Across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, urban farmers and gardeners are reclaiming cultural traditions linked to food, farming, and health; challenging systemic racism and injustice in the food system; demanding greater community control of resources in marginalized neighborhoods; and moving towards their visions of more equitable urban futures. As part of this urgent work, urban farmers and gardeners encounter and reckon with both the cultural meanings and material legacies of the past. Drawing on their narratives, Back to the Roots demonstrates that urban agriculture is a critical domain for explorations of, and challenges to, the long standing inequalities that shape both the materiality of cities and the bodies of their inhabitants.
 

Indebtedness, like inequality, has become a ubiquitous condition in the United States. Yet few have probed American cities’ dependence on municipal debt or how the terms of municipal finance structure racial privileges, entrench spatial neglect, elide democratic input, and distribute wealth and power.

In this passionate and deeply researched book, Destin Jenkins shows in vivid detail how, beyond the borrowing decisions of American cities and beneath their quotidian infrastructure, there lurks a world of politics and finance that is rarely seen, let alone understood. Focusing on San Francisco, The Bonds of Inequality offers a singular view of the postwar city, one where the dynamics that drove its creation encompassed not only local politicians but also banks, credit rating firms, insurance companies, and the national municipal bond market. Moving between the local and the national, The Bonds of Inequality uncovers how racial inequalities in San Francisco were intrinsically tied to municipal finance arrangements and how these arrangements were central in determining the distribution of resources in the city. By homing in on financing and its imperatives, Jenkins boldly rewrites the history of modern American cities, revealing the hidden strings that bind debt and power, race and inequity, democracy and capitalism.
 

The story of how a biologically driven understanding of gender and sexuality became central to US LGBTQ+ political and legal advocacy.

Across protests and courtrooms, LGBTQ+ advocates argue that sexual and gender identities are innate. Oppositely, conservatives incite panic over “groomers” and a contagious “gender ideology” that corrupts susceptible children. Yet, as this debate rages on, the history of what first compelled the hunt for homosexuality’s biological origin story may hold answers for the queer rights movement’s future.

Born This Way tells the story of how a biologically based understanding of gender and sexuality became central to LGBTQ+ advocacy. Starting in the 1950s, activists sought out mental health experts to combat the pathologizing of homosexuality. As Joanna Wuest shows, these relationships were forged in subsequent decades alongside two broader, concurrent developments: the rise of an interest-group model of rights advocacy and an explosion of biogenetic and bio-based psychological research. The result is essential reading to fully understand LGBTQ+ activism today and how clashes over science remain crucial to equal rights struggles.

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

The story of how a biologically driven understanding of gender and sexuality became central to US LGBTQ+ political and legal advocacy.

Across protests and courtrooms, LGBTQ+ advocates argue that sexual and gender identities are innate. Oppositely, conservatives incite panic over “groomers” and a contagious “gender ideology” that corrupts susceptible children. Yet, as this debate rages on, the history of what first compelled the hunt for homosexuality’s biological origin story may hold answers for the queer rights movement’s future.

Born This Way tells the story of how a biologically based understanding of gender and sexuality became central to LGBTQ+ advocacy. Starting in the 1950s, activists sought out mental health experts to combat the pathologizing of homosexuality. As Joanna Wuest shows, these relationships were forged in subsequent decades alongside two broader, concurrent developments: the rise of an interest-group model of rights advocacy and an explosion of biogenetic and bio-based psychological research. The result is essential reading to fully understand LGBTQ+ activism today and how clashes over science remain crucial to equal rights struggles.

Young people are told that college is a place where they will “find themselves” by engaging with diversity and making friendships that will last a lifetime. This vision of an inclusive, diverse social experience is a fundamental part of the image colleges sell potential students. But what really happens when students arrive on campus and enter this new social world? The Cost of Inclusion delves into this rich moment to explore the ways students seek out a sense of belonging and the sacrifices they make to fit in.

Blake R. Silver spent a year immersed in student life at a large public university. He trained with the Cardio Club, hung out with the Learning Community, and hosted service events with the Volunteer Collective. Through these day-to-day interactions, he witnessed how students sought belonging and built their social worlds on campus. Over time, Silver realized that these students only achieved inclusion at significant cost. To fit in among new peers, they clung to or were pushed into raced and gendered cultural assumptions about behavior, becoming “the cool guy,” “the nice girl,” “the funny one,” “the leader,” “the intellectual,” or “the mom of the group.” Instead of developing dynamic identities, they crafted and adhered to a cookie-cutter self, one that was rigid and two-dimensional. Silver found that these students were ill-prepared for the challenges of a diverse college campus, and that they had little guidance from their university on how to navigate the trials of social engagement or the pressures to conform. While colleges are focused on increasing the diversity of their enrolled student body, Silver’s findings show that they need to take a hard look at how they are failing to support inclusion once students arrive on campus.

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book. 

Young people are told that college is a place where they will “find themselves” by engaging with diversity and making friendships that will last a lifetime. This vision of an inclusive, diverse social experience is a fundamental part of the image colleges sell potential students. But what really happens when students arrive on campus and enter this new social world? The Cost of Inclusion delves into this rich moment to explore the ways students seek out a sense of belonging and the sacrifices they make to fit in.

Blake R. Silver spent a year immersed in student life at a large public university. He trained with the Cardio Club, hung out with the Learning Community, and hosted service events with the Volunteer Collective. Through these day-to-day interactions, he witnessed how students sought belonging and built their social worlds on campus. Over time, Silver realized that these students only achieved inclusion at significant cost. To fit in among new peers, they clung to or were pushed into raced and gendered cultural assumptions about behavior, becoming “the cool guy,” “the nice girl,” “the funny one,” “the leader,” “the intellectual,” or “the mom of the group.” Instead of developing dynamic identities, they crafted and adhered to a cookie-cutter self, one that was rigid and two-dimensional. Silver found that these students were ill-prepared for the challenges of a diverse college campus, and that they had little guidance from their university on how to navigate the trials of social engagement or the pressures to conform. While colleges are focused on increasing the diversity of their enrolled student body, Silver’s findings show that they need to take a hard look at how they are failing to support inclusion once students arrive on campus.

Why do America’s wars against poverty turn out to be wards against the poor? Why does a nation so committed to fighting crime show such a bad record of combatting it and so morbid a fascination with it? Why is American racism so deeply rooted? 

These and other questions are answered in this milestone study. Its central thesis is that the national faith in individual initiative and free opportunity has become a breeding ground for guilt about our own limited successes and prejudice against all who exhibit signs of failure. 

While many scholars, policymakers, and development practitioners view decentralization as a way to increase participation, strengthen political representation, and improve social welfare, little is known about the experiences of communities in the context of decentralization – particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume directs our attention toward the ways in which decentralization is “lived locally” by citizens of the MENA region, underscoring the simultaneous influences of individual-level factors (e.g., gender, education) and local context (e.g., development levels, electoral institutions) on governance processes and outcomes. 

A group of international scholars brings together methodologically diverse, original research in Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia to expand the literature on decentralization. Following a preface by Hicham Alaoui, the empirical chapters are arranged into three thematic sections. These focus on subnational variations in the relationships between central and local actors, citizen engagement with state and non-state institutions, and the extent to which representatives reflect their local communities. Together, these chapters provide important insights into governance, participation, and representation in the MENA and open new questions for furthering the study of governance and local development. Only by unpacking perspectives and governance experiences at the micro-level can we understand how decentralization policies affect citizens’ everyday lives.

An ethnographic analysis of how insecurity is at the heart of contemporary higher education.

Institutions of higher education are often described as “ivory towers,” places of privilege where students exist in a “campus bubble,” insulated from the trials of the outside world. These metaphors reveal a widespread belief that college provides young people with stability and keeps insecurity at bay. But for many students, that’s simply not the case.

Degrees of Risk reveals how insecurity permeates every facet of college life for students at public universities. Sociologist Blake Silver dissects how these institutions play a direct role in perpetuating uncertainty, instability, individualism, and anxiety about the future. Silver examined interviews with more than one hundred students who described the risks that surrounded every decision: which major to choose, whether to take online classes, and how to find funding. He expertly identified the ways the college experience played out differently for students from different backgrounds. For students from financially secure families with knowledge of how college works, all the choices and flexibility of college felt like an adventure or a wealth of opportunities. But for many others, especially low-income, first-generation students, their personal and family circumstances meant that that flexibility felt like murkiness and precarity. In addition, he discovered that students managed insecurity in very different ways, intensifying inequality at the intersections of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other sociodemographic dimensions. Drawing from these firsthand accounts, Degrees of Risk presents a model for a better university, one that fosters success and confidence for a diverse range of students.

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

An ethnographic analysis of how insecurity is at the heart of contemporary higher education.

Institutions of higher education are often described as “ivory towers,” places of privilege where students exist in a “campus bubble,” insulated from the trials of the outside world. These metaphors reveal a widespread belief that college provides young people with stability and keeps insecurity at bay. But for many students, that’s simply not the case.

Degrees of Risk reveals how insecurity permeates every facet of college life for students at public universities. Sociologist Blake Silver dissects how these institutions play a direct role in perpetuating uncertainty, instability, individualism, and anxiety about the future. Silver examined interviews with more than one hundred students who described the risks that surrounded every decision: which major to choose, whether to take online classes, and how to find funding. He expertly identified the ways the college experience played out differently for students from different backgrounds. For students from financially secure families with knowledge of how college works, all the choices and flexibility of college felt like an adventure or a wealth of opportunities. But for many others, especially low-income, first-generation students, their personal and family circumstances meant that that flexibility felt like murkiness and precarity. In addition, he discovered that students managed insecurity in very different ways, intensifying inequality at the intersections of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other sociodemographic dimensions. Drawing from these firsthand accounts, Degrees of Risk presents a model for a better university, one that fosters success and confidence for a diverse range of students.

Economic inequality is at a record high in the United States, but public demand for redistribution is not rising with it. Meghan Condon and Amber Wichowsky show that this paradox and other mysteries about class and US politics can be solved through a focus on social comparison. Powerful currents compete to propel attention up or down—toward the rich or the poor—pulling politics along in the wake.

Through an astute blend of experiments, surveys, and descriptions people offer in their own words, The Economic Other reveals that when less-advantaged Americans compare with the rich, they become more accurate about their own status and want more from government. But American society is structured to prevent upward comparison. In an increasingly divided, anxious nation, opportunities to interact with the country’s richest are shrinking, and people prefer to compare to those below to feel secure. Even when comparison with the rich does occur, many lose confidence in their power to effect change. 

Laying bare how social comparisons drive political attitudes, The Economic Other is an essential look at the stubborn plight of inequality and the measures needed to solve it.
 

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil Kraus in his urgent call to action, The Fantasy Economy. Kraus claims the idea that both the education system and labor force are chronically deficient was aggressively and incorrectly promoted starting in the Reagan era, when corporate interests and education reformers emphasized education as the exclusive mechanism providing the citizenry with economic opportunity. However, as this critical book reveals, that is a misleading articulation of the economy and education system rooted in the economic self-interests of corporations and the wealthy.

The Fantasy Economy challenges the basic assumptions of the education reform movement of the last few decades. Kraus insists that education cannot control the labor market and unreliable corporate narratives fuel this misinformation. Moreover, misguided public policies, such as accountability and school choice, along with an emphasis on workforce development and STEM over broad-based liberal arts education, have only produced greater inequality.

Ultimately, The Fantasy Economy argues that education should be understood as a social necessity, not an engine of the neoliberal agenda. Kraus’ book advocates for a change in conventional thinking about economic opportunity and the purpose of education in a democracy.

Meeting students’ basic needs – including ensuring they have access to nutritious meals and a sense of belonging and connection to school – can positively influence students’ academic performance. Recognizing this connection, schools provide resources in the form of school meals programs, school nurses, and school guidance counselors. However, these resources are not always available to students and are not always prioritized in school reform policies, which tend to focus more narrowly on academic learning. This book is about the balancing act that schools and their teachers undertake to respond to the social, emotional, and material needs of their students in the context of standardized testing and accountability policies. Drawing on conversations with teachers and classroom observations in two elementary schools, How Schools Meet Students’ Needs explores the factors that both enable and constrain teachers in their efforts to meet students’ needs and the consequences of how schools organize this work on teachers’ labor and students’ learning.
 

Inequality, per se, has been with us for millennia. With the creation, growth and deepening of Capitalism across the globe, inequalities take on new dimensions, unknown in previous eras. As Capitalism has spread its wings across the globe over the last 200 or so years, so inequalities have deepened and widened, both inside Nation Sates, between nation States. These inequalities are of income, wealth and of power.

This book, written by the widely respected economic historian Douglas Dowd at the age of 90, is notable for his own experience and vivid memory, of the 1929-31 recession. Since the 1980s, and the predominance of the present neo-liberal ideology, all of the inequalities that the book presents have grown rapidly. Written as a critique of the counter-productivity of growing economic inequality and vindicated by the present world banking crisis, Dowd presents a strong argument against capitalist expansion, exploitation and oligarchic rule.

Dowd's conclusions, that the globalization and growth of the financial sector will impact painfully upon hundreds of millions of people, unknown to most of us in our lifetime, Dowd's book deals with these issues from the unique perspective of inequality. Presenting both a history of the current crisis and an overview of it's, Inequality will appeal to both a broad general readership, and provides an extremely useful reference point for students of political economy, economic history, contemporary economics and global politics.

Looking closely at New York City’s political development since the 1970s, three “political orders”—conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism—emerged. In Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, Timothy Weaver argues that the intercurrent impact of these orders has created a constant battle for power.

Weaver brings these clashes to the fore by showing how New York City politics has been shaped by these conflicting orders. He examines the transformation of the city’s political economy in the aftermath of the 1975 fiscal crisis through neoliberal real estate development and privatization, the conservative rise of law-and-order politics in the 1970s to 1990s, and the efforts of the city’s egalitarians to respond to each of these shifts through social movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City belies glib assumptions about the city’s liberal character. Weaver reveals the metropolis not as a homogenous political whole, but as a site in which the victories and defeats of rival political forces change the terms of local citizenship for the millions of residents who call the city home.

In the series Political Lessons from American Cities

An empirically rich reconstruction of how informality became an intrinsic part of urban life across three continents.

Over a quarter of the world’s urban population lives in informal settlements. While informality as a concept has been widely debated, we still know very little about the phenomenon’s urban history or how that history has shaped the evolution of world cities. Spotlighting the historical processes that have created and sustained urban informality for more than a century, editors Charlotte Vorms and Brodwyn Fischer and this volume’s contributors reveal informality as an intrinsic feature of urbanity, shaping not only cities across the globe but also deeper processes of state formation, socioeconomic stratification, and political struggle.
 
The volume brings together case studies spanning more than a hundred years, drawn from Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Mexico), Northern Africa (Morocco and Algeria), and Latin Europe (France, Spain, and Italy). Together, they show that informality is neither a contemporary crisis nor a predicament unique to the Global South. Topics include the origins of informal settlements and their relationship with law and institutional power; grassroots efforts to legitimize shantytown communities; mass social movements for rights to the city; the role that shantytown removal campaigns played in populist politics, fascism, and colonialism; and the ways that informality perpetuated racial and ethnic inequalities. Informal Cities is an indispensable guide to the complex and fraught terrain of urban informality in its many historical guises.

Neil Kraus evaluates both the influence of public opinion on local policy-making and the extent to which public policy addresses economic and social inequalities. Drawing on several years of fieldwork and multiple sources of data, including surveys and polls; initiatives, referenda, and election results; government documents; focus groups; interviews; and a wide assortment of secondary sources, Kraus presents case studies of two Midwestern cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Gary, Indiana. Specifically, he focuses on several major policy decisions in recent decades concerning education, law enforcement, and affordable housing in Minneapolis; and education and riverboat casino development in Gary.

Kraus finds that, on these issues, local officials frequently take action that reflects public opinion, yet the resulting policies often fail to meet the needs of the disadvantaged or ameliorate the effects of concentrated poverty. In light of citizens’ current attitudes, he concludes that if patterns of inequality are to be more effectively addressed, scholars and policymakers must transform the debate about the causes and effects of inequality in urban and metropolitan settings.

An unprecedented account of social stratification within the US legal profession.

How do race, class, gender, and law school status condition the career trajectories of lawyers? And how do professionals then navigate these parameters?

The Making of Lawyers’ Careers provides an unprecedented account of the last two decades of the legal profession in the US, offering a data-backed look at the structure of the profession and the inequalities that early-career lawyers face across race, gender, and class distinctions. Starting in 2000, the authors collected over 10,000 survey responses from more than 5,000 lawyers, following these lawyers through the first twenty years of their careers. They also interviewed more than two hundred lawyers and drew insights from their individual stories, contextualizing data with theory and close attention to the features of a market-driven legal profession.

Their findings show that lawyers’ careers both reflect and reproduce inequalities within society writ large. They also reveal how individuals exercise agency despite these constraints.

An exploration of how and why American city governments delegated the responsibility for solving urban inequality to the nonprofit sector.
 
Nonprofits serving a range of municipal and cultural needs are now so ubiquitous in US cities, it can be difficult to envision a time when they were more limited in number, size, and influence. Turning back the clock, however, uncovers both an illuminating story of how the nonprofit sector became such a dominant force in American society, as well as a troubling one of why this growth occurred alongside persistent poverty and widening inequality. Claire Dunning’s book connects these two stories in histories of race, democracy, and capitalism, revealing how the federal government funded and deputized nonprofits to help individuals in need, and in so doing avoided addressing the structural inequities that necessitated such action in the first place.

Nonprofit Neighborhoods begins after World War II, when suburbanization, segregation, and deindustrialization inaugurated an era of urban policymaking that applied private solutions to public problems. Dunning introduces readers to the activists, corporate executives, and politicians who advocated addressing poverty and racial exclusion through local organizations, while also raising provocative questions about the politics and possibilities of social change. The lessons of Nonprofit Neighborhoods exceed the bounds of Boston, where the story unfolds, providing a timely history of the shift from urban crisis to urban renaissance for anyone concerned about American inequality—past, present, or future.
 

Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define.

Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.

A first-of-its-kind collection, On Gender, Labor, and Inequality is an indispensable text by one of the world's top scholars of gender, equality, and work.

Profiles of triumph and hardship amid massive inequality in Latin America.

Each chapter of Portraits of Persistence, a project of the University of Texas Urban Ethnography Lab, offers an intimate portrait of one or two individual lives. The subjects are a diverse group of individuals from across the continent: grassroots activists and political brokers, private security entrepreneurs, female drug dealers, shantytown dwellers, and rural farmers, as well as migrants finding routes into and out of the region. Through these accounts, the writers explore issues that are common throughout today's world: precarious work situations, gender oppression, housing displacement, experiences navigating the bureaucracy for asylum seekers, state violence, environmental devastation, and access to good and affordable health care. Carefully situating these experiences within the sociohistorical context of their specific local regions or countries, editor Javier Auyero and his colleagues consider how people make sense of the paths their lives have taken, the triumphs and hardships they have experienced, and the aspirations they hold for the future. Ultimately, these twelve compelling profiles offer unique and personal windows into the region’s complex and multilayered reality.

A sobering exploration of the near unchecked power of sheriffs in the United States.

Across the United States, more than 3,000 sheriffs occupy a unique position in the US political and legal systems. Elected by voters—usually in low-visibility, noncompetitive elections—sheriffs oversee more than a third of law enforcement employees and control almost all local jails. They have the power to both set and administer policies, and they can imprison, harm, and even kill members of their communities. Yet, they enjoy a degree of autonomy not seen by other political officeholders.

The Power of the Badge offers an unprecedented, data-rich look into the politics of the office and its effects on local communities. Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman draw on two surveys of sheriffs taken nearly a decade apart, as well as election data, case studies, and administrative data to show how a volatile combination of authority and autonomy has created an environment where sheriffs rarely change; elections seldom create meaningful accountability; employees, budgets, and jails can be used for political gains; marginalized populations can be punished; and reforms fail. Farris and Holman also track the increasingly close linkages between sheriffs and right-wing radical groups in an era of high partisanship and intra-federal conflict.

Copy refers to RSF, Volume 9, issues 4 & 5

​Administrative burdens are the learning, compliance, and psychological costs that individuals incur during encounters with public services. While some burdens are created unintentionally, others are deliberately constructed as barriers to limit claims to programs and services. Often, burdens fall most heavily on marginalized groups, preventing them from resources they need. In this double issue of RSF public administration scholar Pamela Herd, economist Hilary Hoynes, political scientists Jamila Michener and Donald Moynihan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors explore how administrative burdens shape inequality.
 
Issue 1 examines how administrative burdens impact Medicaid and health inequality, student loan repayment programs, and immigration to the U.S. Emily Rauscher and Ailish Burns find that combinations of reforms to reduce administrative burdens in the late 1980s increased Medicaid enrollment and improved infant health nearly as much as Medicaid expansion. Adam Goldstein and colleagues show that administrative burdens in enrolling in income-driven repayment student loan programs causes borrowers with lower socioeconomic status to be disproportionately excluded from these programs. Lilly Yu finds that dramatic changes to immigration law and policy during the Trump Administration led immigration lawyers to inadvertently exacerbate inequality among undocumented and vulnerable immigrants’ access to legal representation.
 
Issue 2 looks at the role of administrative burdens in experiences with child and family support programs, the child welfare system, disaster and housing relief programs, and housing support programs. Carolyn Barnes and colleagues find that mothers’ perceptions of the costs and benefits of participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) vary over time and influence whether they choose to enroll or continue participating in the program. Ethan J. Raker and Tyler M. Woods find applications from poor communities of color for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing aid after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were disproportionately denied or delayed due to burdensome program requirements and implementation. Stephanie Casey Pierce and Stephanie Moulton reveal that reforms to reduce administrative burden in foreclosure programs are associated with a significant increase in the rate of benefit receipt and decrease in the foreclosure rate. Frank Edwards and colleagues show child welfare system-involved parents must navigate considerable administrative burdens in order to retain custody of their children.
 
This volume of RSF sheds light on the origins, experiences, and consequences of administrative burdens.

Copy refers to RSF, Volume 9, issues 4 & 5

​Administrative burdens are the learning, compliance, and psychological costs that individuals incur during encounters with public services. While some burdens are created unintentionally, others are deliberately constructed as barriers to limit claims to programs and services. Often, burdens fall most heavily on marginalized groups, preventing them from resources they need. In this double issue of RSF public administration scholar Pamela Herd, economist Hilary Hoynes, political scientists Jamila Michener and Donald Moynihan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors explore how administrative burdens shape inequality.
 
Issue 1 examines how administrative burdens impact Medicaid and health inequality, student loan repayment programs, and immigration to the U.S. Emily Rauscher and Ailish Burns find that combinations of reforms to reduce administrative burdens in the late 1980s increased Medicaid enrollment and improved infant health nearly as much as Medicaid expansion. Adam Goldstein and colleagues show that administrative burdens in enrolling in income-driven repayment student loan programs causes borrowers with lower socioeconomic status to be disproportionately excluded from these programs. Lilly Yu finds that dramatic changes to immigration law and policy during the Trump Administration led immigration lawyers to inadvertently exacerbate inequality among undocumented and vulnerable immigrants’ access to legal representation.
 
Issue 2 looks at the role of administrative burdens in experiences with child and family support programs, the child welfare system, disaster and housing relief programs, and housing support programs. Carolyn Barnes and colleagues find that mothers’ perceptions of the costs and benefits of participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) vary over time and influence whether they choose to enroll or continue participating in the program. Ethan J. Raker and Tyler M. Woods find applications from poor communities of color for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing aid after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were disproportionately denied or delayed due to burdensome program requirements and implementation. Stephanie Casey Pierce and Stephanie Moulton reveal that reforms to reduce administrative burden in foreclosure programs are associated with a significant increase in the rate of benefit receipt and decrease in the foreclosure rate. Frank Edwards and colleagues show child welfare system-involved parents must navigate considerable administrative burdens in order to retain custody of their children.
 
This volume of RSF sheds light on the origins, experiences, and consequences of administrative burdens.

A guide to supporting children’s wellbeing in cities, through their own perspectives.

Bringing together insights from critical childhood studies, urban studies, and child public health, Urban Childhoods examines the distinct experiences of children growing up in English cities with an emphasis on centering the voices of children and their families. The volume explores how to prioritize children’s wellbeing in urban planning, focusing primarily on children’s definitions of what they need to thrive: stable relationships, access to engaging activities, and having a voice in decisions that affect their lives. Alongside the more theoretical literature on urban childhood, authors regularly reference strategies from a major prevention program conducted in two English cities between 2019 and 2025. 

Violence and Inequality explores the deep-time archaeological relationship between violence and inequality, focusing on prehistoric archaeology’s contribution to the understanding of the human dynamics among coercive force, aggression, and the state. Detailed archaeological case studies within a strong theoretical framework built from historical studies consider the role of coercive violence in trajectories toward complexity, how levels and types of violence can be traced alongside emerging wealth disparities, and the social role of violence.

The assumption that violence and its threat buttressed elite social control is now challenged from various perspectives. This volume incorporates new models of the relationship between violence and social inequalities into the archaeology of social complexity, building more complicated and nuanced understandings of how different modes of social violence can militate different types of social constitution. Contributions from a variety of methodological angles—such as the bioarchaeology of health and trauma and radiogenic isotope studies and the aesthetics of violence—use a comparative perspective, drawing on data from the Southwestern US, Bronze Age China, early dynastic Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, Roman Britain, and the Andes.
 
Violence and Inequality offers an original and deep history of violence and inequality. Understanding the long-term intersection of violence and inequality and how they support or erode one another is of intrinsic importance, making this work significant to the study of archaeology, economic history, and collective action.