For the first half of the twentieth century, private agreements to impose racial restrictions on who could occupy property decisively shaped the development of American cities and the distribution of people within them. Racial restrictions on the right to buy, sell, or occupy property also effectively truncated the political, social, and economic citizenship of those targeted for exclusion. In Patchwork Apartheid, historian Colin Gordon examines the history of such restrictions and how their consequences reverberate today. Drawing on a unique record of property restrictions excavated from local property records in five Midwestern counties, Gordon documents the prevalence of private property restriction in the era before zoning and building codes were widely employed and before federal redlining sanctioned the segregation of American cities and suburbs. This record of private restriction—documented and mapped to the parcel level in Greater Minneapolis, Greater St. Louis, and two Iowa counties—reveals the racial segregation process both on the ground, in the strategic deployment of restrictions throughout transitional central city neighborhoods and suburbs, and in the broader social and legal construction of racial categories and racial boundaries.
 
Gordon also explores the role of other policies and practices in sustaining segregation. Enforcement of private racial restrictions was held unconstitutional in 1948, and such agreements were prohibited outright in 1968. But their premises and assumptions, and the segregation they had accomplished, were accommodated by local zoning and federal housing policies. Explicit racial restrictions were replaced by the deceptive business practices of real estate agents and developers, who characterized certain neighborhoods as white and desirable and others as black and undesirable, thereby hiding segregation behind the promotion of sound property investments, safe neighborhoods, and good schools. These practices were in turn replaced by local zoning, which systematically protected white neighborhoods while targeting “blighted” black neighborhoods for commercial and industrial redevelopment, and by a tangle of federal policies that reliably deferred to local and private interests with deep investments in local segregation. Private race restriction was thus a key element in the original segregation of American cities and a source of durable inequalities in housing wealth, housing opportunity, and economic mobility.

Patchwork Apartheid exhaustively documents the history of private restriction in urban settings and demonstrates its crucial role in the ideas and assumptions that have sustained racial segregation in the United States into the twenty-first century.

An interdisciplinary exploration of childhood play, blending archival research, digital innovation, and children’s voices to reveal the evolving nature of games and storytelling across generations.

Playing the Archive: From the Opies to the Digital Playground revisits the trailblazing work of Iona and Peter Opie, who documented children’s playground games, rhymes, and traditions in mid-20th century Britain, and brings their research into the digital age. Through a major new study, this book explores how children’s play has evolved, drawing on fresh ethnographic research, digital storytelling, and interactive media to compare past and present-day playground cultures.

By making the Opie Archive publicly accessible and involving children through digital interfaces, the project opens up new ways of understanding play as a dynamic, ever-changing practice. The chapters offer novel theoretical insights into the shifting landscapes of play, considering the role of archives and digital media in shaping children’s cultural expressions. Playing the Archive questions stereotypes about childhood in the digital era, positioning children as active creators of their own play cultures.

Any student, academic or practitioner wanting to succeed in development studies, radical or mainstream, must understand the World Bank's role and the evolution of its thinking and activities. The Political Economy of Development provides tools for gaining this understanding and applies them across a range of topics.

The research, practice and scholarship of development are always set against the backdrop of the World Bank, whose formidable presence shapes both development practice and thinking. This book brings together academics that specialise in different subject areas of development and reviews their findings in the context of the World Bank as knowledge bank, policy-maker and financial institution. The volume offers a compelling contribution to our understanding of development studies and of development itself.

The Political Economy of Development is an invaluable critical resource for students, policy-makers and activists in development studies.

In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)—an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada—to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron's creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, their methodology demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.

Posterity Is Now is about doing—about how to do—museum anthropology, collections stewardship, and collaborative research based on working in collaboration with Indigenous communities. Guided by values-centered practice, this book shows how following Indigenous communities’ lead, being flexible, and creating a welcoming environment to build essential relationships can reorient museums to support cultural continuity instead of merely preserving objects.
 
In this handbook based on over twenty years of teaching and practice at the intersection of museums, anthropology, and Indigenous peoples, Jennifer A. Shannon covers both the theoretical (i.e., exploring the idea of objects as kin) and the pragmatic (i.e., guidelines for how to design and budget collaborative projects). She advocates for fundamental change in how anthropological research design and practice are done within and beyond the museum and how leadership and staff view the very purpose of the museum. She also demonstrates how collaborative museum anthropology can be a model for the fields of anthropology, public scholarship, and social science research more broadly.
 
Posterity Is Now is a starting point, a “companion to practice,” written in accessible language and equally relevant for use in university classrooms, by qualitative researchers, and by practitioners in museums and cultural centers.
 

If knowledge is power, then John Hird has opened the doors for anyone interested in public policymaking and policy analysis on the state level. A beginning question might be: does politics put gasoline or sugar in the tank? More specifically, in a highly partisan political environment, is nonpartisan expertise useful to policymaking? Do policy analysts play a meaningful role in decision making? Does policy expertise promote democratic decision making? Does it vest power in an unelected and unaccountable elite, or does it become co-opted by political actors and circumstances? Is it used to make substantive changes or just for window-dressing?

In a unique comparative focus on state policy, Power, Knowledge, and Politics dissects the nature of the policy institutions that policymakers establish and analyzes the connection between policy research and how it is actually used in decision making. Hird probes the effects of politics and political institutions—parties, state political culture and dynamics, legislative and gubernatorial staffing, partisan think tanks, interest groups—on the nature and conduct of nonpartisan policy analysis. Through a comparative examination of institutions and testing theories of the use of policy analysis, Hird draws conclusions that are more useful than those derived from single cases.

Hird examines nonpartisan policy research organizations established by and operating in U.S. state legislatures—one of the most intense of political environments—to determine whether and how nonpartisan policy research can survive in that harsh climate. By first detailing how nonpartisan policy analysis organizations came to be and what they do, and then determining what state legislators want from them, he presents a rigorous statistical analysis of those agencies in all 50 states and from a survey of 800 state legislators. This thoroughly comprehensive look at policymaking at the state level concludes that nonpartisan policy analysis institutions can play an important role—as long as they remain scrupulously nonpartisan.

Principled University Leadership: Critical Decision-Making in Academia is a personal account by university president Marc A. Johnson that draws on his extensive experience in academic administration. The book delves into four major themes: traits that lead individuals into leadership roles; economic principles influencing university decision-making; practical leadership strategies for fostering institutional progress; and approaches to navigating today’s critical challenges, including DEI and free speech. 

Rooted in Johnson’s small-town origins and passion for civic engagement, this narrative offers unique insights into the path to university leadership and the key decisions leaders face. It is an invaluable resource for aspiring and current academic leaders seeking guidance in navigating the complexities of higher education.
 

Process-tracing in social science is a method for studying causal mechanisms linking causes with outcomes. This enables the researcher to make strong inferences about how a cause (or set of causes) contributes to producing an outcome. Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen introduce a refined definition of process-tracing, differentiating it into three distinct variants and explaining the applications and limitations of each. The authors develop the underlying logic of process-tracing, including how one should understand causal mechanisms and how Bayesian logic enables strong within-case inferences. They provide instructions for identifying the variant of process-tracing most appropriate for the research question at hand and a set of guidelines for each stage of the research process.

Learning how to organize and manage research is important for both the researcher and for advancing research. However, graduate students are often trained in theories, methods, and disciplines, but rarely in the organizational, administrative, and metacognitive skills required to manage research projects. Moreover, several disciplines are decrying a reproducibility crisis, with a concerted academic push toward open-access approaches. By clearly organizing research, graduate students and researchers can ensure that they are able to account for their methodological, theoretical,  and other research decisions: to reviewers, to funding agencies, and to support the development of new ideas and exciting offshoots of projects. 

Project Management for Researchers tackles the how, what, and why of project management. It offers step-by-step guidance on choosing tools and developing a personalized system that will help the reader manage and organize their research so that steps and decisions are documented for accountability and reproducibility. Readers will find worksheets they can adapt to their own needs, priorities, and research as well as practical tips on issues ranging from emails to scheduling. Suitable for work across methods, experience levels, and disciplines and adaptable for those working alone, with others, or as team managers, this book will guide readers between various research stages–from planning, to execution, to adjustment of research projects big and small.

This practical volume is the first to gather resources specific to the provenance of Mediterranean antiquities in an accessible, comprehensive guidebook.

The first of its kind, this book is an accessible, comprehensive primer of methods and resources for researching the provenance of Mediterranean (Greek, Roman, and Etruscan) antiquities. In addition to outlining effective strategies for documentation and investigation, the volume features an annotated guide to key archives, databases, and twentieth-century dealers to facilitate a broad spectrum of research endeavors. Building upon a decade-long review of the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, it draws together instructive case studies, legal perspectives, and practical experience to provide an efficient reference for museum professionals, scholars, collectors, and students. The authors aim to emphasize the need for diligent provenance research and to shorten the learning curve for such projects.

The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/provenance-research and includes zoomable illustrations. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book.

Prometheus brought the gift of enlightenment to humanity and suffered for his benevolence. This collection takes on scholars’ Promethean view of themselves as selfless bringers of light and instead offers a new vision of public scholarship as service to society.

Thomas J Billard and Silvio Waisbord curate essays from a wide range of specialties within the study of communication. Aimed at scholars and students alike, the contributors use approaches from critical meditations to case studies to how-to guides as they explore the possibilities of seeing shared knowledge not as a gift to be granted but as an imperative urging readers to address the problems of the world. Throughout the volume, the works show that a pivot to ideas of scholarship as public service is already underway in corners of communication studies across the country.

Visionary and provocative, Public Scholarship in Communication Studies proposes a needed reconsideration of knowledge and a roadmap to its integration with community.

Contributors: Elaine Almeida, Becca Beets, Thomas J Billard, Danielle K. Brown, Aymar Jean Christian, Stacey L. Connaughton, Paula Gardner, Larry Gross, Amy Jordan, Daniel Kreiss, Rachel Kuo, Susan Mancino, Shannon C. McGregor, Philip M. Napoli, Todd P. Newman, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Chad Raphael, Sue Robinson, Silvio Waisbord, Yidong Wang, and Holley Wilkin