Saturday, February 29, 2020

"Criminalizing Sex"

New from Oxford University Press: Criminalizing Sex: A Unified Liberal Theory by Stuart P. Green.

About the book, from the publisher:
Starting in the latter part of the 20th century, the law of sexual offenses, especially in the West, began to reflect a striking divergence. On the one hand, the law became significantly more punitive in its approach to sexual conduct that is nonconsensual, as evidenced by a major expansion in the definition of rape and sexual assault, and the creation of new offenses like sex trafficking, child grooming, and revenge porn. On the other hand, it became markedly more permissive in how it dealt with conduct that is consensual, a trend that can be seen, for example, in the legalization or decriminalization of sodomy, adultery, and adult pornography. This book explores the conceptual and normative implications of this divergence.

At the heart of the book is a consideration of a deeply contested question: How should a liberal system of criminal law adequately protect individuals in their right not to be subjected to sexual contact against their will, while also safeguarding their right to engage in (private consensual) sexual conduct in which they do wish to participate? The book develops a framework for harmonizing these goals in the context of a wide range of nonconsensual, consensual, and aconsensual sexual offenses (hence, the "unified" nature of the theory) -- including rape and sexual assault in a variety of forms, sexual harassment, voyeurism, indecent exposure, incest, sadomasochistic assault, prostitution, bestiality, and necrophilia. Intellectually rigorous, fair-minded, and deeply humane, Criminalizing Sex offers a fascinating discussion of a wide range of moral and legal puzzles, arising out of real-world cases of alleged sexual misconduct - a discussion that is all the more urgent in the age of #MeToo.
Visit Stuart Green's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 28, 2020

"Ending Book Hunger"

New from Yale University Press: Ending Book Hunger: Access to Print Across Barriers of Class and Culture by Lea Shaver.

About the book, from the publisher:
An eye-opening exploration of “book hunger”—the unmet need for books in underserved communities—and efforts to universalize access to print

Worldwide, billions of people suffer from book hunger. For them, books are too few, too expensive, or do not even exist in their languages. Lea Shaver argues that this is an educational crisis: the most reliable predictor of children’s achievement is the size of their families’ book collections.

This book highlights innovative nonprofit solutions to expand access to print. First Book, for example, offers diverse books to teachers at bargain prices. Imagination Library mails picture books to support early literacy in book deserts. Worldreader promotes mobile reading in developing countries by turning phones into digital libraries. Pratham Books creates open access stories that anyone may freely copy, adapt, and translate. Can such efforts expand to bring books to the next billion would-be readers? Shaver reveals the powerful roles of copyright law and licensing, and sounds the clarion call for readers to contribute their own talents to the fight against book hunger.
--Marshal Zeringue

"Taking America Back for God"

New from Oxford University Press: Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry.

About the book, from the publisher:
Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? Why do a sizeable proportion of Americans continue to oppose women's equality in the workplace and in the home?

To answer these questions, Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is-and should be-a Christian nation. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in American public life, but Christian nationalism is about far more than whether the phrase "under God" belongs in the pledge of allegiance. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone--Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women recognizes their "proper" place in society. The first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, Taking America Back for God illustrates the influence of Christian nationalism on today's most contentious social and political issues.

Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues-very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important-and least understood-forces shaping American politics.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 27, 2020

"The Chattering Mind"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk by Samuel McCormick.

About the book, from the publisher:
From Plato’s contempt for “the madness of the multitude” to Kant’s lament for “the great unthinking mass,” the history of Western thought is riddled with disdain for ordinary collective life. But it was not until Kierkegaard developed the term chatter that this disdain began to focus on the ordinary communicative practices that sustain this form of human togetherness.

The Chattering Mind explores the intellectual tradition inaugurated by Kierkegaard’s work, tracing the conceptual history of everyday talk from his formative account of chatter to Heidegger’s recuperative discussion of “idle talk” to Lacan’s culminating treatment of “empty speech”—and ultimately into our digital present, where small talk on various social media platforms now yields big data for tech-savvy entrepreneurs.

In this sense, The Chattering Mind is less a history of ideas than a book in search of a usable past. It is a study of how the modern world became anxious about everyday talk, figured in terms of the intellectual elites who piqued this anxiety, and written with an eye toward recent dilemmas of digital communication and culture. By explaining how a quintessentially unproblematic form of human communication became a communication problem in itself, McCormick shows how its conceptual history is essential to our understanding of media and communication today.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

"History's Fools"

New from Oxford University Press: History's Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism and the Revenge of Politics by David Martin Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:
The end of the Cold War announced a new world order. Liberal democracy prevailed, ideological conflict abated, and world politics set off for the promised land of a secular, cosmopolitan, market-friendly end of history. Or so it seemed. Thirty years later, this unipolar worldview-- premised on shared values, open markets, open borders and abstract social justice--lies in tatters. What happened?

David Martin Jones examines the progressive ideas behind liberal Western practice since the end of the twentieth century, at home and abroad. This mentality, he argues, took an excessively long view of the future and a short view of the past, abandoning politics in favour of ideas, and failing to address or understand rejection of liberal norms by non-Western 'others'. He explores the inevitable consequences of this liberal hubris: political and economic confusion, with the chaotic results we have seen. Finally, he advocates a return to more sceptical political thinking-- with prudent statecraft abroad, and defence of political order at home--in order to rescue the West from its widely advertised demise.

History's Fools is a timely account of the failed project to shape the world in the West's image, and an incisive call for a return to 'true' politics.
Visit David Martin Jones's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

"Ballet Class: An American History"

New from Oxford University Press: Ballet Class: An American History by Melissa R. Klapper.

About the book, from the publisher:
Surveying the state of American ballet in a 1913 issue of McClure's Magazine, author Willa Cather reported that few girls expressed any interest in taking ballet class and that those who did were hard-pressed to find anything other than dingy studios and imperious teachers. One hundred years later, ballet is everywhere. There are ballet companies large and small across the United States; ballet is commonly featured in film, television, literature, and on social media; professional ballet dancers are spokespeople for all kinds of products; nail polish companies market colors like "Ballet Slippers" and "Prima Ballerina;" and, most importantly, millions of American children have taken ballet class. Beginning with the arrival of Russian dancers like Anna Pavlova, who first toured the United States on the eve of World War I, Ballet Class: An American History explores the growth of ballet from an ancillary part of nineteenth-century musical theater, opera, and vaudeville to the quintessential extracurricular activity it is today, pursued by countless children nationwide and an integral part of twentieth-century American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality.

A social history, Ballet Class takes a new approach to the very popular subject of ballet and helps ground an art form often perceived to be elite in the experiences of regular, everyday people who spent time in barre-lined studios across the United States. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, including children's books, memoirs by professional dancers and choreographers, pedagogy manuals, and dance periodicals, in addition to archival collections and oral histories, this pathbreaking study provides a deeply-researched national perspective on the history and significance of recreational ballet class in the United States and its influence on many facets of children's lives, including gender norms, consumerism, body image, children's literature, extracurricular activities, and popular culture.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 24, 2020

"Unmanning"

New from Rutgers University Press: Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare by Katherine Chandler.

About the book, from the publisher:
Unmanning studies the conditions that create unmanned platforms in the United States through a genealogy of experimental, pilotless planes flown between 1936 and 1992. Characteristics often attributed to the drone—including machine-like control, enmity and remoteness—are achieved by displacements between humans and machines that shape a mediated theater of war. Rather than primarily treating the drone as a result of the war on terror, this book examines contemporary targeted killing through a series of failed experiments to develop unmanned flight in the twentieth century. The human, machine and media parts of drone aircraft are organized to make an ostensibly not human framework for war that disavows its political underpinnings as technological advance. These experiments are tied to histories of global control, cybernetics, racism and colonialism. Drone crashes and failures call attention to the significance of human action in making technopolitics that comes to be opposed to “man” and the paradoxes at their basis.
Katherine Fehr Chandler is an assistant professor in the Culture and Politics Program at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

--Marshal Zeringue

"China's Western Horizon"

New from Oxford University Press: China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia by Daniel Markey.

About the book, from the publisher:
Under the ambitious leadership of President Xi Jinping, China is zealously transforming its wealth and economic power into potent tools of global political influence. But China's foreign policy initiatives, even the vaunted "Belt and Road," will be shaped and redefined as they confront the ground realities of local and regional politics outside China. In China's Western Horizon, Daniel S. Markey, a scholar of international relations and former member of the U.S. State Department's policy planning staff, previews how China's efforts are likely to play out along its "western horizon:" across the swath of Eurasia that includes South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Drawing from extensive interviews, travels, and historical research, Markey describes how perceptions of China vary widely within states such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Iran. Powerful and privileged groups across the region often expect to profit from their connections to China, while others fear commercial and political losses. Similarly, Eurasian statesmen are scrambling to harness China's energy purchases, arms sales, and infrastructure investment. These leaders are working with China in order to outdo their strategic competitors, including India and Saudi Arabia, and simultaneously negotiating relations with Russia and America. On balance, Markey anticipates that China's deepening involvement will play to the advantage of regional strongmen and exacerbate the political tensions within and among Eurasian states. To make the most of America's limited influence in China's backyard (and elsewhere), he argues that U.S. policymakers should pursue a selective and localized strategy to serve America's specific aims in Eurasia and to better compete with China over the long run.
Visit Daniel Markey's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 23, 2020

"Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things"

New from The MIT Press: Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things: The Politics of Infrastructure Security by Ryan Ellis.

About the book, from the publisher:
An examination of how post-9/11 security concerns have transformed the public view and governance of infrastructure.

After September 11, 2001, infrastructures—the mundane systems that undergird much of modern life—were suddenly considered “soft targets” that required immediate security enhancements. Infrastructure protection quickly became the multibillion dollar core of a new and expansive homeland security mission. In this book, Ryan Ellis examines how the long shadow of post-9/11 security concerns have remade and reordered infrastructure, arguing that it has been a stunning transformation. Ellis describes the way workers, civic groups, city councils, bureaucrats, and others used the threat of terrorism as a political resource, taking the opportunity not only to address security vulnerabilities but also to reassert a degree of public control over infrastructure.

Nearly two decades after September 11, the threat of terrorism remains etched into the inner workings of infrastructures through new laws, regulations, technologies, and practices. Ellis maps these changes through an examination of three U.S. infrastructures: the postal system, the freight rail network, and the electric power grid. He describes, for example, how debates about protecting the mail from anthrax and other biological hazards spiraled into larger arguments over worker rights, the power of large-volume mailers, and the fortunes of old media in a new media world; how environmental activists leveraged post-9/11 security fears over shipments of hazardous materials to take on the rail industry and the chemical lobby; and how otherwise marginal federal regulators parlayed new mandatory cybersecurity standards for the electric power industry into a robust system of accountability.
--Marshal Zeringue

"Us versus Them"

New from Oxford University Press: Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods by Jan Doering.

About the book, from the publisher:
Crime and gentrification are hot button issues that easily polarize racially diverse neighborhoods. How do residents, activists, and politicians navigate the thorny politics of race as they fight crime or resist gentrification? And do conflicts over competing visions of neighborhood change necessarily divide activists into racially homogeneous camps, or can they produce more complex alliances and divisions? In Us versus Them, Jan Doering answers these questions through an in-depth study of two Chicago neighborhoods. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork, Doering examines how activists and community leaders clashed and collaborated as they launched new initiatives, built coalitions, appeased critics, and discredited opponents. At the heart of these political maneuvers, he uncovers a ceaseless battle over racial meanings that unfolded as residents strove to make local initiatives and urban change appear racially benign or malignant. A thoughtful and clear-eyed contribution to the field, Us versus Them reveals the deep impact that competing racial meanings have on the fabric of community and the direction of neighborhood change.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 22, 2020

"The Journey Before Us"

New from Rutgers University Press: The Journey Before Us: First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College by Laura Nichols.

About the book, from the publisher:
More students are enrolling in college than ever before in U.S. history. Yet, many never graduate. In The Journey Before Us, Laura Nichols examines why this is by sharing the experiences of aspiring first-generation college students as they move from middle-school to young adulthood. By following the educational trajectories and transitions of Latinx, mainly second-generation immigrant students and analyzing national data, Nichols explores the different paths that students take and the factors that make a difference. The interconnected role of schools, neighborhoods, policy, employment, advocates, identity, social class, and family reveal what must change to address the “college completion crisis.” Appropriate for anyone wanting to understand their own educational journey as well as students, teachers, counselors, school administrators, scholars, and policymakers, The Journey Before Us outlines what is needed so that education can once again be a means of social mobility for those who would be the first in their families to graduate from college.
Laura Nichols is an associate professor of sociology at Santa Clara University in California. She is the co-editor of Undocumented and In College: Students and Institutions in a Climate of National Hostility.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 21, 2020

"Contentious Minds"

New from Oxford University Press: Contentious Minds: How Talk and Ties Sustain Activism by Florence Passy and Gian-Andrea Monsch.

About the book, from the publisher:
Why does the mind matter for collective action? In Contentious Minds, Florence Passy and Gian-Andrea Monsch explain how cognitive and relational processes allow activists participate in and sustain their commitment to activism. Based on a wide array of survey and interview data with activists engaged in protest, volunteering and unions, they highlight how a commitment community develop shared values, identities, and meanings through interaction. The interplay of talk and ties enables stories and meanings to be constructed and exchanged, conveys worldviews and intentions that are modified through ongoing conversations, and reinforces and maintains commitment over time. Passy and Monsch's ambitious work brings the mind and culture back into the study of social movements and highlights the crucial role social networks play in constructing the communities and shared values that sustain commitment.
Florence Passy is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Gian-Andrea Monsch is a Senior Researcher at FORS, the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences based at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Midlife Crisis"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Midlife Crisis: The Feminist Origins of a Chauvinist Cliche by Susanne Schmidt.

About the book, from the publisher:
The phrase “midlife crisis” today conjures up images of male indulgence and irresponsibility—an affluent, middle-aged man speeding off in a red sports car with a woman half his age—but before it become a gendered cliché, it gained traction as a feminist concept. Journalist Gail Sheehy used the term to describe a midlife period when both men and women might reassess their choices and seek a change in life. Sheehy’s definition challenged the double standard of middle age—where aging is advantageous to men and detrimental to women—by viewing midlife as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Widely popular in the United States and internationally, the term was quickly appropriated by psychological and psychiatric experts and redefined as a male-centered, masculinist concept.

The first book-length history of this controversial concept, Susanne Schmidt’s Midlife Crisis recounts the surprising origin story of the midlife debate and traces its movement from popular culture into academia. Schmidt’s engaging narrative telling of the feminist construction—and ensuing antifeminist backlash—of the midlife crisis illuminates a lost legacy of feminist thought, shedding important new light on the history of gender and American social science in the 1970s and beyond.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 20, 2020

"Sensible Politics"

New from Oxford University Press: Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations by William A. Callahan.

About the book, from the publisher:
Visual images are everywhere in international politics. But how are we to understand them? In Sensible Politics, William A. Callahan uses his expertise in theory and filmmaking to explore not only what visuals mean, but also how visuals can viscerally move and connect us in "affective communities of sense." The book's rich analysis of visual images (photographs, film, art) and visual artifacts (maps, veils, walls, gardens, cyberspace) shows how critical scholarship needs to push beyond issues of identity and security to appreciate the creative politics of social-ordering and world-ordering. Here "sensible politics" isn't just sensory, but looks beyond icons and ideology to the affective politics of everyday life. It challenges our Eurocentric understanding of international politics by exploring the meaning and impact of visuals from Asia and the Middle East. Sensible Politics offers a unique approach to politics that allows us to not only think visually, but also feel visually-and creatively act visually for a multisensory appreciation of politics.
The Page 99 Test: China: The Pessoptimist Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

"Revolution Goes East"

New from Cornell University Press: Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism by Tatiana Linkhoeva.

About the book, from the publisher:
Revolution Goes East is an intellectual history that applies a novel global perspective to the classic story of the rise of communism and the various reactions it provoked in Imperial Japan. Tatiana Linkhoeva demonstrates how contemporary discussions of the Russian Revolution, its containment, and the issue of imperialism played a fundamental role in shaping Japan's imperial society and state.

In this bold approach, Linkhoeva explores attitudes toward the Soviet Union and the communist movement among the Japanese military and politicians, as well as interwar leftist and rightist intellectuals and activists. Her book draws on extensive research in both published and archival documents, including memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, political pamphlets, and Comintern archives. Revolution Goes East presents us with a compelling argument that the interwar Japanese Left replicated the Orientalist outlook of Marxism-Leninism in its relationship with the rest of Asia, and that this proved to be its undoing. Furthermore, Linkhoeva shows that Japanese imperial anticommunism was based on geopolitical interests for the stability of the empire rather than on fear of communist ideology.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

"Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are"

New from Oxford University Press: Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are by Abigail C. Saguy.

About the book, from the publisher:
While people used to conceal the fact that they were gay or lesbian to protect themselves from stigma and discrimination, it is now commonplace for people to "come out" and encourage others to do so as well. Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are systematically examines how coming out has moved beyond gay and lesbian rights groups and how different groups wrestle with the politics of coming out in their efforts to resist stigma and enact social change. It shows how different experiences and disparate risks of disclosure shape these groups' collective strategies. Through scores of interviews with LGBTQ+ people, undocumented immigrant youth, fat acceptance activists, Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, and sexual harassment lawyers and activists in the era of the #MeToo movement, Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are explains why so many different groups gravitate toward the term coming out. By focusing on the personal and political resonance of coming out, it provides a novel way to understand how identity politics work in America today.
Abigail Saguy is Professor of Sociology and of Gender Studies at UCLA. She has been a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University (2000-2002) and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2008-2009). She is the author of What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne (2003) and What's Wrong with Fat (2013), which received Honorable Mention for the Association for Humanist Sociology's Best Book Award. She has also written scores of scientific journal articles and several op-eds published in leading news outlets.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote"

New from Simon & Schuster: Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote by Ellen Carol DuBois.

About the book, from the publisher:
Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists.

Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight into the 20th century, and she shows how African American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them.

DuBois explains how suffragists built a determined coalition of moderate lobbyists and radical demonstrators in forging a strategy of winning voting rights in crucial states to set the stage for securing suffrage for all American women in the Constitution. In vivid prose DuBois describes suffragists’ final victories in Congress and state legislatures, culminating in the last, most difficult ratification, in Tennessee.

DuBois follows women’s efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women.

Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote is sure to become the authoritative account of one of the great episodes in the history of American democracy.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 17, 2020

"Pasteur's Empire"

New from Oxford University Press: Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World by Aro Velmet.

About the book, from the publisher:
In the 1890s, the Pasteur Institute established a network of laboratories that stretched across France's empire, from Indochina to West Africa. Quickly, researchers at these laboratories became central to France's colonial project, helping officials monopolize industries, develop public health codes, establish disease containment measures, and arbitrate political conflicts around questions of labor rights, public works, and free association.

Pasteur's Empire shows how the scientific prestige of the Pasteur Institute came to depend on its colonial laboratories, and how, conversely, the institutes themselves became central to colonial politics. This book argues that decisions as small as the isolation of a particular yeast or the choice of a laboratory animal could have tremendous consequences on the lives of Vietnamese and African subjects, who became the consumers of new vaccines or industrially fermented intoxicants. Simultaneously, global forces, such as the rise of international standards and American competitors pushed Pastorians to their imperial laboratories, where they could conduct studies that researchers in France considered too difficult or controversial. Chapters follow not just Alexandre Yersin's studies of the plague, Charles Nicolle's public health work in Tunisia, and Jean Laigret's work on yellow fever in Dakar, but also the activities of Vietnamese doctors, African students and politicians, Syrian traders, and Chinese warlords. It argues that a specifically Pastorian understanding of microbiology shaped French colonial politics across the world, allowing French officials to promise hygienic modernity while actually committing to little development. In bringing together global history, imperial history, and science and technology studies, Pasteur's Empire deftly integrates micro and macro analyses into one connected narrative that sheds critical light on a key era in the history of medicine.
--Marshal Zeringue

"Promiscuous Knowledge"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History by Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters.

About the book, from the publisher:
Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google, once compared the perfect search engine to “the mind of God.” As the modern face of promiscuous knowledge, however, Google’s divine omniscience traffics in news, maps, weather, and porn indifferently. This book, begun by the late Kenneth Cmiel and completed by his close friend John Durham Peters, provides a genealogy of the information age from its early origins up to the reign of Google. It examines how we think about fact, image, and knowledge, centering on the different ways that claims of truth are complicated when they pass to a larger public. To explore these ideas, Cmiel and Peters focus on three main periods—the late nineteenth century, 1925 to 1945, and 1975 to 2000, with constant reference to the present. Cmiel’s original text examines the growing gulf between politics and aesthetics in postmodern architecture, the distancing of images from everyday life in magical realist cinema, the waning support for national betterment through taxation, and the inability of a single presentational strategy to contain the social whole. Peters brings Cmiel’s study into the present moment, providing the backstory to current controversies about the slipperiness of facts in a digital age. A hybrid work from two innovative thinkers, Promiscuous Knowledge enlightens our understanding of the internet and the profuse visual culture of our time.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 16, 2020

"Do Morals Matter?"

New from Oxford University Press: Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump by Joseph S. Nye.

About the book, from the publisher:
Americans constantly make moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through. A president is either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or judged solely on the results of their actions.

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 1945. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one was not fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons.

Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most importantly, presidents need to factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy-especially in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia, but a host of transnational threats: the illegal drug trade, infectious diseases, terrorism, cybercrime, and climate change.
Follow Joseph S. Nye on Twitter.

Also see: Joseph Nye's top 5 books on global power.

Writers Read: Joseph S. Nye (August 2007).

The Page 99 Test: Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Peacekeeping in the Midst of War"

New from Oxford University Press: Peacekeeping in the Midst of War by Lisa Hultman, Jacob D. Kathman, and Megan Shannon.

About the book, from the publisher:
Civil wars have caused tremendous human suffering in the last century, and the United Nations is often asked to send peacekeepers to stop ongoing violence. Yet despite being the most visible tool of international intervention, policymakers and scholars have little systematic knowledge about how well peacekeeping works. Peacekeeping in the Midst of War offers the most comprehensive analyses of peacekeeping on civil war violence to date. With unique data on different types of violence in civil wars around the world, Peacekeeping in the Midst of War offers a rigorous understanding of UN intervention by analysing both wars with and without UN peacekeeping efforts. It also directly measures the strength of UN missions in personnel capacity and constitution. Using large-n quantitative analyses, the book finds that UN peacekeeping missions with appropriately constituted force capacities mitigate violence in civil wars. The authors conclude by analyzing the broader context of UN intervention effectiveness, and conclude that peacekeeping is a more generally effective way to reduce the human suffering associated with civil war.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 15, 2020

"The Profits of Nature"

New from Columbia University Press: The Profits of Nature: Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China by Peter B. Lavelle.

About the book, from the publisher:
In the nineteenth century, the Qing empire experienced a period of profound turmoil caused by an unprecedented conjunction of natural disasters, domestic rebellions, and foreign incursions. The imperial government responded to these calamities by introducing an array of new policies and institutions to bolster its power across its massive territories. In the process, Qing officials launched campaigns for natural resource development, seeking to take advantage of the unexploited lands, waters, and minerals of the empire’s vast hinterlands and borderlands.

In this book, Peter B. Lavelle uses the life and career of Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) as a lens to explore the environmental history of this era. Although known for his pacification campaigns against rebel movements, Zuo was at the forefront of the nineteenth-century quest for natural resources. Influenced by his knowledge of nature, geography, and technology, he created government bureaus and oversaw state-funded projects to improve agriculture, sericulture, and other industries in territories across the empire. His work forged new patterns of colonial development in the Qing empire’s northwest borderlands, including Xinjiang, at a time when other empires were scrambling to secure access to resources around the globe. Weaving a narrative across the span of Zuo’s lifetime, The Profits of Nature offers a unique approach to understanding the dynamic relationship among social crises, colonialism, and the natural world during a critical juncture in Chinese history, between the high tide of imperial power in the eighteenth century and the challenges of modern state-building in the twentieth century.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 14, 2020

"High on God"

New from Oxford University Press: High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America by James Wellman, Jr., Katie Corcoran, and Kate Stockly.

About the book, from the publisher:
"God is like a drug, a high, [I] can't wait for the next hit." This direct quote from a megachurch member speaking about his experience of God might be dismissed as some sort of spiritually-induced drug riff. However, according to the research in this book, it was not only sincere, but a deeply felt, and sought-after sensibility. Megachurch attendees desire this first-hand experience of God, and many report finding it in their congregations. The book focuses on the emotional, social and religious dynamics that pull thousands of people into megachurches and how those churches make some feel like they are "high on God" and can't wait to get their next spiritual "hit."

High on God gives the first robust and plausible explanation for why megachurches have conquered the churchgoing market of America. Without condescension or exaggeration, the authors show the genius of megachurches: the power of charisma, the design of facilities, the training of leaders, the emotional dynamics, and the strategies that bring people together and lead them to serve and help others. Using Emile Durkheim's concept of homo duplex, the authors plot the strategies that megachurches employ to satisfy the core human craving for personal meaning and social integration, as well as personal identity and communal solidarity. The authors also show how these churches can go wrong, sometimes tragically so. But they argue that, for the most part, megachurches help their attendees find themselves through bonding with and serving others.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 13, 2020

"Healing Labor"

New from Stanford University Press: Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy by Gabriele Koch.

About the book, from the publisher:
Contemporary Japan is home to one of the world's largest and most diversified markets for sex. Widely understood to be socially necessary, the sex industry operates and recruits openly, staffed by a diverse group of women who are attracted by its high pay and the promise of autonomy—but whose work remains stigmatized and unmentionable. Based on fieldwork with adult Japanese women in Tokyo's sex industry, Healing Labor explores the relationship between how sex workers think about what sex is and what it does and the political-economic roles and possibilities that they imagine for themselves. Gabriele Koch reveals how Japanese sex workers regard sex as a deeply feminized care—a healing labor—that is both necessary and significant for the well-being and productivity of men. In this nuanced ethnography that approaches sex as a social practice with political and economic effects, Koch compellingly illustrates the linkages between women's work, sex, and the gendered economy.
Gabriele Koch is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale-NUS College.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

"Lost and Found: Young Fathers in the Age of Unwed Parenthood"

New from Oxford University Press: Lost and Found: Young Fathers in the Age of Unwed Parenthood by Paul Florsheim and David Moore.

About the book, from the publisher:
Over the past six decades, there have been dramatic changes in the dynamics of family life in the United States. Today, about half of all babies born to mothers under the age of 25 will not live with their fathers for much of their childhood. From the perspective of many social scientists and politicians, this change has wreaked havoc on society by trapping women and children in poverty and loosening the civilizing bond between men and their families. But what is causing the phenomenon? Some place blame at the feet of the young men themselves, together with eroding cultural and family values. Others point to systemic failures in our economy or social support programs. Rather than assign blame, the first goal of Lost and Found is to tell the stories of young men as they struggle (with varying degrees of success) to become fathers. The second goal is to outline a strategy for helping young fathers remain constructively involved with their partners and children.

Drawing from their research with over 1,000 young parents in Chicago and Salt Lake City, Paul Florsheim and David Moore focus on a group of about 20 young fathers, whose stories-conveyed in their own words-help the reader make sense of what is happening to fatherhood in America. Having interviewed young fathers and their partners before and after their children were born, these accounts provide a dynamic perspective on the development of young men and their relationships. Young mothers-the partners of these young men-both corroborate and sometimes offer alternative or contradictory perspectives. Oriented to undo stereotypes, the authors introduce the notion of "good-enough" fathering, tempering the tendency to think simply in terms of good or bad fathers. They go on to provide concrete recommendations for strengthening fathers' roles and helping young fathers and mothers create stable home environments for their children, whether the parents are together or not.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

"Hellfire from Paradise Ranch"

New from the University of California Press: Hellfire from Paradise Ranch: On the Front Lines of Drone Warfare by Joseba Zulaika.

About the book, from the publisher:
In this intimate and innovative work, terror expert Joseba Zulaika examines drone warfare as manhunting carried out via satellite. Using Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas as his center of study, he interviews drone operators as well as resisters to the war economy of the region to expose the layers of fantasy on which counterterrorism and its self-sustaining logic are grounded.

Hellfire from Paradise Ranch exposes the terror and warfare of drone killings that dominate our modern military. It unveils the trauma drone operators experience, in part due to their visual intimacy with their victims, and explores the resistance to drone killings in the same apocalyptic Nevada desert where nuclear testing, pacifist militancy, and Shoshone tradition overlap.

Stunning and absorbing, Zulaika offers a richly detailed account of how we continue to manufacture, deconstruct, and perpetuate terror.
Joseba Zulaika received his licentiate in philosophy from the University of Deusto, Spain, in 1975, his M.A. in social anthropology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, in 1977 and his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton in 1982. He has taught at the University of the Basque Country, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at the University of Nevada, Reno, since 1990, where he is currently affiliated as a researcher with the Basque Studies program.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 10, 2020

"Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane"

New from Yale University Press: Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane by Karen R. Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:
A fascinating new account of the life and legend of the Wild West’s most notorious woman: Calamity Jane

Martha Jane Canary, popularly known as Calamity Jane, was the pistol-packing, rootin’ tootin’ “lady wildcat” of the American West. Brave and resourceful, she held her own with the men of America’s most colorful era and became a celebrity both in her own right and through her association with the likes of Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody.

In this engaging account, Karen Jones takes a fresh look at the story of this iconic frontierswoman. She pieces together what is known of Canary’s life and shows how a rough and itinerant lifestyle paved the way for the scattergun, alcohol-fueled heroics that dominated Canary’s career. Spanning Canary’s rise from humble origins to her role as “heroine of the plains” and the embellishment of her image over subsequent decades, Jones shows her to be feisty, eccentric, transgressive—and very much complicit in the making of the myth that was Calamity Jane.
Karen Jones is a professor at the University of Kent. Her previous publications include Wolf Mountains: A History of Wolves Along the Great Divide, The Invention of the Park, and Epiphany in the Wilderness: Hunting, Nature, and Performance in the Nineteenth-Century American West.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 9, 2020

"A Woman's Place"

New from Oxford University Press: A Woman's Place: US Counterterrorism Since 9/11 by Joana Cook.

About the book, from the publisher:
The 9/11 attacks fundamentally transformed how the US approached terrorism, and led to the unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism strategies, policies, and practices. While the analysis of these developments is rich and vast, there remains a significant void. The diverse actors contributing to counterterrorism increasingly consider, engage and impact women as agents, partners, and targets of their work. Yet, flawed assumptions and stereotypes remain prevalent, and it remains undocumented and unclear how and why counterterrorism efforts have evolved as they did, including in relation to women.

Drawing on extensive primary source documents, A Woman's Place traces the evolution of women in US counterterrorism efforts through the administrations of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, examining key agencies like the US Department of Defense, the Department of State, and USAID. In their own words, Joana Cook investigates how and why women have developed the roles they have, and interrogates US counterterrorism practices in key countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Analysing conceptions of and responses to terrorists, she also considers how the roles of women in Al- Qaeda and Daesh have evolved and impacted on US counterterrorism considerations.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 8, 2020

"10% Less Democracy"

New from Stanford University Press: 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less by Garett Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:
During the 2016 presidential election, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders argued that elites were hurting the economy. But, drawing together evidence and theory from across economics, political science, and even finance, Garett Jones says otherwise. In 10% Less Democracy, he makes the case that the richest, most democratic nations would be better off if they slightly reduced accountability to the voting public, turning up the dial on elite influence.

To do this, Jones builds on three foundational lines of evidence in areas where he has personal experience. First, as a former staffer in the U.S. Senate, he saw how senators voted differently as elections grew closer. Second, as a macroeconomist, Jones knows the merits of "independent" central banks, which sit apart from the political process and are controlled by powerful insiders. The consensus of the field is that this detached, technocratic approach has worked far better than more political and democratic banking systems. Third, his previous research on the effects of cognitive skills on political, social, and economic systems revealed many ways in which well-informed voters improve government.

Discerning repeated patterns, Jones draws out practical suggestions for fine-tuning, focusing on the length of political terms, the independence of government agencies, the weight that voting systems give to the more-educated, and the value of listening more closely to a group of farsighted stakeholders with real skin in the game—a nation's sovereign bondholders. Accessible to political news junkies while firmly rooted and rigorous, 10% Less Democracy will fuel the national conversation about what optimal government looks like.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 7, 2020

"Speak of the Devil"

New from Oxford University Press: Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion by Joseph P. Laycock.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 2013, when the state of Oklahoma erected a statue of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a group calling themselves The Satanic Temple applied to erect a statue of Baphomet alongside the Judeo-Christian tablets. Since that time, The Satanic Temple has become a regular voice in national conversations about religious freedom, disestablishment, and government overreach. In addition to petitioning for Baphomet to appear alongside another monument of the Ten Commandments in Arkansas, the group has launched campaigns to include Satanic "nativity scenes" on government property in Florida, Michigan, and Indiana, offer Satanic prayers at a high school football game in Seattle, and create "After School Satan" programs in elementary schools that host Christian extracurricular programs. Since their 2012 founding, The Satanic Temple has established 19 chapters and now claims 100,000 supporters. Is this just a political group perpetuating a series of stunts? Or is it a sincere religious movement?

Speak of the Devil is the first book-length study of The Satanic Temple. Joseph Laycock, a scholar of new religious movements, contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom. Though the group gained attention for its strategic deployment of outrage, it claims to have developed beyond politics into a genuine religious movement. Equal parts history and ethnography, Speak of the Devil is Laycock's attempt to take seriously The Satanic Temple's work to redefine religion, the nature of pluralism and religious tolerance, and what "religious freedom" means in America.
The Page 99 Test: The Seer of Bayside.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 6, 2020

"Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire"

New from the University of California Press: Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms by Ismael García-Colón.

About the book, from the publisher:
Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in continental U.S. agriculture in the twentieth century. The Farm Labor Program, established by the government of Puerto Rico in 1947, placed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers on U.S. farms and fostered the emergence of many stateside Puerto Rican communities. Ismael García-Colón investigates the origins and development of this program and uncovers the unique challenges faced by its participants.

A labor history and an ethnography, Colonial Migrants evokes the violence, fieldwork, food, lodging, surveillance, and coercion that these workers experienced on farms and conveys their hopes and struggles to overcome poverty. Island farmworkers encountered a unique form of prejudice and racism arising from their dual status as both U.S. citizens and as “foreign others,” and their experiences were further shaped by evolving immigration policies. Despite these challenges, many Puerto Rican farmworkers ultimately chose to settle in rural U.S. communities, contributing to the production of food and the Latinization of the U.S. farm labor force.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

"1774: The Long Year of Revolution"

New from Knopf: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton.

About the book, from the publisher:
From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2018 president of the American Historical Association, a groundbreaking book–the first to look at the critical “long year” of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from December 1773 to mid-April 1775, from the Boston Tea Party and the first Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

This masterly work of historical writing, Mary Beth Norton’s first in almost a decade, looks at the sixteen months during which the traditional loyalists to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire and to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775.

Drawing extensively on pamphlets, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Norton reconstructs colonial political discourse as it happened, showing the vigorous campaign mounted by conservatives criticizing congressional actions. But by then it was too late. In early 1775, governors throughout the colonies informed colonial officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of the committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans, even before the outbreak of war in April 1775, had in effect “declared independence” by obeying the decrees of their new provincial governments rather than colonial officials.

The much-anticipated new book by one of America’s most dazzling historians–the culmination of more than four decades of Norton’s research and thought.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

"When Misfortune Becomes Injustice"

New from Stanford University Press: When Misfortune Becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality by Alicia Ely Yamin.

About the book, from the publisher:
When Misfortune Becomes Injustice surveys the progress and challenges in deploying human rights to advance health and social equality over recent decades, with a focus on women's health and rights. Yamin weaves together theory and firsthand experience in a compelling narrative of how evolving legal norms, empirical knowledge, and development paradigms have interacted in the realization of health rights.

When Misfortune Becomes Injustice reveals extraordinary progress in recognizing health-related claims as legal rights and understanding the policy implications of doing so over the last few decades. Yet Yamin challenges us to consider why these advances have failed to produce greater equality within and between nations, and how the human rights praxis must now urgently address threats to social and gender justice, in health and beyond.
Alicia Ely Yamin has spent half of her professional career working outside the United States, with and through local organizations. She currently leads the Global Health and Rights Project, a collaboration of the Petrie-Flom Center on Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University. Yamin is known globally for her pioneering scholarship and advocacy in relation to economic and social rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the right to health.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 3, 2020

"After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy"

New from Oxford University Press: After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy: Carnival, Politics, and Musical Engagement in Haiti by Rebecca Hope Dirksen.

About the book, from the publisher:
Richly ethnographic and a compelling read, After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy is a study of carnival, politics, and the musical engagement of ordinary citizens and celebrity musicians in contemporary Haiti. The book explores how the self-declared president of konpa Sweet Micky (Michel Martelly) rose to the nation's highest office while methodically crafting a political product inherently entangled with his musical product. It offers deep historical perspective on the characteristics of carnivalesque verbal play-and the performative skillset of the artist (Sweet Micky) who dominated carnival for more than a decade-including vulgarities and polemics.

Yet there has been profound resistance to this brand of politics led by many other high-profile artists, including Matyas and Jòj, Brothers Posse, Boukman Eksperyans, and RAM. These groups have each released popular carnival songs that have contributed to the public's discussions on what civic participation and citizenship in Haiti can and should be. Drawing on more than a decade and a half of ethnographic research, Rebecca Dirksen presents an in-depth consideration of politically and socially engaged music and what these expressions mean for the Haitian population in the face of challenging political and economic circumstances. After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy centers the voices of Haitian musicians and regular citizens by extensively sharing interviews and detailed analyses of musical performance in the context of contemporary events well beyond the musical realm.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 2, 2020

"Carbon Captured"

New from the MIT Press: Carbon Captured: How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics by Matto Mildenberger.

About the book, from the publisher:
A comparative examination of domestic climate politics that offers a theory for cross-national differences in domestic climate policymaking.

Climate change threatens the planet, and yet policy responses have varied widely across nations. Some countries have undertaken ambitious programs to stave off climate disaster, others have done little, and still others have passed policies that were later rolled back. In this book, Matto Mildenberger opens the “black box” of domestic climate politics, examining policy making trajectories in several countries and offering a theoretical explanation for national differences in the climate policy process.

Mildenberger introduces the concept of double representation—when carbon polluters enjoy political representation on both the left (through industrial unions fearful of job loss) and the right (through industrial business associations fighting policy costs)—and argues that different climate policy approaches can be explained by the interaction of climate policy preferences and domestic institutions. He illustrates his theory with detailed histories of climate politics in Norway, the United States, and Australia, along with briefer discussions of policies in in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. He shows that Norway systematically shielded politically connected industrial polluters from costs beginning with its pioneering carbon tax; the United States, after the failure of carbon reduction legislation, finally acted on climate reform through a series of Obama administration executive actions; and Australia's Labor and Green parties enacted an emissions trading scheme, which was subsequently repealed by a conservative Liberal party government. Ultimately, Mildenberger argues for the importance of political considerations in understanding the climate policymaking process and discusses possible future policy directions.
Visit Matto Mildenberger's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 1, 2020

"Bandage, Sort, and Hustle"

New from the University of California Press: Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering by Josh Seim.

About the book, from the publisher:
What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect description, but it is incomplete.

Drawing on field observations, medical records, and his own experience as a novice emergency medical technician, sociologist Josh Seim reimagines paramedicine as a frontline institution for governing urban suffering. Bandage, Sort, and Hustle argues that the ambulance is part of a fragmented regime that is focused more on neutralizing hardships (which are disproportionately carried by poor people and people of color) than on eradicating the root causes of agony. Whether by compressing lifeless chests on the streets or by transporting the publicly intoxicated into the hospital, ambulance crews tend to handle suffering bodies near the bottom of the polarized metropolis.

Seim illustrates how this work puts crews in recurrent, and sometimes tense, contact with the emergency department nurses and police officers who share their clientele. These street-level relations, however, cannot be understood without considering the bureaucratic and capitalistic forces that control and coordinate ambulance labor from above. Beyond the ambulance, this book motivates a labor-centric model for understanding the frontline governance of down-and-out populations.
Follow Josh Seim on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue