Upon publication in the late 1970s this book was the first major historical analysis of twentieth-century Cuba. Focusing on the way Cuba has been governed, and in particular on the way a changing elite has made claims to legitimate rule, it carefully examines each of Cuba’s three main political eras: the first, from Independence in 1902 to the Presidency of Gerardo Machado in 1933; the second, under Batista, from 1934 until 1958; and finally, Castro’s revolution, from 1959 to the present.

Jorge Domínguez discusses the political roles played by interest groups, mass organizations, and the military. He also investigates the impact of international affairs on Cuba and provides the first printed data on many aspects of political, economic, and social change since 1959. He deals in depth with agrarian politics and peasant protest since 1937, and his concluding chapter on Cuba’s present culture is a fascinating insight into a society which—though vitally important—remains mysterious to most readers in the United States.

Cuba’s role in international affairs is vastly greater than its size. The revolution led by Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the missile crisis in 1962, the underwriting of revolution in Latin America and recently in Africa—all these events have thrust Cuba onto the modern world stage. Anyone hoping to understand this country and its people, and above all its changing systems of government, will find this book essential.

The Cuban economy has been transformed over the course of the last decade, and these changes are now likely to accelerate. In this edited volume, prominent Cuban economists and sociologists present a clear analysis of Cuba’s economic and social circumstances and suggest steps for Cuba to reactivate economic growth and improve the welfare of its citizens. These authors focus first on trade, capital inflows, exchange rates, monetary and fiscal policy, and the agricultural sector. In a second section, a multidisciplinary team of sociologists and an economist map how reforms in economic and social policies have produced declines in the social standing of some specific groups and economic mobility for others.

A joint collaboration between scholars at Harvard University and in Cuba, this book includes the same editors and many of the same authors of The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century (edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, and Lorena G. Barberia), which is also part of the David Rockefeller Center series.

Cuba’s economy has grown hardly at all during Raúl Castro’s presidency (beginning in 2006), hit by the economic collapse of its Venezuelan partner and burdened by a legacy of decayed infrastructure, a bankrupt sugar industry, and stagnant agriculture.

The Cuban Economy in ​a New Era diagnoses the ills that afflict Cuba’s economy and examines possible economic policy changes in seven areas: macroeconomic policy, central planning, small and medium private enterprises, nonagricultural cooperatives, financing options for the new private sector, state enterprise management, and relations with international financial institutions. Cuban economists have contributed these seven chapters, and the combined import is further considered in introductory and concluding chapters. The book is the culmination of over a decade of scholarly collaboration with Harvard scholars, anchored in a series of workshops held over several years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Havana.

While most books and articles on Cuba seek to analyse the island’s socialist experiment from the perspective of internal dynamics or international relations, this book attempts to understand the revolutionary process as part of a counter-current against neoliberal globalisation.

Rather than presenting Cuba as a socialist survivor, whose performance must be measured against the standards set by the ‘international community’, George Lambie judges Cuban socialism on the goals which the revolution sets for itself. He shows that despite Cuba’s isolation in the ‘New World Order’, and the enormous pressures it has faced to ‘conform’, its faith in an alternative socialist project has continued and grown.

Now that neoliberalism is in crisis, Cuba’s promotion of socialist values is finding a renewed relevance. In this fascinating study Lambie argues that Cuba is again becoming a symbol, and practical example, of socialism in action. This book is essential reading for students of politics and Latin American studies.

Culling the Masses questions the widely held view that in the long run democracy and racism cannot coexist. David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín show that democracies were the first countries in the Americas to select immigrants by race, and undemocratic states the first to outlaw discrimination. Through analysis of legal records from twenty-two countries between 1790 and 2010, the authors present a history of the rise and fall of racial selection in the Western Hemisphere.

The United States led the way in using legal means to exclude “inferior” ethnic groups. Starting in 1790, Congress began passing nationality and immigration laws that prevented Africans and Asians from becoming citizens, on the grounds that they were inherently incapable of self-government. Similar policies were soon adopted by the self-governing colonies and dominions of the British Empire, eventually spreading across Latin America as well.

Undemocratic regimes in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Cuba reversed their discriminatory laws in the 1930s and 1940s, decades ahead of the United States and Canada. The conventional claim that racism and democracy are antithetical—because democracy depends on ideals of equality and fairness, which are incompatible with the notion of racial inferiority—cannot explain why liberal democracies were leaders in promoting racist policies and laggards in eliminating them. Ultimately, the authors argue, the changed racial geopolitics of World War II and the Cold War was necessary to convince North American countries to reform their immigration and citizenship laws.

Advocates of computers make sweeping claims for their inherently transformative power: new and different from previous technologies, they are sure to resolve many of our existing social problems, and perhaps even to cause a positive political revolution.

In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, confronts this orthodoxy, arguing instead that computers are cultural “all the way down”—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics. From the perspective of transnational corporations and governments, computers benefit existing power much more fully than they provide means to distribute or contest it. Despite this, our thinking about computers has developed into a nearly invisible ideology Golumbia dubs “computationalism”—an ideology that informs our thinking not just about computers, but about economic and social trends as sweeping as globalization.

Driven by a programmer’s knowledge of computers as well as by a deep engagement with contemporary literary and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory, The Cultural Logic of Computation provides a needed corrective to the uncritical enthusiasm for computers common today in many parts of our culture.

Mao Zedong envisioned a great struggle to "wreak havoc under the heaven" when he launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. But as radicalized Chinese youth rose up against Party officials, events quickly slipped from the government's grasp, and rebellion took on a life of its own. Turmoil became a reality in a way the Great Leader had not foreseen. The Cultural Revolution at the Margins recaptures these formative moments from the perspective of the disenfranchised and disobedient rebels Mao unleashed and later betrayed.

The Cultural Revolution began as a "revolution from above," and Mao had only a tenuous relationship with the Red Guard students and workers who responded to his call. Yet it was these young rebels at the grassroots who advanced the Cultural Revolution's more radical possibilities, Yiching Wu argues, and who not only acted for themselves but also transgressed Maoism by critically reflecting on broader issues concerning Chinese socialism. As China's state machinery broke down and the institutional foundations of the PRC were threatened, Mao resolved to suppress the crisis. Leaving out in the cold the very activists who had taken its transformative promise seriously, the Cultural Revolution devoured its children and exhausted its political energy.

The mass demobilizations of 1968-69, Wu shows, were the starting point of a series of crisis-coping maneuvers to contain and neutralize dissent, producing immense changes in Chinese society a decade later.

In recent years, a number of European countries abolished national border controls in favor of Europe’s external frontiers. In doing so, they challenged long-established conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and security in world affairs. 

Setting forth a new analytic framework informed by constructivism and pragmatism, Ruben Zaiotti traces the transformation of underlying assumptions and cultural practices guiding European policymakers and postnational Europe, shedding light on current trends characterizing its politics and relations with others. The book also includes a fascinating comparison to developments in North America, where the United States has pursued more restrictive border control strategies since 9/11. As a broad survey of the origins, evolution, and implications of this remarkable development in European integration, Cultures of Border Control will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations and political geography.

In Cultures of Fear, a truly world-class line up of scholars explore the formation and normalisation of fear in the context of war and terrorism.

"Freedom from fear" is a universal right and fundamental for human well-being. People often look to governments, humanitarian agencies, and other institutions to further this aim. However, this book shows that these organisations often use the same "logic of fear" to monitor, control, and contain human beings in zones of violence.

This is an excellent interdisciplinary reader for students of anthropology, sociology and politics. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Baudrillard, Catharine MacKinnon, Neil Smith, Cynthia Enloe, David L. Altheide, Cynthia Cockburn and Carolyn Nordstrum.

Milk is the only food mammals produce naturally to feed their offspring. The human species is the only one that takes milk from other animals and consumes it beyond weaning age. Cultures of Milk contrasts the practices of the world’s two leading milk producers, India and the United States. In both countries, milk is considered to have special qualities. Drawing on ethnographic and scientific studies, popular media, and government reports, Andrea Wiley reveals that the cultural significance of milk goes well beyond its nutritive value.

Shifting socioeconomic and political factors influence how people perceive the importance of milk and how much they consume. In India, where milk is out of reach for many, consumption is rising rapidly among the urban middle class. But milk drinking is declining in America, despite the strength of the dairy industry. Milk is bound up in discussions of food scarcity in India and food abundance in the United States. Promotion of milk as a means to enhance child growth boosted consumption in twentieth-century America and is currently doing the same in India, where average height is low. Wiley considers how variation among populations in the ability to digest lactose and ideas about how milk affects digestion influence the type of milk and milk products consumed. In India, most milk comes from buffalo, but cows have sacred status for Hindus. In the United States, cow’s milk has long been a privileged food, but is now facing competition from plant-based milk.

Custodians of Place provides a new theoretical framework that accounts for how different types of cities arrive at decisions about residential growth and economic development. Lewis and Neiman surveyed officials in hundreds of California cities of all sizes and socioeconomic characteristics to account for differences in local development policies. This book shows city governments at the center of the action in shaping their destinies, frequently acting as far-sighted trustees of their communities.

They explain how city governments often can insulate themselves for the better from short-term political pressures and craft policy that builds on past growth experiences and future vision. Findings also include how conditions on the ground—local commute times, housing affordability, composition of the local labor force—play an important role in determining the approach a city takes toward growth and land use. What types of cities tend to aggressively pursue industrial or retail firms? What types of cities tend to favor housing over business development? What motivates cities to try to slow residential growth? Custodians of Place answers these and many other questions.

Cyber Blockades is the first book to examine the phenomena of blockade operations in cyberspace, large-scale attacks on infrastructure or systems that aim to prevent an entire state from sending or receiving electronic data. Cyber blockades can take place through digital, physical, and/or electromagnetic means. Blockade operations have historically been considered acts of war, thus their emergence in cyberspace has significant implications for international law and for our understanding of cyber warfare.

The author defines and explains the emerging concept of “cyber blockades” and presents a unique comparison of blockade operations in five different domains—on land, at sea, in the air, in space, and in cyberspace—identifying common elements as well as important distinctions. Alison Lawlor Russell’s framework for defining cyber blockades, understanding how they occur, and considering the motivations of actors who employ them is applied with in-depth analysis of the cyber attacks on Estonia in 2007 and on Georgia during the 2008 Georgia-Russia War.

Blockade operations have occurred in cyberspace and will doubtlessly be used again in the future, by both state and non-state actors alike, because of the unique advantages of this type of attack. This book offers recommendations for policymakers contemplating or confronted by such attacks. Cyber Blockades is also a must-read for scholars and students of security studies, terrorism, substate groups, and the future of warfare.

In a very short time, individuals and companies have harnessed cyberspace to create new industries, a vibrant social space, and a new economic sphere that are intertwined with our everyday lives. At the same time, individuals, subnational groups, and governments are using cyberspace to advance interests through malicious activity. Terrorists recruit, train, and target through the Internet, hackers steal data, and intelligence services conduct espionage. Still, the vast majority of cyberspace is civilian space used by individuals, businesses, and governments for legitimate purposes.

Cyberspace and National Security brings together scholars, policy analysts, and information technology executives to examine current and future threats to cyberspace. They discuss various approaches to advance and defend national interests, contrast the US approach with European, Russian, and Chinese approaches, and offer new ways and means to defend interests in cyberspace and develop offensive capabilities to compete there. Policymakers and strategists will find this book to be an invaluable resource in their efforts to ensure national security and answer concerns about future cyberwarfare.

Cycles of Invention and Discovery offers an in-depth look at the real-world practice of science and engineering. It shows how the standard categories of “basic” and “applied” have become a hindrance to the organization of the U.S. science and technology enterprise. Tracing the history of these problematic categories, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Toluwalogo Odumosu document how historical views of policy makers and scientists have led to the construction of science as a pure ideal on the one hand and of engineering as a practical (and inherently less prestigious) activity on the other. Even today, this erroneous but still widespread distinction forces these two endeavors into separate silos, misdirects billions of dollars, and thwarts progress in science and engineering research.

The authors contrast this outmoded perspective with the lived experiences of researchers at major research laboratories. Using such Nobel Prize–winning examples as magnetic resonance imaging, the transistor, and the laser, they explore the daily micro-practices of research, showing how distinctions between the search for knowledge and creative problem solving break down when one pays attention to the ways in which pathbreaking research actually happens. By studying key contemporary research institutions, the authors highlight the importance of integrated research practices, contrasting these with models of research in the classic but still-influential report Science the Endless Frontier. Narayanamurti and Odumosu’s new model of the research ecosystem underscores that discovery and invention are often two sides of the same coin that moves innovation forward.