New Books In Political Science

Do individuals have the right to “keep and bear” arms? Do “the people” have any collective rights to public safety? Now that the United States Supreme Court requires each side to argue based on the “history” and “tradition” of 1791 and 1868, what do scholars tell us about legal practices and public understanding in those times? Dr. Laura F. Edwards argues that Americans in the South transformed their understanding of inequality during the half century following the Revolutionary War. Drawing on extensive archival research in North and South Caroline, she outlines the changes in the legal system, highlighting the importance of localized legal practices that favored maintaining the "peace”: a concept intended to protect the social order and its patriarchal hierarchies. Ordinary people, rather than legal professionals and political leaders, were central to its workings. People without rights – even those enslaved – “had influence within the system because of their positions of subordination, not in spite of them

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already changed the world. Why did it happen? Who is winning? How will it end? Christopher Miller is the author of The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Hear him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

From Asia to Africa to the Middle East, #MeToo has inspired local movements and hashtag trends like #AnaKaman and transnational collective hashtags like #MosqueMeToo. Yet, most Western scholarly and popular treatment of the movement assumes it is a primarily Western phenomenon.  To attend to the revolutionary international impact of #MeToo, Iqra Shagufta Cheema brings together contributions from scholars and scholar activists that look at specific iterations of the #MeToo movement across multiple communities, cultures, and countries in the Global South. Going beyond gender, this comprehensive study focuses on the intersectional assemblage of ethnicity, religion, race, class, and politics that informs #MeToo and its place in local and transnational feminisms. By doing so, The Other #MeToos (Oxford UP, 2023) highlights the adaptation, translation, and impact of #MeToo in non-Western, postcolonial, minoritized, and othered locales to explore its wider scope and possibilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

Was the use of violence on January 6th Capitol attacks legitimate? Is the use of violence morally justified by members of Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil campaigners? Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States (Routledge, 2023) addresses these issues head on, to make a radical, but compelling argument in favour of the legitimate use of violence in protest in liberal democracies. Grounded in theories of constitutional morality, the book makes the case that when states make illogical or unjust laws, citizens have morally justifiable reasons to disobey. Violence can act as moral dialogue - both expressively and directly - to denounce unjust laws, particularly in cases where civil disobedience does not go far enough. This book considers recent protest movements, of which the use of violent protest has been central to citizens demands. It examines the activism of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter movement, and other contemporary internationa

How do affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities? And how are they used strategically to further particular political projects? In this episode, we discuss these questions with Rahul Ranjan with specific reference to his new book The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India (Cambridge UP, 2023). The book engages these issues by examining representations of Birsa Munda’s political life and the making of anticolonialism in contemporary Jharkhand. By highlighting contrasting features of political imaginations deployed in developing memorial landscapes, Ranjan shows how both the state and Adivasi use memory as a political tool to lay claims to the past of the Birsa Movement. Rahul Ranjan is an interdisciplinary scholar with a key interest in environmental anthropology and humanities, political ecology and social justice. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an

How do we talk about China? It’s a question every analyst, academic, policymaker, and reporter probably needs to ask themselves. Is China, as some of the hawks claim, an existential threat to the world order? Is it on the verge of aggressively taking the number one spot—or is it on the verge of collapse? Is it a dangerous military threat or is it—as some Chinese commentators claim—an entirely benevolent power? Navigating this increasingly black-and-white conversation is Kerry Brown, leading China academic and author of China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) In this interview, Kerry and I talk about China’s politics, and discuss what—if anything—lies at the foundation of some of the common descriptions about China. Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London. He is an Associate of the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House, London, an adjunct of the Australia New Zealand School of Gove

Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics or sovereign power. Or has it? In Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries (Indiana University Press, 2022), Kevin Funk challenges the commonsensical view that today members of a global capitalist class have little or no need of national loyalty. Teasing the global apart from the transnational and de-national, Funk delineates a global capitalist ideal type, which he adopts as a heuristic for study of Arab-Latin American business elites. Through relational interviews he shows that global capitalism’s ostensible new class might be more rooted in place than either those who champion its achievements or who reluctantly take its existence for granted would have us believe. Evidence of a global capitalist class consciousness, he explains on this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, is ha

Today I talked to David B. Wong about his book Moral Relativism and Pluralism (Cambridge UP, 2023). The argument for metaethical relativism--the view that there is no single true or most justified morality--is that it is part of the best explanation of the most difficult moral disagreements. The argument for this view features a comparison between traditions that highly value relationship and community and traditions that highly value personal autonomy of the individual and rights. It is held that moralities are best understood as emerging from human culture in response to the need to promote and regulate interpersonal cooperation and internal motivational coherence in the individual. The argument ends in the conclusion that there is a bounded plurality of true and most justified moralities that accomplish these functions. The normative implications of this form of metaethical relativism are explored, with specific focus on female genital cutting and abortion. You can find out more about Prof. David Wong's wo

What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? In We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (Verso, 2021), Patel retells Britain's recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today. In a series of post-war immigration laws from 1948 to 1971, arrivals from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa to Britain went from being citizens to being renamed immigrants. In the late 1960s, British officials drew upon an imperial vision of the world to contain what it saw as a vast immigration “crisis” involving British citizens, passing legislation to block their entry. As a result, British citizenship itself was redefined along racial lines, fatally compromising the Commonwealth and exposing the limits of Britain’s influence in world politics. Combining voices of so-called immigrants trying to make a home in Britain and the politicians, diplomats and commentators who were rethinking the nation, Ian Sanjay Patel excavates the reasons why

In 2019, nearly two-thirds of domestic violence homicides in the United States were committed with a gun. On average, three women are killed by a current or former partner every day in the United States. Between 1980 and 2014, more than half of women killed by intimate partners were killed with guns. Domestic violence affects children, friends, neighbors, peace officers, the abusers themselves, and society as a whole. This fall, the United States Supreme Court will hear a Second Amendment case (United States v. Rahimi) that may affect whether Congress or state legislatures may pass laws to mitigate domestic violence. To unpack what we know about the effect of firearms on intimate partner violence, Postscript brings you two nationally recognized experts on public health and firearms and an attorney who helped assembled an amicus brief for the Supreme Court. Dr. Shannon Frattoroli, PhD, MPH, is Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for

At the end of the day, I have faith in the wisdom of democracy: the idea that good political solutions only arise from widely dispersed discussion, debate and decision among the broadest group of those affected. This book is intended, then, not as a finalized blueprint or technical report delivered from on high but as a conversation opener for democratic debate among my fellow citizens. – Christopher F. Zurn, Splitsville USA (2023) Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking Up the United States (Routledge, 2023) argues that it’s time for us to break up to save representative democracy, proposing a mutually negotiated, peaceful dissolution of the current United States into several new nations. Zurn begins by examining the United States’ democratic predicament, a road most likely headed for electoral authoritarianism, with distinct possibilities of ungovernability and violent civil strife. Unlike others who share this diagnosis, Zurn presents a realistic picture of how we can get to reform and what it

50 years ago, anarchism was written off by some as a set of outdated idealistic ideas that had no contemporary relevance. Then came protests at events such as World Trade Organisation meetings – protests by people who either described themselves as anarchists or were so described by the media. It all gave rise the question "Has anarchism actually got a future?" To answer this question, Ruth Kinna has written The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism (Pelican Publishing, 2020). Listen to her on conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why are we seeing a rise in coups in Africa and growing debate about the possible benefits of military rule? What are the roots of “feel good” militarism and how much of a threat does this pose to civilian governments? Whose interests are served by giving the military a role in development, and how well do the armed forces actually perform in reality? Join Nic Cheeseman and Rita Abrahamsen in this episode of the People, Power, Politics podcast to learn more about these questions and what they mean for the future of democracy and security. Rita Abrahamsen is one of the world’s leading experts on security issues and international relations, and a Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada. Her work on the spread of global militarism has shaped our understanding of how we think about the armed forces and the role that they play in politics and society around the world. Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the Universi

When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, the hashtag turned rallying cry is but one expression of a radical reorientation toward Black politics, protest, and political thought. To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care (Princeton UP, 2023) examines the spirit and significance of this insurgency, offering a revelatory account of a new political culture--responsive to pain, suffused with joy, and premised on care--emerging from the centuries-long arc of Black rebellion, a tradition that traces back to the Black slave. Drawing on his own experiences as an activist and organizer, Christopher Paul Harris takes readers inside the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) to chart the propulsive trajectory of Black politics and thought from the Middle Passage to the present historical moment. Carefully attending to the social forces that produce Black struggle and the contradictions that arise

Emilee Booth Chapman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, has a new book that examines the idea of the vote, and what this experience means for citizens, for the structure of government, and, as the title indicates, for democracy. Booth Chapman is a political theorist, so she is approaching the actual experience of voting not only as an activity that we all do “together” but also considering how this experience is part of democracy.  What Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy (Princeton UP, 2022) also teaches us is that within the study of democratic theory, not all that much attention has been directed at the idea of and the execution of the vote itself. While there is an approach within democratic theory that citizens/individuals should think about and engage with other dimensions of democratic participation beyond the vote—and this is also important, since it focuses on places of deliberation, community engagement, and the like—it obscures the importance of

McManus presents an intellectual history of the conservative and reactionary tradition, stretching from Aristotle and Filmer to Alexander Dugin and Patrick Deneen. Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of the intellectual political right, McManus traces its core to a nostalgia for the hierarchical cosmos of antiquarian and scholastic thinking. The yearning for a shared vision of the universe where each part of reality has its place maps onto the conservative admiration for orderly political and social stratification. It stamps even the more moderate forms of liberal conservatism which emerged in the aftermath of the revolutionary 18th century, as the political right struggled to accept and later master first the politics of liberal capitalism and later universal suffrage. In its most radical forms this nostalgia for an orderly and hierarchical existence can harden into a resentment at the perceived shallowness of liberal modernity. McManus argues for those who support the project of modernity to commit

Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and free exercise of religion, plus a handful of others. However, we do not need to enumerate every liberty because there is another way to protect them: an "etcetera clause." It states that there are other rights beyond those specifically listed: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Yet scholars are divided on whether the Ninth Amendment itself actually does protect unenumerated rights, and the Supreme Court has almost entirely ignored it. Regardless of what the Ninth Amendment means, two-thirds of state constitutions have equivalent provisions, or "Baby Ninth Amendments," worded similarly to the Ninth Amendment. Anthony B. Sanders' book Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why

Western analysts and media often assess the prospect that Moscow might use nuclear weapons as the war in Ukraine grinds on, possibly to a flailing Russia’s disadvantage. George Beebe, though, injects a less-familiar element into this grim dynamic: What are the chances that Washington might resort to nukes, should the direction in the war turn sharply against U.S.-backed Ukraine? Or enter the conflict directly with NATO air support for beleaguered Ukrainian foot soldiers? These are awkward questions but Beebe is well equipped to parse them. He is the Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington and in an earlier career in government he served as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis.  The springboard for our discussion is his 2019 book, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (St. Martins Press, 2019). It’s a sober and an incisive look at a vital topic—and as characterizes Beebe’s assessments generally, his take is un

J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings delighted so many of us as children, yet it and its vast body of accompanying work, such as the Silmarillion, contain a rich depth not well understood by most adults. Tolkien's work reflects his academic interests in the history of language and the Medieval world, as well as his Catholic faith. What purpose and religious message does his writing contain? Does his work carry a political meaning? Here to discuss is Professor Rachel Fulton Brown, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Chicago. In addition to her work on the history of Christianity, medieval liturgy, and the cult of the Virgin Mary, she teaches a popular course "Tolkien: Medieval and Modern," and has a series of lectures and writings mining the depths of Tolkien's thought and writing. More on Rachel Fulton Brown here. The syllabus to her course is here. Her lecture series, "The Forge of Tolkien" is here.  Her blog, "Fencing Bear at Prayer" is here.  Dragon Common Room, w

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.  Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science