Categorizing race and ethnicity for twenty-first-century statistics and economics.

The increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the US population raises the question of whether the race and ethnicity categories and definitions used by federal statistical agencies to create demographic statistics on which government officials, business decision-makers, and private citizens rely fully reflect the changing population. Official definitions of existing race and ethnic groups do not always command wide agreement, and over time, some definitions that were once widely accepted may become less so based on political, legal, and social factors. Comparable measures of race and ethnicity over time are needed to accurately track historical changes in economic and social outcomes, as well as racial and ethnic segregation.

This volume explores the production of economic statistics that accurately depict the complex racial and ethnic diversity of the US population in the twenty-first century. The chapters examine the consequences for economic analyses of different measurement choices concerning race and ethnicity, assess the likely implications of the 2024 changes in federal race and ethnicity measurement standards, introduce new data sets with richer demographic information, and compare measures of race and ethnicity in administrative versus survey data. They also apply existing data in creative ways to develop alternative characterizations of the changing US workforce and to illuminate important policy questions related to criminal justice, immigration, labor market discrimination, the social safety net, health care, and child welfare.

Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration re-imagines the ethical relationship of host societies towards newcomers by applying the concept of hospitality to two specific realms that impact the lives of immigrants in the United States: policy and media. The book calls attention to the moral responsibility of the host in welcoming a stranger. It sets the stage for the analysis with a historical background of the first host-guest diads of American hospitality, arguing that the early history of American hospitality was marked by the degeneration of the host-guest relationship into one of host-hostage, normalizing a racial discrimination that continues to plague immigration hospitality to this day. Author Nour Halabi presents a historical policy and media discourse analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during three periods of US history: the 1880s and the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1920s and the National Origins Act and the 2000s and the Muslim travel ban. In so doing, it demonstrates how U.S. immigration hospitality, from its peaks in the post-Independence period to its nadir in the Muslim travel ban, has fallen short of true hospitality in spite of the nation’s oft-touted identity as a “nation of immigrants.” At the same time, the book calls attention to how a discourse of hospitality, although fraught, may allow a radical reimagining of belonging and authority that unsettles settler-colonial assumptions of belonging and welcome a restorative outlook to immigration policy and its media coverage in society.

It is not an easy road—but hope is the oxygen of my life.  These insightful words of Meron Semedar, a refugee from Eritrea, reflect the feelings of the eleven men and women featured in this book.  These refugees  share their extraordinary experiences  of fleeing oppression, violence and war in their home countries in search of a better life in the United States.
 
Each chapter of Refugees in America focuses on an individual from a different country, from a 93-year-old Polish grandmother who came to the United States after surviving the horrors of Auschwitz to a young undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who became an American college graduate, despite being born impoverished and blind. Some have found it easy to reinvent themselves in the United States, while others have struggled to adjust to America, with its new culture, language, prejudices, and norms.
 
Each of them speaks candidly about their experiences to author Lee T. Bycel, who provides illuminating background information on the refugee crises in their native countries. Their stories help reveal the real people at the center of political debates about US immigration.
 
Giving a voice to refugees from such far-flung locations as South Sudan, Guatemala, Syria, and Vietnam, this book weaves together a rich tapestry of human resilience, suffering, and determination.

Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to two organizations that are doing excellent refugee resettlement work and offer many opportunities to support refugees: HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) hias.org International Rescue Committee (IRC) rescue.org
 

 

The green belt has been one of the UK’s most consistent and successful planning policies. It has limited urban sprawl and preserved the countryside around cities—but what is its role in an era of unprecedented urban growth and potentially catastrophic climate change? Repurposing the Green Belt in the 21st Century examines the history of the green belt in the UK and how it has influenced planning regimes in other countries. Despite the undoubted achievements of the green belt, the authors argue, it is time to review it as an instrument of urban planning and landscape design, now that the problem of the ecological impact of cities and the mitigation measures of major climate changes are at the top of the urban agenda across the world.
 
Through an examination of practice in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany, Repurposing the Green Belt in the 21st Century proposes a framework for a reconsideration of the critical relationship between the city and its hinterlands. It will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students of planning, landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, and land economics, as well as practitioners in design, planning, and real estate.
 

Winner, 2023 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book

Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia traces the “kopecks to rubles” journey of Russian comics at the turn of the century. As the follow-up to José Alaniz’s groundbreaking Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (2010), Resurrection authoritatively and exhaustively details the Russian comic landscape of the last three decades: beginning after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and encompassing the fourth Putin administration, the COVID-19 crisis, and beyond. Bolstering his analysis with interviews with some of the major figures in Russia’s comics industry, Alaniz particularly focuses on the representation of masculinity, disability, historical trauma, and superheroes, as well as on the recent rise of fandom, alternative micropresses, and nonfiction graphic narrative. Resurrection is a sweeping discussion of the metamorphosis of contemporary Russian comic art from its rebirth to its entry into mainstream culture.

Both a history and a contemporary analysis, an illuminating investigation of the defining economic concern of our time.
 
The last year has seen the return of inflation as a preoccupation of political decision-makers, economists, and the general public. After two decades of wondering why inflation was so low, despite vast economic stimulus, economists were surprised by the recent surge in price increases. Despite disagreement about what exactly is happening in the economy, there is unanimity in one belief: slowing growth to control inflation. To focus on inflation’s return, Paul Mattick looks at both the past and present, placing current events in the context of capitalism’s history. Exploring the nature of money itself, he provides a concise, jargon-free understanding of recent inflation as well as official efforts to control it, illuminating the state of our contemporary economy.

Between 2000 and 2011, eight million immigrants became American citizens. In naturalization ceremonies large and small these new Americans pledged an oath of allegiance to the United States, gaining the right to vote, serve on juries, and hold political office; access to certain jobs; and the legal rights of full citizens. 

“Art has a lot to answer for.” So says Sarah Bernhardt in Ronald Harwood’s play After the Lions. Harwood’s own career can be summarized by that same quote as well.
         Ronald Harwood’s Tragic Vision offers the first critical analysis of prolific and award-winning British author Ronald Harwood (1934–2020). Though he received an Oscar for The Pianist, a knighthood, and numerous other awards and nominations, Harwood worked as a ghostwriter, script doctor, and veritable unknown for many years. As he became successful, many critics still misread his works and positioned him as a less-fashionable counterpart to his lifelong friend Harold Pinter. This study proposes a conceptual framework to approach his, and others’, work based on the genre of tragedy, offering a greater appreciation for and understanding of the Harwood canon.
 

Winner of the Julia Ward Howe Prize

“The gripping story of the most important environmental law case ever decided by the Supreme Court.”
—Scott Turow

“In the tradition of A Civil Action, this book makes a compelling story of the court fight that paved the way for regulating the emissions now overheating the planet. It offers a poignant reminder of how far we’ve come—and how far we still must go.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

On an unseasonably warm October morning, an idealistic young lawyer working on a shoestring budget for an environmental organization no one had heard of hand-delivered a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency, asking it to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from new cars. The Clean Air Act authorized the EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” thought to endanger public health. But could carbon dioxide really be considered a harmful pollutant? And even if the EPA had the authority to regulate emissions, could it be forced to do so?

The Rule of Five tells the dramatic story of how Joe Mendelson and the band of lawyers who joined him carried his case all the way to the Supreme Court. It reveals how accident, infighting, luck, superb lawyering, politics, and the arcane practices of the Supreme Court collided to produce a legal miracle. The final ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, by a razor-thin 5–4 margin brilliantly crafted by Justice John Paul Stevens, paved the way to important environmental safeguards which the Trump administration fought hard to unravel and many now seek to expand.

“There’s no better book if you want to understand the past, present, and future of environmental litigation.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

“A riveting story, beautifully told.”
—Foreign Affairs

“Wonderful…A master class in how the Supreme Court works and, more broadly, how major cases navigate through the legal system.”
—Science

This fourth Rural Sociological Society decennial volume provides advanced policy scholarship on rural North America during the 2010’s, closely reflecting upon the increasingly global nature of social, cultural, and economic forces and the impact of neoliberal ideology upon policy, politics, and power in rural areas.

The chapters in this volume represent the expertise of an influential group of scholars in rural sociology and related social sciences. Its five sections address the changing structure of North American agriculture, natural resources and the environment, demographics, diversity, and quality of life in rural communities. 

Through a compilation of foreign policy documents and statements, harnessed together by a section of analytic works, this book seeks to highlight the shift in Russian foreign policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This compilation presents the work of formative scholars in this field who are concerned with the evolution of Russia Foreign policy thinking and behavior. This volume compiles critical documents and statements (treaties, addresses and articles) that deal with the formation of new conceptions of security in the New World order. The articles critically evaluate the implications of these new initiatives and lend insight to these documents and statements in practice. They address a wide range of topics from the crisis in Kosovo to domestic Russian policy, with an eye to the future of Russian policy.