New Books In Public Policy

Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often require residents to draw on their own resources, knowledge, and expertise to resolve these life and livelihood dilemmas. In DIY Urbanism in Africa: Politics and Practice (Zed Books, 2023), editors Stephen Marr and Patience Mususa investigate these practices. The edited volume develops a theoretical framework through which to analyze them, and presents a series of case studies to demonstrate how residents invent new DIY tactics and strategies in response to security, place-making, or economic problems. This book offers a timely critical intervention into literatures on urban development and politics in Africa. It is valuable to students, policymakers, and urban practitioners keen to understand the mechanisms and political implications of w

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue to red. Cities that were once part of the traditional Democratic New Deal coalition began to vote Republican, providing crucial support for the electoral victories of Republican presidents from Reagan to Trump.  In How the Heartland Went Red Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Stephanie Ternullo argues for the importance of place in understanding this rightward shift, showing how voters in these small Midwestern cities view national politics—whether Republican appeals to racial and religious identities or Democrat’s appeals to class—through the lens of local conditions. Offering a comparative study of three White blue-collar Midwestern cities in the run-up to the 2020 election, Ternullo shows the ways that local contexts have sped up or slowed down White voters’ shift to the right. One of these cities h

Think that today's debates about the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, financial regulation, "too big to fail", etc. are new? Think again. Who should control banks, who should regulate banks, what should banks even do--these questions have been debated since the founding of the Republic. Replace CNBC's David Faber with Alexander Hamilton, and Joe Kernan with Thomas Jefferson (or James Madison) and the arguments about banking, moral hazard, and regulation would be largely the same, though the attire would be quite different. Kathleen Day's new book Broken Bargain: Bankers, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street (Yale University Press, 2019) provides a detailed two-century history of the give and take between government authority and financial institutions (and the individuals caught between them). The challenges over time have changed--the absence of a single currency in the early 19th century, insufficient credit in the late 19th century, the roaring and patently stupid 1920s, and then the whole range

Until 1900, most political parties in the United States chose their leaders – either in back rooms with a few party elites making decisions or in conventions. The direct primary, in which voters select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century Progressive movement. Intuitively, the direct primary sounds democratic. Voters directly select the candidates. They have more of say over who will ultimately represent or govern them. But decades of scholarship suggests that direct primaries might not have changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom is that as the strength of the Progressive movement declined and voters paid attention to other issues. Party leaders were able to reassert control over candidate selection. In Reform and Retrenchment: A Century of Efforts to Fix Primary Elections (Oxford UP, 2024), Dr. Robert G. Boatright insists this narrative is incorrect and misleading for contemporary efforts

Since coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s governing party, the AKP, has made poverty relief a central part of their political program. In addition to neoliberal reforms, AKP’s program has involved an emphasis on Islamic charity that is unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Republic. To understand the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, Zencirci introduces the concept of the Muslim Social, defined as a welfare regime that reimagined and reconfigured Islamic charitable practices to address the complex needs of a modern market society. In The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey (Syracuse UP, 2024), Zencirci explores the blending of religious values and neoliberal elements in dynamic, flexible, and unexpected ways. Although these governmental assemblages of Islamic neoliberalism produced new forms of generosity, distinctive notions of poverty, and novel ways of relating to others in society, Zencirci reveals how this welfare regime privileged managerial efficiency and emotiona

What types of coalitions can deliver social justice within sustainability initiatives? And how can we avoid reproducing unjust distributions of risk and responsibility in urban sustainability efforts? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Arve Hansen, and Manisha Anantharaman discuss these questions by engaging with Anantharaman’s new book Recycling Class: The Contradictions of Inclusion in Urban Sustainability (MIT Press, 2024), a unique ethnographic exploration that links middle-class, sustainable consumption with the environmental labour of the working poor to offer a relational analysis of urban sustainability politics and practice. The focus is on Bangalore in India, but the arguments and findings have much wider resonances. Manisha Anantharaman is Assistant Professor at the Center for the Sociology of Organisations at Sciences Po in Paris. Arve Hansen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, and co-leader of the Norwegian Network of Asian Studi

John Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916) transformed how people around the world view the purposes of schooling. This new edition makes Dewey's ideas come alive for a new generation of readers. Nicholas Tampio is a professor of political science at Fordham University. He is the author of Teaching Political Theory: A Pluralistic Approach (2022) and Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (2018).   Max Jacobs is a PhD student in education at Rutgers University. He currently sits on the Graduate Student Council for the History of Education Society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives.  In The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Mark Robert Rank draws from a wealth of evidence, including interviews and research, to explain how luck and chance play out and reveals how we can use these lessons to guide our personal lives and public policies. The Random Factor traverses luck from macro to micro, from events like the Cuban Missile Crisis to our personal encounters and relationships. From his perspective as a scholar of poverty, Dr. Rank also delves into the class and race dynamics of chance, emphasizing the stark disparities it brings to light. This transformative book prompts a new understanding of the t

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.  Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City (Princeton UP, 2024) tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways. As New York City’s housing market becomes too expensive for even the middle class, many urbanites are bypassing the suburbs and moving to smaller cities like Newburgh, where housing is affordable and historic. Richard Ocejo takes readers into the lives of these newcomers, examining the different ways th

Aya Gruber, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, has written a history of how the women’s movement in America has shaped the law on domestic violence and sexual assault. In The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (University of California Press, 2020), Professor Gruber contends that the legal reform movement on sexual assault began with feminists in the 19th century, who argued in favor of temperance reform, partly in the hope that it would lead to less violence against women. She also argues that the social context in which sexual assault allegations were made in the 19th century, especially regarding African-American males and white women, influenced the outcomes in legal cases and divided the feminists of the 19th century. Professor Gruber also addresses the fissures created in the women’s movement from the 1960s through today regarding how sexual assault should be treated under the law has worked against justice for both victims an

Weh Yeoh's Redundant Charities: Escaping the Cycle of Dependence (Koan Press, 2023) presents a transformative approach to charitable work. Drawing on his extensive experience in the non-profit sector, Yeoh argues that the ultimate goal of a charity should be to render itself unnecessary. He critiques the traditional charity model, which often perpetuates dependency and self-preservation, and instead advocates for organizations to implement clear exit strategies and focus on supporting local communities to solve their own problems. Yeoh asserts that success in charity work is measured by the ability to address root causes and sustainably transfer skills and resources to local populations, ensuring they can continue the work independently. This approach is exemplified by his own work founding OIC Cambodia, where he aimed to establish a sustainable speech therapy profession in Cambodia, ultimately handing over the leadership to local practitioners. The book is not just a critique but also offers practical guidan

It is widely acknowledged that the United States is in the grip of an enduring housing crisis. It is less frequently recognized that this crisis amounts to more than there being an insufficient supply of adequate shelter. It rather is tied to a range of other forms of social and economic vulnerability – and many of these forms of vulnerability impede a citizen’s capacity to function as a full member of society. What’s more, the familiar terms we deploy in discussing the housing crisis – gentrification, integration, segregation, and so on – stand in need of philosophical clarification. In Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction (Oxford UP, 2024), Ronald R. Sundstrom draws upon tools derived from moral philosophy, political theory, and urban studies to provide the beginning of a comprehensive analysis of justice in “social-spatial arrangements.” He proposes a liberal-egalitarian and reconstructive, yet pragmatic, approach to addressing the challenges posed by our country’s legacy of

What makes Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) uniquely Latinx? And how can university leaders, staff, and faculty transform these institutions into spaces that promote racial equity, social justice, and collective liberation? Today’s book is: Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), by Dr. Gina Ann Garcia. In it, Dr. Garcia argues that in order to serve Latinx students and other students of color, these institutions must acknowledge how whiteness operates across the organization, from the ways that it is governed and how decisions are made to how education and knowledge are delivered. Diversity alone is insufficient for achieving a dynamic learning environment within higher education institutions. Dr. Garcia's framework for transforming HSIs into truly Latinx institutions is grounded in critical theories, yet it advances new ways of thinking about how to organize colleges and universities that are actively serving students of color, low-income students, and

In Disability Worlds (Duke UP, 2024), Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp chronicle and theorize two decades of immersion in New York City’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. They situate their disabled children’s lives among the experiences of advocates, families, experts, activists, and artists in larger struggles for recognition and rights. Disability consciousness, they show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions. Chapters consider dilemmas of genetic testing and neuroscientific research, reimagining kinship and community, the challenges of “special education,” and the perils of transitioning from high school. They also highlight the vitality of neurodiversity activism, disability arts, politics, and public culture.  Disability Worlds reflects the authors’ anthropological commitments to recognizing the significance of this fundamental form of human difference. Ginsburg and Rapp’s conversations with diverse New Yorkers reveal t

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs such as the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and affordable housing vouchers and subsidies. States and local governments spend tens of billions more.  Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the “corporate poverty complex,” a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor. From bail bondsmen to dialysis providers to towing companies, their business models depend on exploiting low-income Americans, and their political influence ensures a thriving set of industries where everyone profits except the poor, while U.S. taxpayers foot the bill. In Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor (The New Press, 2024), veteran journalist Anne Kim investigates the multiple industries that infiltrate almost every aspect of

Dialysis is a medical miracle, a treatment that allows people with kidney failure to live when otherwise they would die. It also provides a captive customer for the dialysis industry, which values the steady revenues that come from critically required long-term care that is guaranteed by the government.  Tom Mueller's six year deep dive into the dialysis industry has yielded his latest book, How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars in American Medicine (W. W. Norton, 2023). It's both an historical account of this lifesaving treatment and an indictment of the industry that is dominated by two for-profit companies that control ~80% of the market.   There is a precarious balance between ethical care for patients and the prioritization of profits for the providers, a tension that has led to ethical, political, and legal debates about the rationing and exploitation of life-saving care and quality of life.  Dialysis services are desperately needed by patients who require the dangerous, uncomfortable, and ex

On this episode of International Horizons, Francesco Duina, Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Bates College and Luca Storti, Associate Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Turin in Italy and a Research Fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, discuss the rise of inequalities around the globe and the divergent attitudes towards them since 1970. How can those inequalities be broken down?  In this week’s episode, Duina and Storti preview their book-in-progress on The Social Acceptance of Inequality, and they examine four types of logic leading us to accept inequalities in today’s world. Not surprisingly, the concept of meritocracy plays a major role in our thinking about contemporary inequality, although perhaps more so in the United States than in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

A sweeping history of the United States’ economy and politics, in Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy (U Chicago Press, 2024), Carola Binder reveals how the American state has been shaped by a massive, ever-evolving effort to insulate its economy from the real and perceived dangers of price fluctuations. Carola Binder narrates how the pains of rising and falling prices have brought lasting changes for every generation of Americans. And with each brush with price instability, the United States has been reinvented—not as a more perfect union, but as a reflection of its most recent failures. Shock Values tells the untold story of prices and price stabilization in the United States. Expansive and enlightening, Binder recounts the interest-group politics, legal battles, and economic ideas that have shaped a nation from the dawn of the republic to the present. Carola Binder is Associate Professor and Chair of Economics at Haverford College. Twitter. Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of

For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters’ fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn’t matter to others. The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels (Crown, 2024) is an extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction that took Pamela J. Prickett and Stefan Timmermans eight years in the making to uncover this hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will. The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to c

During the COVID pandemic, billions of dollars in relief aid was sent out to help us ride out the storm, although many people who struggled through it might scratch their heads at such a number, having seen little of it make any concrete impact in their own lives. This discrepancy is indicative of the underlying problem with the contemporary care economy, a series of federal and state programs, healthcare facilities and NGO’s, all trying to bend the needs of those under their care to the mechanisms and incentives laid out by capitalism. The result is a massive apparatus that regularly fails to fulfill its supposed intentions, leaving workers and those in need of help in precarious and often dangerous situations.  This apparatus is untangled and explained in clear detail by Premilla Nadasen in her book Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2023). Informed by both her work as a historian and as a political activist, she manages to untangle and explain why the massive apparatus regularly fails