New Books In Public Policy

This podcast is usually devoted to book written about the past. The authors may be historians, or political scientists, or anthropologists, or even a member of the human rights community. But we’re almost always talking about a mass atrocity that took place ‘before.’ Sam Totten‘s new book Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege: Accounts by Humanitarians in the Battle Zone (McFarland, 2017) is different. The book is a compilation of first hand accounts of people currently working in a crisis area. Some of are doctors, some journalists, some aid workers. Their contributions to the book are intensely personal, recounting experiences caring for the sick, communicating the truth, or simply trying to deliver food amidst the scorching heat and poor roads of the Nuba Mountains. Many are harrowing to read. All inspire a profound respect. But collectively they raise interesting questions. What does it mean to study genocide while being an activist? How can activists raise the visibility of conflicts in far-away pl

Prior to the wave of protests in 2017 supporting immigrants in the US, there were the protests of 2006. That spring, millions of Latinos and other immigrants across the country opposed Congressional action hostile to immigrants. These protesters participated in one of the largest movements to defend immigrant and civil rights in US history. In Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Chris Zepeda-Millan surveys the strategies and impacts of this unprecedented wave of protests, focusing on the unique local, national, and demographic dynamics, as well as the role of the ethnic media. Latino Mass Mobilization is an important addition to contemporary debates regarding immigration policy, social movements, and immigrant rights activism in the US and elsewhere. Zepeda-Millan is assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies and Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Berkeley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Alexandra Dellios, a Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Australian National University, provides a critical reassessment of Bonegilla, which received and temporarily accommodated about 320,000 post-war refugees and migrants from 1947 to 1971. Using a series of four cases studies of controversy, she argues that rather than being a simple story of progress, the center’s history is actually one of containment, control, deprivation and political discontent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North? That is what historian Brian McCammack endeavors to find out in his new book, Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago (Harvard University Press, 2017). McCammack’s study is the first book-length environmental history of black Chicago and the first sustained exploration of the how the 1.6 million black southerners who moved to northern cities between 1910 and 1940 thought about and interacted with the natural world. He follows black Chicagoans’ through both the greenspaces of the South Side and rural retreats across the Upper Midwest. He finds their experiences of nature were shaped by racial exclusion, intraracial class conflict, and paternalistic reform efforts. Many of their preferred forms of outdoor recreation blended southern traditions with new practices coded as modern. And they articulated their devotion to nature in terms often i

Every young generation inspires a host of comparisons—usually negative ones—with older generations. Whether preceding a criticism or punctuating one, “kids these days” is a common utterance. Perhaps because of the ubiquity of the internet and their heavy presence on it, Millennials have been the most parsed and monitored generation as its members are still in the process of coming of age in history. Stereotypes abound in the media and popular culture: Millennials are lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and immature. Synthesizing an array of social science research that has been conducted not just on this cohort but on the society they find themselves struggling to navigate, writer Malcolm Harris in Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials (Little, Brown and Company, 2017) aims to get readers to question these stereotypes and myths and instead think about how Millennials are trying to survive within today’s shifting social structures and conditions. More than any other generation, Millennials hav

Seth Barrett Tillman, an instructor in the Department of Law at Maynooth University in Ireland, is one of the few scholars to have researched and written about the history of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Prof. Tillman has also submitted amicus briefs (friend of the court briefs) in three recent federal cases regarding whether President Trump has violated the clause. In this podcast interview, Prof. Tillman discusses the historical origins of the clause, its original understanding during the early republic, and its possible application to the Trump presidency. In short, Prof. Tillman contends that the clause does not apply to elective offices; rather, it only applies to appointed offices in the federal government. Although conceding that there are good reasons to want such a clause to apply to the President, he contends that it is simply not a proper understanding of the clause to apply it to President Trump. Here’s some reading: Prof. Tillman and Josh Blackman’s New York Times op-

In their new book Recharging Judaism: How Civic Engagement is Good For Synagogues, Jews and America (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017), Rabbi Judith Schindler and Judy Seldin-Cohen argue that social action and Jewish action go hand-in-hand. The book offers both inspiration and guidance, weaving together passages from Torah and Talmud, insights from contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish civic leaders, and practical advice drawn from the authors many years of advocacy, activism, and civic collaboration in their home community of Charlotte, North Carolina. In this episode, we discuss how the idea of minyan can work as a model for social movements; we discuss the stages congregations can follow to embark on a civic project; and, we discuss how to avoid community division while still encouraging healthy debate — which, along with supporting the needy, is as authentic and ancient a Jewish tradition as one can find. Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, i

Alice Echols is a professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. In her book Shortfall: Family Secrets, Financial Collapse and a Hidden History of American Banking (New Press, 2017) Echols offers a narrative and social history of American capitalism in the years of and preceding the Great Depression by focusing not on Wall Street but on Main Street and the men who ran hundreds of small-town building and loan associations across the nation. Situated in Colorado Springs she reconstructs the life of her shrewd and ambitious grandfather Walter Davis, who emerged from virtually nowhere to become a small town finance man running the City Savings Building and Loan Association. He gained and betrayed the trust of hundreds of depositors who invested their life savings to secure the American dream of homeownership and financial security. They found their lives destroyed by an unregulated industry and Davis’s dishonest practices. Shortfall is

The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency of information will result in a perfect government. Dr. Mark Fenster discusses the motivations of transparency movements and justifications for state secrecy. Through the lens of communications theory, Fenster raises questions about the utility of disclosed information and how it may or may not be deemed valuable by the public. Fenster also examines the state’s ability to keep secrets and what, if any, outcomes result from information disclosure. In conclusion, Fenster asserts transparency, on its own, will not fix the state, but focused efforts on good governance just might. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Technology is a form of material culture and is a human activity. The way in which humans view technology is a social construction in which people use social processes of interpretation and negotiation. The mundane rituals that humans carry out when interacting with technology are loaded with emotional overtones. The interaction with technology in most cases become habit. The dependence and isolation that result from technology use is invisible and seems natural to membership groups that use it. Chelsea Schelly, the author of Dwelling in Resistance: Living with Alternative Technologies in America (Rutgers University Press, 2017) and my guest for this episode, studied technology and the way in which people of four alternative lifestyles live without such dependency on technology. In our interview, we discuss the way in which people at The Farm, Twin Oaks, Dancing Rabbits, and Earthship Biotecture lived their daily lives by sharing some technology and living without most of it. Chelsea Schelly, Ph.D. is an Ass

We end the year by remembering our favorite authors, books, and some of the titles. There were so many great books written this year that we had the fun of reading and talking to a few of the authors. Weve both been doing a lot of grading, so left out as many great books as we mentioned. Please do share your favorites on Twitter/Facebook with #poliscibooks2017. Here are several of the books we mentioned in this weeks podcast: * Josh Chafetz’s Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers * Catherine Zuckert’s Machiavelli’s Politics * Brittany Cooper’s Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women * Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson’s Listen We Need to Talk * David Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe’s Neither Liberal nor Conservative * Anna Law’s The Immigration Battle in American Courts * Alex Hertel-Fernandez’s Politics at Work * David Hopkins’s Red Fighting Blue * Jamila Michener’s Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics Learn

In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the ‘worst of the worst.’ The 1976 decision ushered in the ‘modern’ period of the US death penalty, resulting in the execution of over 1,400 inmates, with over 8,000 individuals currently sentenced to die. Each chapter of Frank Baumgartner‘s, Marty Davidson’s, Kaneesha Johnson’s, Arvind Krishnamurthy’s, and Colin Wilson’s Deadly Justice : A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty (Oxford University Press, 2017) addresses a specific factual question and provides statistical evidence about how the modern death penalty has functioned. Baumgartner is Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina. Davidson, Johnson, Krishnamurthy, and Wilson were all students at North Carolina during the research for the book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melanee Thomas and Amanda Bittner have assembled a fascinating and important exploration of the role, understanding, and perceptions of mothers and motherhood within the realm of politics. Mothers and Others: The Role of Parenthood in Politics (University of British Columbia Press, 2017) opens up many avenues for understanding and considering what we mean and what we think about when the concept and reality of motherhood is introduced into political dynamics. This relationship, which is often a tension, as explored in the book, includes those who have run for and occupied elected office, have been appointed to public office, or have otherwise held public office. The book moves beyond this arena to consider, as well, how motherhood is communicated and why it is communicated in the ways that it is or where it is perhaps subsumed—and thus not communicated—by those running for office. Much of the discussion within Mothers and Others is also the contrast between how motherhood is seen for female public officials

Kevan Harris is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017). Harris is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Much scholarship has focused on understanding the Iranian revolution of 1979, especially in relation to other nations in the Middle East and those further away in the West. The Islamic Republic of Iran is an interesting foreign policy study, but of less interest for studies of the political development of the state. Absent from this conventional interest is the ways that the Iranian government has adopted and implemented social policy, before and after the revolution. Based on extensive fieldwork, Harris shows how the government since 1979 took welfare state institutions of the pre-revolutionary regime and expanded programs for health, education, and aid. His descriptions of the provision and administration of healthcare services in rural regions of Iran is especially interesting. These finding

Volatility. Instability. Insecurity. Precarity. There’s a burgeoning lexicon seeking to capture the grim economic state of more and more Americans. Join us as Jonathan Morduch describes what he and Rachel Schneider discovered when they got 253 households to track their every bit of income and their every expense over the course of a year. The results—showcased in The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty (Princeton University Press, 2017)—are sobering, and should cause us to reevaluate what we think we know about poverty and inequality in postindustrial America. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford University Press

“Marriage is the foundation of a successful society,” proclaimed the Clinton-era welfare reform bill. Since then, national and state governments have spent nearly a billion dollars on programs designed to encourage poor and low-income Americans to get married and to remain married. But do any of these initiatives achieve their stated goals? To find out, listen to our interview with Jennifer Randles, author of Proposing Prosperity?: Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America (Columbia University Press, 2016), who knows first-hand what happens in such programs, bringing important new insight into evaluating claims that there is a “success sequence” that will bring people out of poverty. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award

The recent spate of revelations about high-profile sexual predators who have been harassing and assaulting women, sometimes for decades, along with the #MeToo campaign, have drawn renewed attention to the pernicious problem of discrimination in the workplace. We speak about these issues with Suja Thomas, whose new book, with co-author Sandra Sperino, shows us how (male) judges have invented an entire body of jurisprudence to justify dismissing sexual harassment cases before they can even get to juries. Join us for this timely and provocative discussion about Unequal: How American Courts Undermine Discrimination Law (Oxford University Press, 2017). Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down

In this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). Mass incarceration and the carceral state are hot topics in law and criminology, as the American criminal justice system faces mounting criticism for imprisoning disproportionate numbers of minorities, especially blacks. But as James Forman Jr. lays out in this book, the war on crime that saw its origins in the 1970s found a great deal of support among African American citizens, community leaders, and politicians across America’s urban landscape. Locking Up Our Own tries to understand this phenomenon. James Forman Jr. is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and criminal law policy, constitutional law, juvenile justice, and education law and policy. His particular interests are schools, prisons, and police, and those institutions race and class dimensions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap

On September 3, 1991, a fire erupted at the Imperial Foods factory in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. Twenty-five people died behind the factory’s locked doors that morning. Most of the victims were women, and about half of them were black. In The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives (The New Press, 2017), Temple University history professor Bryant Simon lays out the structural failures in the American and global economic systems which killed those workers. As economic growth slowed and inflation rose in the 1970s, many Americans grew disillusioned with the New Deal era promise of high wages and a robust regulatory state. Instead, Simon argues, Americans began to embrace a culture of cheap, ready-made, products and government policies which benefitted business owners, rather than employees. Food sat high atop the list of cheap items Americans craved, particularly chicken which, just before the Hamlet fire, surpassed beef as the meat most commonly consumed by A

According to a challenge going back to Plato, democracy is unacceptable as a mode of political organization, because it distributes political power equally among those who are unequal in wisdom. Plato goes on to object that democracies are suspicious of the very idea of expertise in political matters. Long traditions in political philosophy have proposed various responses to Plato. According to a predominant trend in contemporary democratic theory, public deliberation can serve to meet Plato’s challenges. Yet appeals to public deliberation seem to reintroduce some of Plato’s worries. Does the commitment to public deliberation suggest, with Plato, that wisdom should rule? How can a democracy introduce an ideal of public deliberation that remains democratic? In Critical Elitism: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Problem of Expertise (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Alfred Moore examines the role of expertise in democratic deliberation. He defends the idea that the epistemic authority of experts derives its po