New Books in Political Science

Stephen DysonView on AmazonStephen Dyson is the author of Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica (Johns Hopkins University Press 2015). Dyson is associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. Is Tyrian Lannister a realist or a liberal? What would Mr. Spock have to say about rational choice theory? And what did Stanley Kubrick read to create Dr. Strangelove? Dyson takes on these important questions with an enjoyable exploration for how the classic theories of International Relations have been played on our television and movie screens.

Chris WellsView on AmazonHow has the digital revolution changed communication? In The Civic Organization and The Digital Citizen: Communicating Engagement in the Networked Age (Oxford University Press 2015), Chris Wells examines the ways that organizations have negotiated the changing communications landscape, sometimes failing to fully understand the expectations of younger people. Wells is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

John CaseyView on AmazonThe 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.

Guntis SmidchensView on AmazonIn the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these movements espoused nonviolent principles, but the capacity for violence was always there – especially as Soviet authorities engaged in violent repression. In The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution (University of Washington Press, 2015), Guntis Smidchens tackles the question "of whether it is possible to reconcile nonviolent principles with a pursuit of nationalist power" and his answer is yes. As evidence, Smidchens presents the events of 1988 to 1991 in the Baltic countries and their national song cultures, considering them through the lens of principles of nonviolence. Smidchens analyzes the role of choral, folk and rock music in the national movements, demonstrating that choral music provided mass discipline, folk songs pulled in people not already involved in song culture, and rock music integrated ideology and responsiveness to rapidly changing events in the Baltic and the Soviet Union more broadly. He also provides English translations of over 100 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian songs, setting them in their historical, cultural and poetic contexts. The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution explains why Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians chose music as their weapon of choice to regain independence from the Soviet Union.

Neil RobertsView on AmazonWhat does it mean to be free?  How can paying attention to the relationship between freedom and slavery help construct a concept and practice of freedom that is "perpetual, unfinished, and rooted in acts of flight" (181)? In his book Freedom as Marronage (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Neil Roberts (Africana Studies, Religion, and Political Science, Williams College) explores this and many other questions. Proceeding from and working with the concept and practice of marronage – modes of escape from slavery emerging from the Caribbean – Roberts articulates a theory of freedom that is historically specific while having trans-historical reverberations, and that is attentive to lived experiences of freedom and slavery. In doing so, he engages histories of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, diaspora, the Haitian Revolution, and American slavery. Arguing for the need to creolize political theory and philosophy, Roberts also takes up the thought and practice of W.E.B. DuBois, Hannah Arendt, Philip Petit, Frederick Douglass, Angela Davis, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Edouard Glissant, Rastafari, and much more.

Alice J. KangView on AmazonAlice J. Kang has written Bargaining for Women's Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Kang is assistant professor of political science and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Much attention is paid to Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East, especially the contentious role of women's rights in those countries. Less attention has been paid to Muslim democracies in Africa. Kang's book focuses on the politics of women's rights in one such country: Niger. Women's rights activists in Niger have fought to participate in democratic governance, but haven't won every recent battle. Kang highlights several successes as well as policy areas where women's organizations have failed to win policy victories. The book has much to say about social movements and also the evolving way Muslim majority democracies grapple with human rights.

Jason W. Moore View on AmazonIn 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 wall 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.

Eli ZaretskyView on AmazonBack in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell. First, he decided, he'd better read some Freud. This started a life-long engagement with psychoanalysis and leftist politics, and his new book Political Freud: A History (Columbia University Press, 2015) conveys the richness of his decades of reading Freud. Following his 2004 Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis, Zaretsky's latest book, some would call it a companion, is comprised of five essays analyzing the complexity of the mutual influencing of capitalism, social/political history, and psychoanalysis, with particular attention to how and whether people conceive of their own interiority as political. (Particularly timely is chapter two: "Beyond the Blues: the Racial Unconscious and Collective Memory" which explores African American intellectual engagement with psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding oppression.) "Whereas introspection did once define an epoch of social and cultural history– the Freudian epoch– there were historical reasons for this, and it was bound to pass" says Zaretsky. But Political Freud is also a compelling argument for how badly we still need a conception of the self–or ego– with a critical and non-normalizing edge. Eli Zaretsky is a professor of history at The New School, writes and teaches about twentieth-century cultural history, the theory and history of capitalism (especially its social and cultural dimensions), and the history of the family. He is also the author of Why America Needs a Left, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis and Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life.

View on AmazonRobert Stoker is the co-author (with Clarence Stone, John Betancur, Susan Clarke, Marilyn Dantico, Martin Horak, Karen Mossberger, Juliet Musso, Jeffrey Sellers, Ellen Shiau, Harold Wolman, and Donn Worgs) of Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era: Revitalization Politics in the Postindustrial City (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Stoker is professor of public policy political science at George Washington University and a member of the faculty of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Administration. After decades of deindustrialization and population loss, the revitalization of cities has paid scant attention to empowering neighborhoods and neighborhood leaders to move ahead. Focusing on neighborhoods in six cities (Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Toronto), recasts the debate about the future of cities as one about neighborhoods, rather than downtown development.

View on AmazonFor people and governments in the west the revolutions of 1989 and 1991 were happy events, and as the twentieth anniversary of those events rolled around they were to be celebrated once again with historical reviews in newsmagazines and tv news shows. For the peoples of Eastern Europe they were always political events that went beyond the thrill of no longer being systematically harassed for being too openly religious or public about political views not in line with the party line. There were big questions about how to deal with the legacy of communist rule and how to redirect the country, which have shaped politics in those countries ever since. In Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik's collection Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration (Oxford University Press, 2015), then, it should come as no surprise that the celebration and commemoration of 1989 looks quite different. As such, it provides an interesting means to explore the political landscape in Eastern Europe revealing a variety of different directions politics have taken since 1989, and provides insights into how and why 1989 is remembered differently in these countries. I invite you to listen to my talk with Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik to learn more about their findings and their book.

Ilan Zvi BaronView on AmazonIn Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Ilan Baron, Lecturer in International Political Theory in the School of Government and International Affairs and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics at Durham University, explores the transnational political obligation of Diaspora Jewry to have a relationship with Israel, including one of critique. The book, featuring Baron's interviews about the Israel-Diaspora relationship with key figures and community leaders in North America, the UK, and Israel, combines empirical work with political theory.

John Durham PetersView on Amazon[Cross-posted from the NBN Seminar] John Durham Peters' wonderful new book is a brilliant and beautifully-written consideration of natural environments as subjects for media studies. Accessible and informative for a broad readership. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is structured as a series of meditations on and explorations of water, fire, air, earth, and ether media. After a chapter that sets out some of the foundational ideas shaping the book and charts an intellectual landscape for rethinking media, each of the following chapters offers a carefully curated series of studies of particulars – dolphin jaws, candles, towers, watches, clouds, feet, bells, weathermen, Google, and more – as a means of examining the significance of infrastructure, forgetting, technicity, and other modes of understanding media. Peters asks us to come with a fresh perspective to notions that we otherwise take for granted, and the result is a thoughtful and inspiring account that brings together media studies, theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences in thoroughly compelling ways. Among other things, the book is a call for a "greener media studies" that "appreciates our long natural history of shaping and being shaped by our habitats as a process of mediation." What if, Peters asks, we took nature instead of the mind as the "epitome of meaning"? What are the stakes of doing so? The result is among the most exciting and enjoyable books that I've read in some time.

View on AmazonMarc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph have written the alliteratively titled Why Washington Won't Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is professor of political science at Vanderbilt University; Rudolph is professor of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Who do you trust? According to Why Washington Won't Work, you definitely do not trust the government, especially if you are a Republican. Today, more than in the past, political trust divides the country. Hetherington and Rudolph argue that a profound, and historically high, lack of trust among the public reduces the likelihood of compromise in Congress. In an increasingly polarized political environment that is already pre-disposed to gridlock, this finding on public trust helps to further explain the inability of Washington to govern, effectively legislate, and work.

Nahuel RibkeView on AmazonFrom Ronald Reagan through Gilberto Gil to Donald Tramp, our media channels are filled with celebrities vying for the highest political posts. In A Genre Approach to Celebrity Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), cultural historian Nahuel Ribke explores the historical trajectory that led to the current mass movement of celebrities into electoral politics. The book is a comparative project made up of short case studies. The range is impressive; it begins with the transition of Israeli models into the Israeli parliament, the meteoric rise of a charismatic journalist to the head of the treasury in Israel, goes on to Gilberto Gil's tenure as minister of culture in Brazil and explores the contrasting political paths of the previously successful salsa partnership of the musicians Rubén Blades and Willie Colón. The book then moves on to North America to explore the American pattern of celebrity politics. The book ends with a return to Brazil and Argentina to look at two fascinating stories of 'ordinary' people-turned celebrities-turned politicians. In addition to its contribution to the fields of celebrity and genre studies, this book is a vibrant narrative, bristling with the energy of its subjects. Nahuel Ribke is a lecturer at the University of Tel Aviv, The Sverdlin Institute for Latin American History and Culture and Seminar Hakibutzim College, Depatment of Film and Communication.

View on AmazonElisabeth (Libby) Anker has recently published Orgies of Feeling: Melodramatic Politics and the Pursuit of Freedom (Duke University Press, 2014). Anker is an associate professor of American Studies and political science at The George Washington University. Joining the conversation as guest host is, Lilly Goren. She is professor of political science at Carroll University and editor of Madmen and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury, 2015). How does melodrama advance a political narrative? In Orgies of Feeling, Anker reframes political theories of sovereignty, freedom, and power by analyzing the work of melodrama in contemporary politics. Based on her reading melodramatic discourses in the War on Terror, neoliberal politics, anticommunist rhetoric, Hollywood film, and post-Marxist critical theory, she argues that melodrama animates desires for unconstrained power.