New Books in Politics and Polemics

Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serves as an introduction to a new era of critical research. It is written by Prof. Sara Cantillon, Dr. Sara Stevano and Prof. Odile Mackett, who have carried out incredible work to deconstruct gender-blind approaches in contemporary economic research. The book brings together the most important topics in political economy and demonstrates why feminist approaches are crucial to understanding social relations. It begins with an overview of feminist political economy and then offers a nuanced perspective on care, social reproduction, inequalities in households and labour markets, and the feminisation of poverty. As mentioned in the podcast, the book not only takes a feminist approach to theory, but is also an example of the practice of feminist research, focusing for example on female scholars.The host, Sarah Vogelsanger, is a feminist researcher, who is interested in social justice, critical migration studies and political ecology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current state of American democracy rooted in the American pragmatist tradition. Robert Danisch analyzes the characteristics of communication systems and communication practices that inhibit or enhance democratic life. In doing so, this book provides a detailed explanation of the ways in which the communication systems and practices that constitute democratic life are currently fostering polarization and how they might be made to foster cooperation. Scholars of communication, rhetorical studies, political science, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.Robert Danisch is Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo whose research interests include rhetorical theory, persuasion, and public communication in democratic societies. He is the author of Pragmatism, Democracy and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Building a Rhetorical Democracy: The Promise of Rhetorical Pragmatism as well as journal articles and several co-authored books. He is also the host of the podcast Now We’re Talking that focuses on communication skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Barbara A. Biesecker explores the prestige and rhetorical power of the “Good War,” revealing how it was retooled to restore a new kind of social equilibrium to the United States.Biesecker analyzes prominent cases of World War II remembrance, including the canceled exhibit of the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum in 1995 and its replacement, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Situating these popular memory texts within the culture and history wars of the day and the broader framework of US political and economic life, Dr. Biesecker argues that, with the notable exception of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, these reinventions of the Good War worked rhetorically to restore a strong sense of national identity and belonging fitted to the neoliberal nationalist agenda.By tracing the links between the popular retooling of World War II and the national state fantasy, and by putting the lessons of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and their successors to work for a rhetorical-political analysis of the present, Dr. Biesecker not only explains the emergence and strength of the MAGA movement but also calls attention to the power of public memory to shape and contest ethnonational identity today.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (New Press, 2024) reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of popular music’s role in shaping our society. Told through a Marxist lens, Toby Manning traces the last seventy years of political and social upheavals through its most iconic US and UK-based music.Mixing Pop and Politics examines the connections between popular music and political ideology and explores themes like the liberation of rock ’n’ roll, containment of girl groups, defiance of glam, resignation of soft rock, the communal spirit of disco, and the individualism of 1980s pop. Spanning the early 1950s to today, the book reveals how music—from doo-wop to hip-hop, punk to crunk, and grunge to grime—has both reflected and resisted the political forces of its time.Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carré and the Cold War (2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press, 2023), an eye-opening exploration of the invisible world of unpaid caregivers. Drawing from her own experience caring for her terminally ill mother, Emily sheds light on the challenges faced by millions who provide critical care while being marginalized, unsupported, and overburdened. In our conversation, she urges us to reimagine a society that places care at its core, rather than on the sidelines. This conversation is a call to action for all of us to recognize and support those who give so much and ask for so little in return. Tune in to hear why Who Cares? is a book for everyone, now and in the future.Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia: Searching for Truth (Routledge, 2024) provides psychoanalytic insight into the motives of this complex and contradictory topic.The chapters written by the editor of this book focus on the importance of truth-telling and evidence as it relates to presidents of the United States. She studied the way in which some of these leaders have failed to tell the American people the truth about the Maddox incident, Abu Ghraib, the Iran-Contra affair, My Lai, and the real reasons why atomic bombs were detonated in Japan.In the process of uncovering lies, over time this process has eroded trust in our leaders. She also explains epistemic trust which refers to the trust we place in others as sources of knowledge and information. It is a fundamental aspect of how we learn and understand the world, relying on the belief that the knowledge we receive from others is reliable and truthful. It plays a crucial role in various contexts, including education, science, with the media, and in everyday interpersonal interactions.The other contributors, from different professional and academic backgrounds, use a range of methods including quantitative research and literary analysis to shed light on Putin’s background, outlook and current actions. Reflecting a range of perspectives on how Putin’s background may have informed his beliefs and his actions, particularly with respect to the invasion of Ukraine, the book brings together diverse viewpoints.A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and to readers seeking to understand the complex dynamics of populist leadership.Interview conducted by C.K. Westbrook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norton, 2024). Danny is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and the steward of a fantastic interview series in The Nation magazine. Did it Happen Here? presents a snapshot of the fascism debate being waged on American campuses, in magazines, and on social media. The most recent iteration of the fascism debate began, as with many debates about the state of American politics, with the election of Donald Trump. Since his first term in 2016, speculation about the true nature of Trumpism has generated countless think-pieces and books. Did It Happen Here? is the definitive summary of the major scholarly views on whether fascism has come to America. As Danny puts it, “the fascism debate is Rorschach test for understanding what is truly ailing American society.”Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and fascism as a matter of course. The philosophical differences, however, may be more apparent than real. The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) argues that dominant trends in critical and radical theory inadvertently reproduce the cardinal tenets of the twentieth century’s most influential right-wing philosophers. It finds the rejection of foundationalism, rationalism, economic planning, and vanguardism mirrored in the work of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Strauss. If it is to be more than merely an inverted image of the Right, critical theory must reevaluate its relationship to what Julius Nyerere once called “deliberate design” in politics. In the era of anthropogenic climate change, a substantial—not merely nominal—departure from right-wing talking points is all the more necessary and momentous.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics