New Books in Economics

If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead This is the unifying idea of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green’s new book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013) Those six words – If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead – appear on the back cover, on the inside jacket, and in the very first paragraph of the book’s introduction. The authors focus on the new currencies of media, including user engagement and the rapid flow of information, while debunking the terms we’ve all learned to know and dread, such as “viral” and “Web 2.0.” Jenkins, Ford, and Green set an ambitious agenda, targeting not one but three audiences: media scholars, communication professionals, and those who create and share media and are interested in learning how media are changing because of it. “Perhaps the most impactful aspect of a spreadable media environment,” the authors write, “is the way in which we all now play a vital role in the sharing of media texts.” A review of Spreadable Media can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

There were always and will always be orphans. The question is what to do with them. In his terrific new book The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America (University of Chicago Press, 2013), economic historian John E. Murray tells us how one Southern American city did it in the 18th and 19th centuries. Charleston was a city divided between free whites and enslaved African Americans. The whites felt insecure and, according to Murray, this is one of the reasons they founded and funded America’s first public orphanage. The white-only institution not only helped indigent parents and their children, but it also brought the city’s white population together in a way no other body did. It was an expression of civic humanity, but it was also an expression of white unity against the black masses. Listen to John tell the tale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Gene Cooper‘s new book is a multi-sited ethnographic study of market and temple fairs in the region of Jinhua, a city on the east coast of China and the home of Hengdian, “China’s Hollywood.” The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire (Routledge, 2013) weaves together historical and ethnographic methodologies in a spirited account of the genealogies and contemporary practices of a variety of forms of performance at these local gatherings. After providing an extended background of the region, its religious institutions and perspectives, and on the history of temple fairs in general in Part 1 of the book, Part 2 moves into the economic, cultural, religious, and political dimensions that contribute to the “red fire” of temple fairs in Jinhua today. Cooper shows how the local fair can serve both as a Bakhtinian carnivalesque atmosphere (replete with elements of freak show and circus) and a site of everyday forms of resistance. The book also features a wonderfully detailed account of the arts of popular performance at the fairs, from small-cymbal narrative (xiaoluo shuo) to opera (wuju) competitions, and looks closely at the religious dimension of secular temple gatherings. Cooper’s lively voice infuses every page of the book and each moment of the interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

You wouldn’t know from the 2012 president race but the United States remains engaged in a fairly bloody conflict in Afghanistan. In addition to boots on the ground, we deploy scores of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa to keep Al Qaeda and its affiliates at bay. In the post-9/11 world does the US have any other option aside from semi-permanent war against non-state actors that operate in developing and/or failed states? Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld thinks American policymakers have viable options, alternatives and policies that can address the national security challenges of the 21st century. In Let There Be Light: Electrifying the Developing World With Markets and Distributed Energy, co-authored with Drew Sloan, (Truman National Security Institute, 2012), they reveal that “energy,” or the lack thereof, keeps many nations mired in poverty. To jump start-developing economies, Kleinfeld offers some relatively doable innovations to make energy plentiful. In so doing, failed states could very well become success stories or, at the very least, less likely to incubate poverty, lawlessness and threats to international security. In the same vein, Kleinfeld’s second book, Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), offers additional policies to promote the rule of law in developing nations. In both cases, these books give viable policy solutions that address the national security challenges of the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

What did money mean to the people of medieval Japan? In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), Ethan Segal takes readers through a fascinating exploration of the politics, society, and culture of pre-1600 Japan. One of the wonderful things about this book is the extent to which Ethan Segal very carefully contextualizes early medieval Japan within a broader global history, situating this economic history in a network of relations with the Mongols and China. East Asianists, take note: Segal’s work is of great interest to those working beyond the field of economic history, and speaks to the history of foreign policy and relations, ideas of virtue, and social history as well. Written in a very fluid and accessible style, Coins, Trade, and the State is an excellent read for anyone interested in cultures of exchange and their histories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Many of us in the western world don’t rely on bills and coins as much as we used to, yet the idea of cash money is still an ever-present constant in our minds. How often have you stopped to consider the idea of what “money” actually is on a larger scale, or where our changing habits could lead us? In his book The End of Money – Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers, and the Coming Cashless Society (Da Capo Press, 2012), David Wolman examines our commitment to cash, its advantages and drawbacks, how it facilitates crime and poverty, even its health and environmental issues. With an engaging and accessible style he prompts us to rethink the notion of money, how it works, and what forms it could take in the future. Wolman starts with a short history of cash, beginning with the official introduction of paper money to the Chinese monetary system in the 13th century and Marco Polo’s reaction to it 100 years later. Next we follow him around the globe to get a cross-cultural picture of cash today – including explorations of the cultural heritage and emotional value of cash, of an increasing trend in developing countries of people using their cellphones to transfer money to both businesses and family, and of counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting technology. Along the way he enlists a wide variety of people to help illustrate these concepts: a Georgia pastor who views the end of cash as a sign of the End Times, a convicted counterfeiter (or “Monetary Architect”, depending on who you’re talking to), a coin collector with an ambivalent attitude toward coins, and a British “digital money guru” who views money as a menace. David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @DavidWolman. He is, in his own words, a “…guy who’s interested in seemingly small, simple, straightforward topics that in fact, when you put them under the microscope, are anything but simple.” This book is an excellent example of that, and an engrossing read. In our interview he spoke of his year-long experiment to go without using coins or bills at all, the meaning of privacy and security as it relates to money in a digital world, and what he sees as the future of “money”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a “party tape?” Bought a bootleg album? You may have done these things, but have you purchased a bootlegged song-sheet? In Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 (University of Chicago, 2011) Barry Kernfeld fills us in on the history of disobedient music reproduction and distribution since, well, before the advent of recording technology. Along the way he discusses the above mentioned disobedient distribution techniques along with a few others: fake books, music photocopying, and pirate radio round out the book. Kernfeld suggests that the history of pop music piracy is never ending, with battles of different types of disobedience taking similar forms: the music “monopolists” (song owners) attempting to enact prohibitions on illegal production and distribution, the failed containment of said production and distribution systems and, finally, the assimilation of disobedient forms into the mainstream production and distribution industries. Barry Kernfeld is on the staff of the Special Collections Library of the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians and What to Listen for in Jazz, and he is the editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. He is also a professional jazz saxophonist playing in Jazza-ma-phone and a clarinetist in local musical theater productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Helen Tilley‘s new book Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2011) uncovers the surprising relationships that developed between science and empire as Britain attempted to fulfill its imperial projects in Africa. Focused primarily on Britain’s colonial dependencies, Tilley shows how the weakness of the empire and the complexity of Africa and of Africans transformed field studies into social and scientific laboratories conducting not merely scientific experiments but also experiments in epistemology, governance and disciplinary methods and aims. Tilley shows how what she calls “vernacular knowledge” circulated and affected metropolitan decision making, how understandings of ecology and complexity seemed to produce both epistemic and imperial humility and how some scientists were ambivalent about their participation research in states that were founded on white rule. Development, under all of its meanings, began long before decolonization, and Africa as a Living Laboratory shows us how imperial ambitions, expertise and experience transformed understandings of what was possible and how it would be best achieved.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy.  In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, 2010), which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths. In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist! Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  And he’s the co-author, again with James Kwak, of the influential economics blog The Baseline Scenario. Simon spoke with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

When I was in college I had a summer job once working in an aircraft factory. My task was to count screws. Nope, I’m not kidding. I put together parts-kits that were then taken to another station “down the line” for assembly. It wasn’t much fun, and it taught me that I did not want to pursue a career as a screw-counter. But it’s important to remember that the benefits of mechanical production are largely due to making work mechanical. To get all that cheap stuff we know and love, we have to turn what were once complex jobs into simple jobs. In his excellent book Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Cornell UP, 2009), Daniel Sidorick tells how the Campbell company made the cooking of soup–a magical art to many–into a mechanical process. The results were contradictory. On the one hand, soup became homogenous (though pretty tasty), portable, and very cheap. On the other, the soup-makers were made, as Marx might have put it, into appendages of soup-making machines. Management tried to make production lean and keep profits high; labor tried to keep work safe and wages high. But in the end, the two couldn’t make ends meet, at least in Camden: Campbell moved its production out of NJ in the 1980s. Not an unfamiliar story, I think, but still a very important one to tell and re-tell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics