In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

Donald Bloxham and Dirk Moses have offered us a unique opportunity--a chance to see authors and editors in conversation with each other and themselves about the state and nature of Genocide Studies.Genocide: Key Themes (Oxford University Press, 2022) emerged out of an effort to update and slim down their earlier, larger volume The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. In the just more than a decade between the two, the field has pushed forward in a variety of directions.  Moses and Bloxham have used this opportunity to create a volume that interrogates both the field itself and the state of its emergence. Some of the chapters are revisions of essays originally written for the Handbook, allowing the authors to expand, reframe or even withdraw their original ideas. Others are commissioned for this volume and reflect the new directions taken over the past decade.It's a distinctive and compelling contribution to the field.

On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued a ban on TikTok in the United States, requiring that the owner, Beijing-based Bytedance, sell the company to American investors or shut it down. Legions of TikTokers were devastated at the possible loss of their beloved platform, and for what: a political grudge with China? American suitors like Walmart and Oracle tried to make a deal with Bytedance to keep the platform operating in the US. But then something curious happened. The Chinese government refused to let Bytedance sell TikTok on national security grounds. As it turns out, the pandemic era platform for dance challenges is a Chinese government asset.As digital technologies and social media have evolved into organizing forces for the way in which we conduct our work and social lives, the business logic that undergirds these digital platforms has become clear: we are their product. We give these businesses information about everything--from where we live and work to what we like to do for entertainment, what we consume, where we travel, what we think politically, and with whom we are friends and acquaintances. We do this willingly, but often without a full understanding of how this information is stored or used, or what happens to it when it crosses international boundaries. As Aynne Kokas argues, both corporations and governments traffic much of this data without our consent--and sometimes illegally--for political and financial gain.In Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford UP, 2022), Aynne Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens, putting US national security at risk. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish, and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fuelled China's technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives.Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy.

The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters (Oxford University Press, 2022) collects excerpts from a massive encyclopedic work of the late period of Buddhism in India. Translator Charles Goodman has selected sections of this Sanskrit text which cover debates over the existence of prime matter, God, and an immaterial soul, as well as controversies around the cause and effect, karma, and Jain perspectivalism. Within these chapters, through a translation of the verses of the Tattvasaṃgraha as well as the canonical commentary the Tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā by Kamalaśila, the book showcases Buddhists debates with a wide range of interlocutors. Śānatarakṣita and Kamalaśila, from their vantage point late in the history of Indian Buddhism, collect a range of arguments against their historical opponents: Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, Advaita Vedānta, Jainism, and even a group of Buddhists known as the Vātsīputrīyas. The book also includes an introductory chapter by the translator which explains the sophisticated underlying epistemological framework of this massive and massively influential text.Malcolm Keating is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Sanskrit works of philosophy in Indian traditions, in the areas of language and epistemology. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras & Stuff.

Robert J. Savage is a professor in the Boston College History Department and served as one of the directors of the University’s Irish Studies program for close to twenty years. He has been awarded Visiting Fellowships at Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Edinburgh, Queen’s University, Belfast and the University of Galway. Savage’s publications explore contemporary Irish and British history and include The BBC’s Irish Troubles: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland (2015) short listed for the Ewart-Biggs Literary Award; A Loss of Innocence? Television and Irish Society 1960-1972, (2010) winner of the James S. Donnelly Sr. Book Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies and Sean Lemass, a biography (2014).In this interview, he discusses his new book Northern Ireland, the BBC and Censorship in Thatcher’s Britain (Oxford University Press, 2022), which explores issues of censorship, paramilitary violence and British and international politics in the 1980s.Northern Ireland, the BBC and Censorship in Thatcher’s Britain is a study of how the Northern Ireland conflict was presented to an increasingly global audience during the premiership of Britain's 'Iron Lady', Margaret Thatcher. It addresses the tensions that characterized the relationship between the broadcast media and the Thatcher Government throughout the 1980s. Savage explores how that tension worked its way into decisions made by managers, editors, and reporters addressing a conflict that seemed insoluble. Margaret Thatcher mistrusted the broadcast media, especially the BBC, believing it had a left-wing bias that was hostile to her interests and policies. This was especially true of the broadcast media's reporting about Northern Ireland. She regarded investigative reporting that explored the roots of republican violence in the region or coverage critical of her government's initiatives as undermining the rule of law, and thereby providing terrorists with what she termed the 'oxygen of publicity'. She followed in the footsteps of the Labour Government that proceeded her by threatening and bullying both the BBC and IBA, promising that the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act would be deployed to punish journalists that came into contact with the IRA. Although both networks continued to offer compelling news and current affairs programming, the tactics of her government produced considerable success. Wary of direct government intervention, both networks encouraged a remarkable degree of self-censorship when addressing 'the Troubles'. Regardless, by 1988, the Thatcher Government, unhappy with criticism of its policies, took the extraordinary step of imposing formal censorship on the British broadcast media. The infamous 'broadcasting ban' lasted six years, successfully silencing the voices of Irish republicans while tarnishing the reputation of the United Kingdom as a leading global democracy.Aidan Beatty is a historian at the Frederick Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (Oxford UP, 2020), Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors, from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers, to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits, while reducing costs and minimizing resistance. She draws on ethnographic research conducted annually from 2011 to 2019--the years from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations in a study of everyday land grabs and housing demolition in China. Her research highlights one of the ways in which modern authoritarians conceal their actions in order to maintain their popularity among ordinary citizens, a theme also explored in my earlier interview with Daniel Treisman about his book Spin Dictators.Author Lynette Ong is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, with a joint appointment at the Department of Political Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s Asian Institute. Her other books are The Street and the Ballot Box: Interactions Between Social Movements and Electoral Politics in Authoritarian Contexts (Cambridge University Press, Elements Series in Contentious Politics, 2022), and Prosper or Perish: Credit and Fiscal Systems in Rural China (Cornell University Press, 2012), She has published research articles in Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Comparative Politics, China Quarterly, China Journal, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and other prominent journals. Here research has also been covered in the Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the South China Morning Post.Host Peter Lorentzen is the Chair of the Economics Department at the University of San Francisco. His research focus is the political economy of governance in China and he is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSCR) and USF’s new Center on Business Studies and Innovation in the Asia-Pacific.

As the hazards of carbon emissions increase and governments around the world seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the search for clean and affordable alternate energies has become an increasing priority in the twenty-first century. However, one nation has already been producing such a fuel for almost a century: Brazil. Its sugarcane-based ethanol is the most efficient biofuel on the global fuel market, and the South American nation is the largest biofuel exporter in the world.Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol (Oxford UP, 2022) offers the first full historical account of the industry's origins. The Brazilian government mandated a mixture of ethanol in the national fuel supply in the 1930s, and the success of the program led the military dictatorship to expand the industry and create the national program Proálcool in 1975. Private businessmen, politicians, and national and international automobile manufacturers together leveraged national interests to support this program. By 1985, over 95% of all new cars in the country ran exclusively on ethanol, and, after consumers turned away from them when oil was cheap, the government successfully promoted flex fuel cars instead. Yet, as Jennifer Eaglin shows, the industry's growth came with associated environmental and social costs in the form of water pollution from liquid waste generated during ethanol distillation and exploitative rural labor practices that reshaped Brazil's countryside.By examining the shifting perceptions of the industry from a sugar byproduct to a national energy solution to a global clean energy option, Sweet Fuel ultimately reveals deeper truths about what a global large-scale transition away from fossil fuels might look like and challenges idealized views of green industries.Mohamed Gamal-Eldin is a historian of Modern Egypt, who is interested in questions related to the built environment, urban history, architecture, social history and environmental ecology of urban centers in 19th and early 20th century Egypt, the Middle East and globally.

Ruth Vanita's book The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics (Oxford UP, 2021) shows that many characters in the Sanskrit epics - men and women of all varnas and mixed-varna - discuss and criticize discrimination based on gender, varna, poverty, age, and disability. On the basis of philosophy, logic and devotion, these characters argue that such categories are ever-changing, mixed and ultimately unreal therefore humans should be judged on the basis of their actions, not birth. The book explores the dharmas of singleness, friendship, marriage, parenting, and ruling. Bhakta poets such as Kabir, Tulsidas, Rahim and Raidas drew on ideas and characters from the epics to present a vision of oneness. Justice is indivisible, all bodies are made of the same matter, all beings suffer, and all consciousnesses are akin. This book makes the radical argument that in the epics, kindness to animals, the dharma available to all, is inseparable from all other forms of dharma.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

Who are America's creationists? What do they want? Why do they think Jesus rode around on a dinosaur? In Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution (Oxford UP, 2021), Adam Laats reveals that common misconceptions about creationism have led Americans into a full century of unnecessary culture-war histrionics about evolution education and creationism. In fact, America does not now and never has had deep, fundamental disagreement about evolution. Not about the actual science of evolution, that is, and not in ways that truly matter to public policy. Americans do have significant disagreements about creationism, though, and Laats offers a new way to understand those battles. By describing the history of creationism and its many variations, this book demonstrates that the real conflict about evolution is not between creationists and evolution. The true landscape of American creationism is far more complicated than headlines suggest.Your host, Ryan Shelton (@_ryanshelton) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slaves, thousands of acres of rich cotton land, and a net worth of approximately $200,000. In life, Samuel had done little to distinguish himself from other members of the South's elite slaveholding class. But he made a name for himself in death by leaving almost the entirety of his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them his slaves.In Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oxford UP, 2022), R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama to purchase part of the old plantation where he had once been held as a slave. In Morales's telling, the Townsends' story maps a new landscape of opportunity and oppression, where the meanings of race and freedom--as well as opportunities for social and economic mobility--were dictated by highly local circumstances.During the turbulent period between the Civil War and the rise of Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century, the Townsends carved out spaces where they were able to benefit from their money and mixed-race ancestry, pass down generational wealth, and realize some of their happy dreams of liberty.Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

Sesame Street has taught generations of Americans their letters and numbers, and also how to better understand and get along with people of different races, faiths, ethnicities, and temperaments. But the show has a global reach as well, with more than thirty co-productions of Sesame Street that are viewed in over 150 countries. In recent years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided funding to the New York-based Sesame Workshop to create international versions of Sesame Street. Many of these programs teach children to respect diversity and tolerate others, which some hope will ultimately help to build peace in conflict-affected societies. In fact, the U.S. government has funded local versions of the show in several countries enmeshed in conflict, including Afghanistan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Jordan, and Nigeria.Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism?: Children's Television and Globalized Multicultural Education (Oxford UP, 2019) takes an in-depth look at the Nigerian version, Sesame Square, which began airing in 2011. In addition to teaching preschool-level academic skills, Sesame Square seeks to promote peaceful coexistence-a daunting task in Nigeria, where escalating ethno-religious tensions and terrorism threaten to fracture the nation. After a year of interviewing Sesame creators, observing their production processes, conducting episode analysis, and talking to local educators who use the program in classrooms, Naomi Moland found that this child-focused use of soft power raised complex questions about how multicultural ideals translate into different settings. In Nigeria, where segregation, state fragility, and escalating conflict raise the stakes of peacebuilding efforts, multicultural education may be ineffective at best, and possibly even divisive. This book offers rare insights into the complexities, challenges, and dilemmas inherent in soft power attempts to teach the ideals of diversity and tolerance in countries suffering from internal conflicts.Sharonee Dasgupta is currently a graduate student in the department of anthropology at UMass Amherst.