"Curricular Injustice"

New from Columbia University Press: Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities by Lauren D. Olsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Humanities and social sciences education has often not only failed to deliver on its promise but even entrenched the inequalities that the medical profession set out to address.

Lauren D. Olsen examines how U.S. medical school faculty conceived, designed, and implemented their vision of education, tracing the failures of curricular reform. She argues that the way medical students encounter humanities and social sciences material in practice has served to reinforce the status quo by teaching them to individualize systemic problems. Students learn to avoid advocacy, critique, and attention to structural inequalities―while also gathering that it will be up to them to find coping strategies for problems from burnout to systemic racism. Olsen pinpoints the limitations of how clinical faculty understand the humanities and social sciences, arguing that in structuring and teaching courses, they assumed, reinforced, and glorified a white, elite model of the medical profession. Showing how deeply intertwined professional and social identities are in medical education, Curricular Injustice has significant implications for how occupations, organizations, and institutions shape understandings of inequality.

Visit Lauren D. Olsen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Between Borders"

New from Oxford University Press: Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe by Tobias Brinkmann.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years.

Between Borders tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants.

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Incarceration to Repatriation"

New from Cornell University Press: From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union by Susan C. I. Grunewald.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible.

Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction.

From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.

Visit Susan C. I. Grunewald's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Global Ayahuasca"

New from Stanford University Press: Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds by Alex K. Gearin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ceremonies of drinking the psychoactive brew ayahuasca have flourished across the planet in recent decades. Emerging from Indigenous roots in the Amazon rainforest, the brew is now envisaged by many as the spiritual gateway to archaic and primordial worlds, with reports of healing, spiritual insight, and awe-inspiring visions placing ayahuasca among the burgeoning field of psychedelic medicines. Astonished and allured by descriptions of ayahuasca experiences, researchers in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy have attempted to define the shared properties of the visions. In this book, Alex Gearin challenges this simplified obsession with universal truth and explores the embodied practices of contemporary ayahuasca drinkers to reveal how the brew has conjured contradictory experiences across the globe. These range from urban disenchantment and capitalist mastery to competitive sorcery and ecological harmony, wherein the plant-induced visions embody different attitudes towards capitalist modernity. Based upon ethnographic research among Shipibo healers in remote Peru, alternative medicine groups in urban Australia, and entrepreneurs and corporate managers in mainland China, Global Ayahuasca examines how the wondrous visions of ayahuasca are entangled within the social and economic realities that they illuminate, revealing different tensions, fears, and hopes of everyday modern life.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Subversion 2.0"

New from Oxford University Press: Subversion 2.0: Leaderlessness, the Internet, and the Fringes of Global Society by Christopher Whyte.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why are conspiracy theories, extremist rhetoric, and acts of antagonism by fringe elements of society so much more visible today than in years past? The Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the surge of medical skepticism during the global COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the challenge of extreme rhetoric in global society, with increasing attention paid to the enabling role of the Internet. But beyond the ways in which the Internet allows for connection, how do fringe ideas travel into the mainstream to become more significant movements?

In Subversion 2.0, Christopher Whyte describes the transformation of societal subversion in the digital age. Whyte makes the case that "leaderlessness"--characterized by an evolving and uneven feedback loop linking fringe spaces to mainstream elite rhetoric and popular discourse--has emerged in recent years as the default format of subversive activity. Through case explorations and novel data, Whyte shows how extreme narratives that originate in conspiratorial, restrictive virtual spaces are rapidly filtered into mainstream settings due to a series of socio-technological conditions present in the Web 2.0 era. As a result, fringe narratives and symbols often become the lens through which social and political elites interpret information that they then spread through public speech, which is projected back to subversive spaces and used to perpetuate fringe narratives.

By examining the uneven feedback loop of leaderlessness, Whyte argues that social Internet platforms act as a vehicle for transmitting and amplifying extreme rhetoric but often fail to moderate extremism in turn. He ultimately shows how societal subversion, an activity that is about degrading existing power structures without directly attacking them, has taken on a new, dynamic form in the digital age.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Some White Folks"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity by Jennifer Chudy.

About the book, from the publisher:

A pioneering exploration of the unexamined roots and effect of racial sympathy within American politics.

There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. This is a book about white people who feel that distress. For decades, political scientists have studied the effects of white racial prejudice, but Jennifer Chudy shows that white racial sympathy for Black Americans’ suffering is also a potent force in modern American politics. Grounded in the history of Black-white relations in America, racial sympathy is unique. It is not equivalent to a low level of racial prejudice or sympathy for other marginalized groups. Some White Folks reveals how racial sympathy shapes a significant number of white Americans’ opinions on policy areas ranging from the social welfare state to the criminal justice system. Under certain circumstances, it can also spur action—although effects on political behavior are weaker and less consistent, for reasons Chudy examines.

Drawing on diverse quantitative and qualitative evidence and integrating insights from multiple disciplines, Chudy explores the origins, importance, and complexity of racial sympathy, as well as the practical implications for political and movement leaders. A companion to the rich literature on prejudice, Some White Folks demonstrates the multifaceted role of race in American politics and public opinion.

Visit Jennifer Chudy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Illusions of Control"

New from Columbia University Press: Illusions of Control: Dilemmas in Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria by Erica L. Gaston.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critics have argued that such partnerships have many perils, from enabling human rights abuses to seeding future threats. Policy makers, however, have sought to mitigate the risks of partnering with irregular armed groups. Militia group leaders in far-flung corners of these war-torn countries were subjected to background checks and instructed about international law and human rights, and their funding was cut when they crossed red lines. To what extent have such mechanisms curbed the dangers of proxy warfare, and what unforeseen consequences has this approach unleashed?

Drawing on a decade of field research and hundreds of interviews with stakeholders, Erica L. Gaston unpacks the dilemmas of attempting to control proxy forces. She demonstrates that, although the tools U.S. policy makers used to constrain partners’ behavior increased in number and sophistication, they never fully addressed the range of political, security, and legal concerns surrounding these forces. Moreover, by shifting policy makers’ calculations, the use of proxy forces introduced additional moral hazards and may have enabled riskier decision making. Featuring substantial empirical detail and close analysis of key internal debates, Illusions of Control offers new perspectives on some of the most significant and controversial elements of recent U.S. security policy. In addition to nuanced insights about proxy relationships, this book provides a novel analytical toolkit for exploring transnational bargaining and foreign policy deliberations in hybrid political environments.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Uncovered: The Story of Insurance in America"

New from Oxford University Press: Uncovered: The Story of Insurance in America by Katherine Hempstead.

About the book, from the publisher:

Historically, the insurance industry in America has been fragmented. As a result, there have been debates and conflicts over the proper roles of federal and state governments, business, and the responsibilities of individuals. Who should cover the risks of loss? And to what extent should risk be shared and by whom?

In Uncovered, Katherine Hempstead answers these questions by exploring the history of the insurance business and its regulation in the United States from the 1870s through the twentieth century. Specifically, she focuses on the friction between the public demand for insurance and the private imperatives of insurers. Tracing the history of the industry from the early days of life, fire, and casualty insurance to the development of state regulation in the late nineteenth century, Hempstead examines the role that insurers initially played in the largely voluntary social safety net and how this changed over time. After the Great Depression, the federal government assumed a greater role in the provision of insurance, while insurers enthusiastically pursued the growing business of employee benefits. As the twentieth century progressed, insurers and government have become interdependent, with insurers participating in publicly funded markets. As Hempstead shows, periodic crises in life, fire, health, auto, and liability insurance highlighted gaps between the coverage that insurers were willing to provide and what the public demanded.

Highlighting how the major part states play in insurance regulation has made it harder to solve important problems, Uncovered fundamentally changes our understanding of the crucial role that insurance has always played in American politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Near and Far Waters"

New from Stanford University Press: Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower by Colin Flint.

About the book, from the publisher:

Seapower has been a constant in world politics, a tool through which powerful countries have policed the seas for commercial advantage. Political geographer Colin Flint highlights the geography of seapower as a dynamic, continual struggle to gain control of near waters―those parts of the oceans close to a country's shoreline―and far waters―parts of the oceans beyond the horizon and that neighbor the shorelines of other countries. A forceful and clarifying challenge to conventional accounts of geopolitics, Near and Far Waters offers an accessible introduction to the combination of economic and political relations that are the reason behind, and the result of, the development of seapower to control near waters and project force into far waters.

Examining the histories of three naval powers (the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States), this book distills the past and present patterns of seapower and their tendency to trigger repercussive conflict and war. Readers will gain an appreciation for how geopolitics works, the importance of seapower in economic competition, the motivations behind China's desire to become a global naval force, and the risks of current and future wars. Drawing on decades of experience, Flint urges readers to take seriously the dilemma of near/far waters as a context for an alternative understanding of global politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Return from the World"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Return from the World: Economic Growth and Reverse Migration in Brazil by Gregory Duff Morton.

About the book, from the publisher:

An anthropologist’s investigation of why some Brazilians choose to leave behind a booming economy and return to their villages.

In Return from the World, anthropologist Gregory Duff Morton traces the migrations of Brazilian workers who leave a thriving labor market and return to their home villages to become peasant farmers. Morton seeks to understand what it means to turn one’s back deliberately on the promise of economic growth.

Giving up their positions in factories, at construction sites, and as domestic workers, these migrants travel thousands of miles back to villages without running water or dependable power. There, many take up subsistence farming. Some become activists with the MST, Brazil’s militant movement of landless peasants. Bringing their stories vividly to life, Morton dives into the dreams and disputes at play in finding freedom in the shared rejection of growth.

Gregory Duff Morton is assistant professor at City College of New York, where he teaches anthropology and Latin American studies.

--Marshal Zeringue