial Latin West, the book presents a novel overview of the transformations of both religion and politics in the early Middle Ages. Drawing on recent anthropology and global history approaches to sacred kingship, it takes seriously both continuity and change over time to show how the relationship between early medieval Christianity and kingship was, above all, driven by people's search for good government. Christian kingship arose in societies where it proved a useful mechanism for addressing the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. In doing so, The Rise of Christian Kingship in the Early Medieval West provides not just a rich reconstruction, grounded in the primary evidence, of changes in political thought and practice in the early Middle Ages, but also contributes to wider historical discussions about secularity, sacred kingship and the relationship between politics and religion.

--Marshal Zeringue