New Books In World Affairs

The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music (NYU Press, 2015), Roshanak Kheshti explores how these origins shape how listeners hear world music today. Kheshti did fieldwork at Kinship Records, a pseudonym of a world music label, and examined how world music gets record, produced, marketed, and sold. Full of theoretical insights, Modernity’s Ear focuses on how listening and the ear have become key sites for the production of racial and gender identities and how listeners come to hear their own desires. Kheshti challenges earlier scholarly studies that criticize world music for appropriating ethnic sounds. Instead, she considers how music allows listeners to incorporate a wide range of sounds into their own culture. For example she discusses how Vampire Weekend, an alternative rock band, drew on Afro pop in their music. For

Darjeeling tea, like other members of its artisanal tribe serrano peppers, Champagne, and grana padano,exists through a combination of intimate understanding of natural forces, intensive labor, and lifelong dedication. The result is a small output of unparalleled quality. The town where Darjeeling tea grows, in West Bengal, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, is a setting of immense beauty, complicated history, and environmental fragility. Even transporting this precious tea to Kolkata, where it is traded 400 miles away down on the Indian plains, is subject to the whims of climate: monsoons and narrow mountain roads, often washed out by mudslides. Does a tea warrant such efforts? In Darjeeling (Bloomsbury, 2015), Jeff Koehler explains why the answer is “yes.” There is nothing simple about Darjeeling, this single estate agricultural product. He weaves a web of stories: how this non-native plant came to India, how a tea garden functions, what the role of tea taster is (there’s lots of spitting, as in win

The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day (PM Press, 2007) is a new collection of essays from Peter Linebaugh about the history of May Day. The essays were written for a range of occasions celebrating or otherwise relating to May Day. Collectively, the essays recognize the power of May Day historically and internationally. They reflect on the holiday in relation to a number of historical figures from Native American anarcho-communist Lucy Parsons, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, and Karl Marx to Jose Marti, W. E. B. Du Bois, and SNCC, along with many others. The book also makes an argument for the continued relevance and importance of this workers’ day. In the interview Linebaugh discusses his own background as a child of empire from schooling in London to working as a professor in the United States and living in numerous places in between. He introduces listeners to some of the essays in detail and then generally talks about the importance of May Day historically. He also addr

John D. Wilsey, assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (IVP Academic, 2015) is a work of historical political theology and examination of the idea of American exceptionalism that many have held as true and compatible with the evangelical faith. Exceptionalism, as part of civil religion, has its roots in several theological ideas including the Puritan concept of covenant, providence and millennialism. These theological ideas were extracted from the bible and applied to the American nation, married to republicanism, and championed by nineteenth century historians. Through its history exceptionalism was reinforced by western expansion, slavery, and the rise of the U.S as a global power. National leaders have espoused notions of choosenness, divine commission, innocence, sacred land and glory. All these ideas that have been challenged by critics and charge with ex

Thanks to mobile phones, getting online is easier and cheaper than ever. In After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet (MIT Press, 2015), Jonathan Donner challenges the optimistic narrative that mobile phone will finally close the digital divide. How we log on, how long we stay, what we choose to do, what we can do – all are shaped by our environments, resources and digital literacies. After Access examines the implications of the shift to a more mobile, more available Internet throughout the developing world. Donner addresses these implications specifically for socioeconomic development and broad-based inclusion in a global society. He offers a note of caution about the Panglossian views of mobile phones arguing that access and effective use are not the same thing, and the digital world does not run on mobile handsets alone. Donner, a Senior Director of Research at Caribou Digital, a UK-based consultancy focused on building inclusive digital economies in the developing world. After Acc

Chances are that at this very moment, you are either looking at a computer screen, holding a digital device, or listening to my voice through plastic earphones. Our computers and these other devices are constructed out of materials that have their origins in lands across the globe. And oil plays a central and early role in the causal story of how we came into possession of them. Oil also plays a leading role in the major global conflicts of our day. Much of the world’s oil is sold to us by brutal tyrants who use the monetary proceeds to strengthen their tyranny. But it is arguable that tyrants who control a territory have no legitimate claim to ownership of the territory’s resources; the oil belongs to the people, not to the tyrant. So the oil that goes into creating the objects that we now possess and use is likely stolen. How is it then that your computer, which is made of oil in the form of plastic, is your property? And what can be done about the fact that out ordinary consumption habits so directly place

The Canadian author and journalist Naomi Klein says right-wing conservatives who deny the reality of global warming are correct about the revolutionary implications of climate change. In her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon and Schuster, 2014) Klein quotes Thomas J. Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who says that the steps being proposed to radically reduce carbon emissions would change the American way of life and put large segments of the economy out of business. Klein agrees, but argues that transforming global capitalism into a more humane economic system would be a good thing. In her book, she urges progressives who care about the environment to show that the steps needed to avert catastrophic climate change “are also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed.” Klein also argues that the

For most of recorded history, single rulers such a kings, queens, chiefs, and emperors exercised authority over human populations. Jeroen Duindam (Professor of Early Modern History, Leiden University) examines an important part of this story in his new book Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He employs an easy-to-follow, four-level comparative framework that explains how dynastic power evolved in kingdoms as diverse as the Qing Empire, Mughal Empire, France, and Dahomey in Africa. The use of this framework allows Duindam to move beyond the pitfalls of many comparative works. With careful attention to detail, he recounts how “divergent practices” of dynastic rule “can be seen as part of the same pattern,” as well as how “striking similarities hide profound differences (14).” This approach allows him to illustrate the tendency of scholars to overstate the differences between “Eastern” and “Western” dynasties; it also puts him in a strong position to make astute o

Published in October 2015, Caroline Shaw‘s timely new book, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford University Press, 2015), traces the intertwined development of the category of refugee and of the moral commitment of Britons to providing refuge for persecuted foreigners. By confidently working across a range of methods and geopolitical contexts, Shaw shows how the refugee category became “potentially universal in scope,” thanks to the depth of this moral commitment. Yet the attendant challenges of providing relief and resettlement for a potentially endless stream of people fleeing slavery in the US and East Africa, political persecution in continental Europe, and Russian pogroms raised a number of questions, not least where these refugees would live and work. Here, the British Empire provided an important safety valve: resettling refugees abroad made the work of relief seem feasible, despite real problems on the ground. By the later nineteenth century, h

When former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas traveled to Havana in 1959 to celebrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro in front of a crowd of thousands, providing the early sketches of an image of unquestioned Mexican support for revolutionary Cuba that would persist over the next few decades. Mexico was the only country in the Western Hemisphere that defied the United States and refused to break off relations with Castro’s government, and successive presidential administrations in Mexico cited their own country’s revolutionary legacy in their enduring professions of support. But the story told in Renata Keller‘s fascinating new book, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015) paints a rather more complicated story: one in which leaders in all three countries craft official public narratives contradicted by their actions behind-the-scenes, and one in which the optics of foreign poli

William C. Smith (ed.), senior associate with RESULTS Educational Fund, joins New Books in Education to discuss The Global Testing Culture: Shaping Education Policy, Perceptions, and Practice (Symposium Books, 2016). This edited volume provides an analysis of the global testing culture that has permeated societies throughout the world. With a diverse range of academic contributors, perspectives of this global phenomenon are thoroughly explored and problematized at various levels of societies, from an expansive macro view from the top, down to the micro view of individual actors. You can find more information on the author and on the Right to Education Index (RTEI) at www.results.org. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can connect to the host at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The nonprofit sector is growing, not just in the United States, but globally. In The Nonprofit World: Civil Society and the Rise of the Nonprofit Sector (Kumarian Press, 2015), John Casey demonstrates the extent to which nonprofits, what are sometimes called civil society organizations, charities, or community groups, participate in all sectors of the economy in countries across the world. This broad focus allows Casey to show the commonalities and differences in which issues nonprofits pursue and how this increasingly internationalized sector affects national policy and politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of rice, rooted in specific local cases, that spans 15 chapters written by specialists in the histories of Africa, the Americas, and several regions of Asia. Rice: Global Networks and New Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2015) creates a conversation among regional and disciplinary modes of studying and narrating rice histories that have often been conducted in isolation. Specifically, the project brings together two large-scale debates that emerge from very different rice historiographies: the “Black Rice” and “agricultural involution” debates frame the inquiry here, and as you listen to my conversation with Francesca and Dagmar (the two co-editors with whom I spoke for the podcast) you’ll hear them offer an overview of the nature and stakes of both of those areas of inquiry. In the course of the conversation we also had a chance to talk about the collaborative

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of pol

Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-Find-A-Way-To-Somehow-Engage-Even-If-Reading-Is-Not-Their-Thing. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015) joyfully bursts forth in a “riot of short chapters” that collectively open out into a mushroom-focused exploration of what Tsing refers to as a “third nature,” or “what manages to live despite capitalism.” Tsing’s book is based on fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2011 in the US, Japan, Canada, China, and Finland, plus interviews with scientists, foresters, and matsutake traders in those places and in Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey. The book is an exemplar of the kind of work that can come out of thoughtful and extended scholarly collaboration, here resulting from Tsing’s work with the Matsutake Worlds Research Group. The book treats matsutake mushrooms as objects and companions that

Today, sustainability is all the rage. But when and why did the idea of sustainable development emerge, and how has its meaning changed over time? Stephen Macekura’s new book, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2015) explores this question by connecting three of the most important aspects of the twentieth century: decolonization, the rise of environmentalism, and the pursuit of economic development and modernization in the Third World. Macekura, who is an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Indiana University, demonstrates how environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attempted to promote environmental protection in the post-colonial world, then, after failing to do so, challenged the economic development approaches of the United States, World Bank, and United Nations. The book reveals how environmental activists initially conceived of “sustainable development” as a way to link environmental protection w

In Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), author Jason W. Moore seeks to undermine popular understandings of the relationship among society, environment, and capitalism. Rather, than seeing society and environment as acting on an external, nonhuman nature, Moore wants us to recognize capitalism-in-nature. For Moore, seeing society and environment as separate has hampered clear thinking on the problems we face, such as climate change or the end of cheap nature, as well as political solutions to these issues. His book is an analysis of the interrelationship of capitalism and nature over the past few centuries as well as a critique of important environmental concepts such as the Anthropocene. Moore is assistant professor of sociology at SUNY-Binghamton and coordinator of the World Ecology Research Network. This book is a product of over a decade of research and writings on world ecology and evidence of his wide-ranging scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices.

In Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Marjorie Feld, associate professor of history at Babson College, explores the tension between the particularist and universalist commitments many American Jews have felt in the battle against apartheid. For Feld, the post-war debates among American Jews about how to deal with injustice in South Africa later expanded when the term apartheid was used in other contexts. Drawing on archival research and interviews, Feld brings a global perspective to the story of the American Jewish past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

To write a comprehensive history of Southeast Asia is a task reserved for precious few scholars: historians of unrivaled skill and formidable knowledge. Anthony Reid is among them. His new book, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), is almost impossibly vast in scale and ambitious in scope, ranging across familiar territory while drawing out major new themes in the history of one of the world’s most diverse yet nevertheless coherent regions. Writing against the “seductive pressure” to view past political and cultural arrangements as analogues of our own, Reid draws on the resources of a life spent studying and writing Southeast Asian history to take the reader on a journey from the nagara polities and stateless majorities of a thousand years ago to the rise of high modernism in the places that today we know as Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. His strong engagement with major debates will appeal to specialists, yet the book is also highly accessible to students new to study

The assassination of the Armenian-Turkish activist Hrant Dink in 2007 raised uncomfortable questions about a historical tragedy that the leaders of the Turkish Republic would like people to forget: the Armenian genocide. In his new book Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide (Oxford UP, 2015), the journalist/historian Vicken Cheterian offers a scholarly, yet high readable account of this injustice and the century-long silence surrounding it. With engaging prose, he explains how and why this genocide took place, including a description of the violence that Kurds carried out against Armenians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also helps readers better grasp the continuities in how Sultan Abudhamid II, the Young Turks, and Mustafa Kamal's Turkish Republic employed violence to deal with their "Armenian problem" and other "internal enemies" such as Greeks, Assyrians, and the Yezidis. Not one to mince words, Cheterian offers a fascinating description of the Turkish efforts t