New Books In Public Policy

Many of us are familiar with the court-mandated bussing programs created in an effort to achieve school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Far fewer of us realize there were also voluntary transfer programs that were crafted in out-of-court settlements in the decades that followed. For example, as part of the Canford Program, wealthy districts like those in Arbor Town accept between 6-60 students from nearby South Bay City, where resources are more scarce. These children who win the lottery have access to all of the same teachers, facilities, and curricular materials as the students living in the surrounding neighborhoods. Still, their experiences are far from the same. Canford students ride the bus each morning. Their trips are long and chaotic, and as a result, they often arrive late, hungry, or unsettled. These students must quickly transition into routines that fail to take this reality into account, and issues of equity quickly arise. Do the benefits of such a program exceed its costs? How might such

Nicole Rudolph‘s At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort (Berghahn Books, 2015) contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the three decades after 1945 known as the Trente glorieuses. Rudolph’s emphasis is on French designs and experiences of dwelling, and the interior spaces of French homes in particular. The book argues that housing was essential to the modernizing project that French society engaged in during these years, a vital site of reconstruction in the wake of the Second World War, and a key locus of nation-building and democratization. In this period, the French state actively pursued policies that sought to guarantee its citizens the right to safe, hygienic, and comfortable homes that would nurture individual happiness while helping to strengthen families as the building blocks of a thriving society. From the creation of a Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism in 1945, to the housing crisis of 1953, to the yearly Salon des arts menagers promoting new househo

The landscape described in Bernard Harcourt‘s new book is a dystopia saturated by pleasure. We do not live in a drab Orwellian world, he writes. We live in a beautiful, colorful, stimulating, digital world a rich, bright world full of passion and jouissance–and by means of which we reveal ourselves and make ourselves virtually transparent to surveillance. Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (Harvard University Press, 2015) guides us through our new digital age, one that makes it so easy for others to monitor, profile, and shape our every desire. We are building what he calls the expository society a platform for unprecedented levels of exhibition, watching, and influence that is reconfiguring our political relations and reshaping our notions of what it means to be an individual. Other actors from advertisers to government agencies can compile huge amounts of information about who we are and what we do. Whether they use it to recommend other products to buy or track our movements, Harcourt ar

How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the concept of Urban Multiculture as a framework for understanding his ethnographic research in East London. The book considers memory, territory and cultural practice, thinking through how the politics of class and race, alongside the lived experience of young people in the area, are being reconfigured by technology. This reconfiguration takes place in the context of global flows of people and culture, in a contested and transforming East London. The book demonstrates the importance of ethnographic research, both to how we understand and do politics, and to how we understand the contemporary city. It will be of interested to any scholar of urban studies, as well as those working on youth, race and class. Dave OBrien is the host of New Books In Critical Theory and is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the Insti

“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited by Fred Ross during the five decades he spent organizing impoverished and disenfranchised communities throughout the country. In America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2016), Gabriel Thompson provides the first biography of Ross, one of the most influential, albeit virtually unknown, activists and organizers in American history. Radicalized by his experiences working with impoverished Dust Bowl migrants during the Great Depression and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, Ross developed an insatiable desire to stand up for those “kept out” of mainstream society. He spent the majority of his career building Latino political power across the state of California aiding in the establishment of the Community Services Organization (CSO) and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), tw

Pedro Garcia de Leon, Policy Analyst for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), joins New Books in Education to discuss the organizations new data website, gpseducation.oecd.org. The new site streamlines all of OECDs educational data into one easily searchable location. It even provides customizable data graphics that can be used in presentations or shared on social media. The team at OECD hopes that educational researchers, policymakers, or anyone interested in education will find the site useful to access this wealth of data. For any questions, comments, or recommendations for the New Books in Education podcast, you can connect with the host, Ryan Allen, at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (Verso Books, 2015), Linsey McGoey proposes a new way of discussing philanthropy and, in doing so, revives associated historical debates often overlooked at present: from the ethics of clinical trials to industrial labor organizing in the early 20th century to global financial regulation. Tracing theological and industrial origins, among others, of what is now the field of philanthropy, Dr. McGoey asks how these institutions fit into the larger global economy. More broadly, McGoey suggests that capitalism has become the bedrock of many philanthropic social change efforts, reflected in the terms philanthrocapitalism, impact investment, and social enterprise among others. What, then, are the most appropriate questions to ask about regulation, morality, well-being, accountability, and profitability? No Such Thing As A Free Gift starts by examining the industry in the language of monopolies, investments, regulation, taxes, and de

Peter K. Enns is the author of Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Enns is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Executive Director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. The rise of mass incarceration in the United States is one of the most critical outcomes of the last half-century. Incarceration Nation combines close analysis of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon’s presidential campaigns with 60 years of data analysis. In contrast to conventional wisdom, Enns shows that over this time period, politicians responded to an increasingly punitive public by pushing policy in a more punitive direction. The book also shows that media coverage of rising crime rates fueled the public’s attitudes. More recently, a decline in public punitiveness helps explain the current bipartisan calls for criminal justice reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In New Mexico, before World War Two, Catholic sisters in full habits routinely taught in public schools. In her fascinating new book, Religious Lessons: Catholic Sisters and the Captured Schools Crisis in New Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2012), Dr. Kathleen Holscher explores how this curious situation arose and how this partnership between public schools and female religious orders was brought to an end by the court case Zellers v. Huff. Through a sensitive and rich exploration of diverse sources, including trial transcripts and her own interviews, Holscher captures the complex ways people in New Mexico and the wider United States understood religious freedom and the proper relationship between church and state while constructing a fascinating and ultimately moving narrative of division and reconciliation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed and destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Mark Schuller‘s book Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti (Rutgers University Press, 2016) takes readers into the temporary camps in Port au Prince and offers a searing critique of the NGOs and aid organizations that organized relief efforts. Despite good intentions, the assumptions and practices of many of those organizations all too frequently resulted in the separation of families, sexual violence, and a continuation of racist hierarchies. And yet Schuller finds some success stories amidst the continuing tragedy. This is a necessary read for anyone interested in the complexities of humanitarianism, in US-Haiti relations, and in the politics of catastrophe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King are the authors of Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford UP, 2016). Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Government in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. King is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford. Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King’s Fed Power follows the Federal Reserve Banks historic development from the 19th century to its current position as the most important institution in the American economy, possessing considerable autonomy to intervene in private markets. Despite its power and considerable resources, Jacobs and King claim that the Fed was asleep at the wheel when the recent economic crisis hit. The Fed acted swiftly to contain the crisis, but in the process exposed its strong favoritism. The authors dissect how the Fed’s

Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer David Grazian tracks the competing missions of zoos as site of education, entertainment, philanthropy, and work. Grazian coins the term nature making to describe the process through which people assert and police an imagined division between nature and culture. On his sociological safari as a dung-shoveling, insect-eating volunteer at two urban zoos, Grazian observes how a range of stakeholders including visitors, employees, and corporate donors all participate in nature-making. Yet these groups make nature in different, patterned ways, which spawns everyday controversies as well as broader struggles to manage zoos rival missions. These contradictions shape what people learn in zoos (no evolution, please), how they imagine distant people and places (often crudely), and how species, both human and nonhuman, interact in

Few social justice struggles have captivated recent political history like the broad Black Lives Matter movement. From the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore to campaign rally interruptions of leading politicians, we have seen people speak up in outrage about injustices of policing, racist violence, wealth inequality and much more. What does this cycle of struggle have to do with the history of capitalism? In addition to these questions, our guest today, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, asks “Can the conditions created by institutional racism be transformed within the existing capitalist order?. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation was recently published by Haymarket Books. Republished with permission from Betsy Beasley and David Stein’s Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How are humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect changing in the current international political scene? In Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action (3rd ed., Polity Press, 2016), Thomas G. Weiss (The Graduate Center, CUNY) explores the past, present, and future of these phenomena. The book offers a synthesis of conceptual debates, case studies, and historical analysis in exploring the constantly evolving theory and practice of humanitarian intervention. It also discusses that way that transformations in how wars are fought and in the identity and operations of humanitarian organizations impact prospects for intervention. The interview covers the history of humanitarian intervention and the emergence of the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm, the role of the UN and of humanitarian organizations in relation to intervention, shifting understandings of sovereignty, the expansion of what is understood to constitute a threat to international peace and security, the present situation in Syria, and

Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His book The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016) interprets the New Deal as a massive but unstable experiment from the main of American political culture. Against arguments that the New Deal was the product of the American penchant for reform, Cowie asserts that it was a remarkable historical detour. The Great Depression and WWII were specific historical circumstances that wrought a short-lived effort for central government intervention in securing collective economic rights. Unions flourished, industrial workers gained job security and good wages, and the country enjoyed a relative amount of political cohesion. Multiple legislative measures and the growth of unions offered a countervailing power against corporate wealth accumulation and promised a bright economic future. Several enduring fissures in political culture would all but undo the New Deal after the

Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among worlds, navigate shifting circumstances, and find emergent opportunities? When do new species add value to ecological associations, and when do they become irredeemably destructive? When should we let unruly forms of life run wild, and when should we intervene?…Which creatures are flourishing, and which are failing, at the intersection of divided forces, competing political projects, and diverse market economies? Amid widespread environmental destruction, with radical changes taking place in ecosystems throughout the Americas, where can we find hope? Emergent Ecologies (Duke University Press, 2015) takes readers on an adventure through the Americas stopping over in ecosystems, laboratories, art exhibits, forests, and more in Panama, New York, Maine, Florida, Costa Rica to tell a story about the practices of worldmaking by ants, frogs, fungi, and other ontologic

Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman are the authors of Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2016). Potter is a former health insurance executive, is the author of Deadly Spin, and is a regular contributor for the Huffington Post and HealthInsurance.org. Penniman is the executive director of Issue One. In Nation on the Take, Potter and Penniman catalogue the enormous amount of money spent on politics in the U.S. Over $6 billion spent on the 2012 election and over $3 billion spent annually on lobbying. From lobbying to campaign contributions, they argue that big money has corrupted the countrys democratic institutions altering everything from health care to food to banking. But Potter and Penniman arent cynics, they suggest that numerous legislative and legal fixes could greatly change the direction the country is headed. This podcast interview was recorded by Heath Brown, assistant professor of public policy, City University of New York, John Jay College and The Graduate Cente

All of us are familiar with multiple-choice tests. They may be the one thing that you can find in kindergarten classrooms, college courses, and workplace training programs. But why are they so common? Multiple-choice tests may be the simplest and easiest way to see if someone knows something — or at least that someone probably knows something. No one would contend that this form of assessment moves beyond the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy — remembering and understanding. Of course, we want students — and employees — who can do more than that. What kinds of assessments can measure whether someone can apply, analyze, evaluate, or create something? How would teachers prepare students for those evaluations? How would schools promote those practices? In Transforming Schools: Using Project-Based Learning, Performance Assessment, and Common Core Standards (Jossey-Bass, 2015), Bob Lenz and co-authors Justin Wells and Sally Kingston outline a series of practices designed to promote higher levels of cognition as we

March Madness is big business. Each year the NCAA collects $700 million for television rights to the men’s college basketball tournament, under the terms of a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting. The two networks, in turn, bring in just over a billion dollars each year in advertising revenue. And it’s estimated that over nine billion dollars changes hands in bets every year, as some 40 million Americans fill out their brackets to predict the outcome of all 67 games in the three-week tournament. And this is “amateur” sports. In his new book Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports (University of Illinois Press, 2015), historian Howard Chudacoff describes the key turning points that led to today’s big-money world of college sports. Focusing on the decades since World War II, Howard shows how college football, rather than basketball, led to the unchecked power of coaches, athletic directors, and wealthy boosters that we see today. He also ex

Teenagers live in their phones. As an educator you can try to pull them away or meet them where they are. The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messaging and Other Behavioral Strategies Can Improve Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) urges educators to meet teens on their must-have device. Author Benjamin Castleman of the University of Virginia shows how text messaging combined with insights from behavioral science―more specifically the fields of behavioral economics and social psychology―can be leveraged to help students complete assignments, perform to their full potential on tests, and choose schools and colleges where they are well positioned for success. In his own research, Castleman has studied how to use personalized text messages to reduce “summer melt,” in which up to 40 percent of high school graduates who have been accepted to college, mostly from underserved communities, fail to show up for the fall semester. Behavioral strategies extend beyond texting and even beyond smartphon