The University of Chicago Press Podcast

How has the Syrian regime been able to bear the brunt of the challenges raised against it? And, what can we learn about the seductions of authoritarian politics more generally from the study of Syria? These questions animate Lisa Wedeen’s Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Her answers to them journey far beyond narrow causal inferences about the war in Syria, into an empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated account of the part that ideology as form plays in the making of subjects. Drawing on a decade of multi-sited ethnography, Wedeen traverses the day-to-day violence of war to attend to how Syrians are interpolated into arrangements for political domination through logics of disavowal. Weaving her interlocutors’ cultural products and interpretations of conditions in Syria together with work by Althusser, Arendt and Wittgenstein, she offers a complex and unsettling account of how people are brought into deeply ambivalent relationships with neoliberal autocracy, at once desiring political change and craving social order.Listeners to this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science might also be interested in two other episodes on exemplary interpretivist political scientific studies featured in this series: Sarah Marie Wiebe on Everyday Exposure, and James C. Scott on Against the Grain.To download or stream episodes in this series, please subscribe to our host channel: New Books in Political Science.Nick Cheesman is a fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, and a committee member of the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods group. He co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asian Studies channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Earth. In An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo's Commuter Train Network (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Michael Fisch provides a nuanced perspective on how Tokyo’s commuter train network embodies the lived realities of technology in our modern world. Drawing on his fine-grained knowledge of transportation, work, and everyday life in Tokyo, Fisch shows how fitting into a system that operates on the extreme edge of sustainability can take a physical and emotional toll on a community while also creating a collective way of life—one with unique limitations and possibilities. An Anthropology of the Machine is a creative ethnographic study of the culture, history, and experience of commuting in Tokyo. At the same time, it is a theoretically ambitious attempt to think through our very relationship with technology and our possible ecological futures. Fisch provides an unblinking glimpse into what it might be like to inhabit a future in which more and more of our infrastructure—and the planet itself—will have to operate beyond capacity to accommodate our ever-growing population. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the systematic recording and processing of geographical and topographical information on an unprecedented scale. As Jeremy Black—one of the world's leading military and cartographic historians—convincingly shows in this lavish full-color book, it is impossible to understand the events and outcomes of the Second World War without deep reference to mapping at all levels. In World War II, maps themselves became the weapons.A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps (University of Chicago Press, 2020) traces how military cartography developed from simply recording and reflecting history to having a decisive impact on events of a global scale. Drawing on one hundred key maps from the unparalleled collections of the British Library and other sources—many of which have never been published in book form before—Jeremy Black takes us from the prewar mapping programs undertaken by both Germany and the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s through the conflict's end a decade later. Black shows how the development of maps led directly to the planning of the complex and fluid maneuvers that defined the European theater in World War II: for example, aerial reconnaissance photography allowed for the charting of beach gradients and ocean depths in the runup to the D-Day landings, and the subsequent troop movements at Normandy would have been impossible without the help of situation maps and photos. In the course of the conflict, both in Europe and the Pacific, the realities of climate, terrain, and logistics—recorded on maps—overcame the Axis powers. Maps also became propaganda tools as the pages of Time outlined the directions of the campaigns and the Allies dropped maps from their aircraft.​In this thrilling and unique book, Jeremy Black blends his singular cartographic and military expertise into a captivating overview of World War II from the air, sea, and sky, making clear how fundamental maps were to every aspect of this unforgettable global conflict. Beautifully illustrated and with a past master of the historical art form as the author, A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps is the perfect holiday gift for both the academi and the lay educated reader. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life (U Chicago Press, 2020) journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can Shakespeare tell us about territory, and what can territory tell us about Shakespeare? In Shakespearean Territories (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick and author of the Progressive Geographies blog, explores both of these questions, drawing on his earlier work theorising territory, as well as an extensive discussion of numerous works of Shakespeare. The book considers a range of subjects associated with the concept of territory, from the geo-politics of King Lear, the idea of sovereignty in King John, and power in Richard II, to questions of the body in Coriolanus, and ideas of calculation and measurement in The Merchant of Venice. Alongside Shakespeare’s relevance for understanding territory, territory offers a framework for alternative readings of Macbeth and Hamlet, and draws attention to often neglected or even completely ignored parts of Henry V. Fascinating and wide ranging, at the intersection of geography and English literature, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, algorithms, and software offer to make participation easier, but new technologies have had the opposite effect. We find ourselves suspicious of how participation extracts our data or monetizes our emotions, and the more procedural participation becomes, the more it seems to recede from our grasp.In The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Christopher M. Kelty traces four stories of participation across the twentieth century, showing how they are part of a much longer-term problem in relation to the individual and collective experience of representative democracy. Kelty argues that in the last century or so, the power of participation has dwindled; over time, it has been formatted in ways that cramp and dwarf it, even as the drive to participate has spread to nearly every kind of human endeavor, all around the world. The Participant is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation, investigating how the concept has evolved into the form it takes today. It is a book that asks, "Why do we participate?" And sometimes, "Why do we refuse?"C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II (U Chicago Press, 2019), Mark Wild traces the achievements and losses of American mainline Protestant Christians as they attempted to renew their churches and their cities in the twentieth century.Urban church renewal began as an effort to restore the church’s standing; in the process these liberal mainline Protestants adopted methods of social science and the language of urban renewal and secularization. Their campaigns embraced an interwoven relationship with government and local authorities all while maintaining an overarching belief in the goodness and righteousness of their Protestant influence and power. These efforts often collided with social causes and social conflict, including black freedom movements and the War on Poverty.Renewal illuminates this important facet of American church history and complicates narratives of liberal Protestant decline.Lane Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University where he studies American religious history. Find him on Twitter @TheeLaneDavis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey's 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy--but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey's claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers?Although the various thinkers associated with pragmatism--from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond--were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910--from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics--in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology.Trevor Pearce is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.Alec Kacew is a medical school student at the University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a strong interest today in turning inward to explore the mind and body. Mindfulness meditation exemplifies this trend, and has become increasingly well-known and widely practiced. In Inward: Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Michal Pagis, who lectures in sociology at Bar-Ilan university, explores in depth one school of mindfulness, or vipassana, founded by the Indian teacher S.N. Goenka and now established in countries around the world. Pagis draws on her own meditation experience and on in-depth interviews with vipassana meditators in both Israel and the United States. She explores the communities that form when people go on silent meditation retreats, the impact of focusing on bodily sensations over the course of an intensive retreat, and the ways that retreat practice affect practitioners and those close to them.Jack Petranker is the Director of the Center for Creative Inquiry and the Mangalam Research Center in Berkeley, CA. He presents programs in Full Presence Mindfulness, an approach grounded in the teachings of Tibetan lama Tarthang Tulku. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I speak with Matt Rafalow, about his book, Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era (University of Chicago Press, 2020). This book provides an ethnographic study of students and teachers at three Los Angeles schools utilizing instructional technology. We discuss the role of play in learning, how disciplinary dispositions are influenced by race and class, and how the prevalence ed tech can reinforce existing social heirarchies.His recommended books included the following: Teachers and Machines: Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 by Larry Cuban (Teachers' College Press, 1986) Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs by Paul Willis and Stanley Aronowitz (Columbia University Press, 1981) Keepin' It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White: Why School Success Has No Color by Prudence L. Carter (Oxford University Press, 2005) Trevor Mattea is an educational consultant and speaker. His areas of expertise include deeper learning, parent involvement, project-based learning, and technology integration. He can be reached by email at info@trevormattea.com or on Twitter at @tsmattea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices