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When Mary Livermore died in 1905 at age 84, a Boston newspaper praised her as “America's foremost woman.” A leading figure in the struggle for woman's rights as well as in the temperance movement, she was as widely recognized during her lifetime as Susan B. Anthony, and for a time the most popular and highly paid female orator in the country. Yet aside from Civil War historians familiar with her service as a wartime nurse, few today remember even her name.

In this book, Wendy Hamand Venet reconstructs Mary Livermore's remarkable story and explores how and why she became so renowned in her day. Born and raised in Boston, Livermore left home at age eighteen to become the private schoolteacher to a wealthy tobacco planter's children in Virginia, an experience that afforded her an intimate look at slave-based society in the 1840s. Returning to New England, she married and lived a conventional life as the wife of a minister and mother of three daughters. With the coming of the Civil War, however, Livermore's life changed dramatically when she became active with the United States Sanitary Commission, an organization that would propel her into the public limelight and cause her to challenge society's traditional view of the role of women. 

After the war Livermore became deeply involved in the woman's rights movement, serving as editor of the newspaper Woman's Journal and later as president of three major suffrage organizations—the American, New England, and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Associations. She was also founder and president of the Massachusetts Women's Christian Temperance Union, and became active in the Society of Christian Socialists in Boston. Her frequent speaking appearances on behalf of these causes eventually earned her the nickname “Queen of the Platform.” Although she may not have been as radical as some other early feminists, Livermore's ideas resonated with thousands of middle-class women whose experiences paralleled her own. For that reason alone, Venet shows, her life and legacy are worthy of our attention.

In this lively and original book, the distinguished Polish historian Jerzy Jedlicki tells the story of a century-long Polish dispute over the merits and demerits of the Western model of liberal progress and industrial civilization. 

As in several countries of Europe, also in Poland, intellectuals--conservatives, liberals, and (later) socialists--quarrelled about whether such a model would suit and benefit their nation, or whether it would spell the ruin of its distinctive cultural features.

This heated debate revolved around several pairs of opposing ideas: native cultures v. cosmopolitan civilization; natural v. artificial ways of economic development; Christian morals v. capitalist laissez-faire; traditional customs v. mobile society; romanticism v. scientism, and so on. It is these various aspects of the main issue which the author analyzes and links together here. He describes how difficult and painful the process of modernization was in a nation deprived of its political independence and cultural autonomy.

Liz Fekete is a leading authority on issues of racism, Islamophobia and national security legislation. A Suitable Enemy draws on sixteen years of research to present a comprehensive overview of EU immigration, asylum, race and security policies.

Fekete argues that at the same time as the EU introduces selective migration policies, it closes its borders against asylum seekers who were the first victims of the growth of the security state which now embraces Muslims. She explores the way in which anti-terrorist legislation has been used to evict undesirable migrants, how deportation policies commodify and de-humanise the most vulnerable and how these go hand in hand with evolving forms of racism, particularly Islamophobia.

At the heart of the book is an examination of xeno-racism -- a non-colour coded form of institutionalised racism -- where migrants who do not assimilate, or who are believed to be incapable of assimilation, are excluded.

Examining anticorruption battles and transparency laws to ask: what makes for good governance, and can it limit liberal democratic politics as much as encourage it?
 

Good governance is meant to empower citizens, increase democratic participation, and make states transparent and accountable, yet this liberal democratic imperative can also promote populist authoritarian rule. Bringing together discourses on ethical goodness with the technicalities of governance as expressed in laws and policies, Aradhana Sharma develops the concept of “technomoral politics” to navigate this fraught topic. With a focus on the work of activists, citizens, and state officials, she offers an ethnographic account of the contradictions and dangers of good-governance politics in twenty-first-century India.

A Technomoral Politics follows the evolution of a group of activists in New Delhi led by Arvind Kejriwal from 2008 to 2014 as they morphed from a protransparency NGO to a mass movement against state corruption to a populist party that promised to change the political system through laws and policies. Sharma explores the technomoral framing of state opacity and corruption as well as the limits of the law in resolving these issues, probing such themes as the contradictory relationship between transparency and bureaucracy and the classed and gendered nature of democratic state institutions.

By examining scalar dimensions of good-governance politics, from the hyperlocal work of activists to global trends, A Technomoral Politics illuminates the paradoxes, limits, and risks of a system that is meant to spread liberal democratic principles but that also ends up promoting antidemocratic, populist-authoritarian forms of rule.

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A vital reckoning with how we understand the basic categories of cultural expression in the digital era
 

Digital and social media have transformed how much and how fast we communicate, but they have also altered the palette of expressive strategies: the cultural forms that shape how citizens, activists, and artists speak and interact. Most familiar among these strategies are storytelling and representation. In A Theory of Assembly, Kyle Parry argues that one of the most powerful and pervasive cultural forms in the digital era is assembly.

Whether as subtle photographic sequences, satirical Venn diagrams, or networked archives, projects based in assembly do not so much narrate or represent the world as rearrange it. This work of rearranging can take place at any scale, from a simple pairing of images, undertaken by one person, to the entire history of internet memes, undertaken by millions. With examples ranging from GIFs and paintings to museum exhibitions and social movement hashtags, Parry shows how, in the internet age, assembly has come to equal narrative and representation in its reach and influence, particularly as a response to ecological and social violence. He also emphasizes the ambivalence of assembly—the way it can be both emancipatory and antidemocratic.

As the world becomes ever hotter, more connected, and more algorithmic, the need to map—and remake—assembly’s powers and perils becomes all the more pressing. Interdisciplinary, engaging, and experimental, A Theory of Assembly serves as a playbook of strategies and critical frameworks for artists, activists, and content creators committed to social and environmental justice, ultimately arguing for a collective reenvisioning of which cultural forms matter.

Cover alt text: Letters from the title appear in a jumble, each colored in a blue-orange gradient. Readable title and author sits below the jumble.

In response to the 2020–21 youth-led protests throughout Thailand, which were largely fueled by discourse on digital platforms, the government launched a sweeping program of technological suppression. Smear campaigns were orchestrated to discredit young activists, laws were weaponized to criminalize their activities, and surveillance technologies were deployed to keep tabs on them.

In A Thousand Cuts, Janjira Sombatpoonsiri traces the historical development of repression in Thailand, detailing how “traditional” methods of repression have been merged with digital tools to maintain the status quo since 2005, when mass mobilization started to move online. By examining the adverse effects of digital repression on individual activists—their mental health, private lives, and socioeconomic resources—Sombatpoonsiri also offers one of the first systematic analyses of the “reception” side of repression, shedding light on its detrimental consequences for activists and mass movements as a whole.

A nuanced reassessment of US democratic responsiveness and public opinion on economic policy that explores the real reasons government does not do more to mitigate inequality.

Many believe that the United States’ growing economic inequality is the result of a political system that has been captured by wealthy elites. But is economic capture actually the problem? In A Tolerance for Inequality, Andrew J. Taylor examines this question from multiple angles, drawing on public opinion data and analyses of representation in Congress. Taylor finds that economic policy outcomes are more reflective of public opinion than the common wisdom suggests.

Broadly, less-affluent Americans’ policy preferences are not meaningfully different from the preferences of other Americans, and Washington is responsive to these preferences. Although politicians are more affluent, on average, than most Americans, this does not prevent them from representing the economic views of their poorer constituents. Today’s Democratic Party is more interested in regulation and supplying public goods than redistributing wealth downwards, and political reforms designed to provide more equal outcomes are largely misguided. In short, Americans get the kind of economy they at least say they want.

Located in the southern San Luis Valley of Colorado, the remote and relatively unknown town of Antonito is home to an overwhelmingly Hispanic population struggling not only to exist in an economically depressed and politically marginalized area, but also to preserve their culture and their lifeways. Between 1996 and 2006, anthropologist Carole Counihan collected food-centered life histories from nineteen Mexicanas—Hispanic American women—who had long-standing roots in the Upper Rio Grande region. The interviews in this groundbreaking study focused on southern Colorado Hispanic foodways—beliefs and behaviors surrounding food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption.

In this book, Counihan features extensive excerpts from these interviews to give voice to the women of Antonito and highlight their perspectives. Three lines of inquiry are framed: feminist ethnography, Latino cultural citizenship, and Chicano environmentalism. Counihan documents how Antonito's Mexicanas establish a sense of place and belonging through their knowledge of land and water and use this knowledge to sustain their families and communities. Women play an important role by gardening, canning, and drying vegetables; earning money to buy food; cooking; and feeding family, friends, and neighbors on ordinary and festive occasions. They use food to solder or break relationships and to express contrasting feelings of harmony and generosity, or enmity and envy. The interviews in this book reveal that these Mexicanas are resourceful providers whose food work contributes to cultural survival.

In Egypt, singing and dancing are considered essential on happy occasions. Professional entertainers often perform at weddings and other celebrations, and a host family's prestige rises with the number, expense, and fame of the entertainers they hire. Paradoxically, however, the entertainers themselves are often viewed as disreputable people and are accorded little prestige in Egyptian society.

This paradox forms the starting point of Karin van Nieuwkerk's look at the Egyptian entertainment trade. She explores the lives of female performers and the reasons why work they regard as "a trade like any other" is considered disreputable in Egyptian society. In particular, she demonstrates that while male entertainers are often viewed as simply "making a living," female performers are almost always considered bad, seductive women engaged in dishonorable conduct. She traces this perception to the social definition of the female body as always and only sexual and enticing—a perception that stigmatizes women entertainers even as it simultaneously offers them a means of livelihood.

Drawn from extensive fieldwork and enriched with the life stories of entertainers and nightclub performers, this is the first ethnography of female singers and dancers in present-day Egypt. It will be of interest to a wide audience in anthropology, women's studies, and Middle Eastern culture, as well as anyone who enjoys belly dancing.

After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney’s death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression.

During a hospital stay, years into their relationship, Matthiessen confessed to Cheney that “never once has the freshness of your life lost any trace of its magic for me. Every day is a new discovery of your wealth.” Situating the couple’s private correspondence alongside other sources, Scott Bane tells the remarkable story of their relationship in the context of shifting social dynamics in the United States. From the vantage point of the present day, with marriage equality enacted into law, Bane provides a window into the realities faced by same-sex couples in the early twentieth century, as they maintained relationships in the face of overt discrimination and the absence of legal protections.

How users experience and influence technological change—when so much of that change feels out of our control

Every day, we casually employ one of the most complex tools ever created, using it to read the news, plan our day, and connect with friends. In A User’s Guide to the Age of Tech, Grant Wythoff investigates the process by which now-ubiquitous technologies like our phones become integrated into our lives, showing how the “gadget” stage—before devices are widely adopted—opens the door for users to co-create these technologies and adapt them toward unexpected ends. 

In this elegant, approachable work, Wythoff offers a view of how users make new technology their own, subverting dominant power structures and imagining uses never intended by their creators. Rooted in a detailed look into the history of technique (focusing on how we do things with tools rather than the tools themselves), A User’s Guide to the Age of Tech proceeds to complicate, and influence, discussion of subjects like the digital divide and AI.

Drawing on a range of sources, including novels, patents, and newspapers, Wythoff explores the vernacular philosophies that have emerged from users and their diverse, everyday practices, bringing down to earth the conversation about digital titans, away from the abstracted domains of server farms and algorithms. Lodging a passionate argument that we know ourselves better than the data brokers who appear to wield influence over our psyches, Wythoff invites readers (and tech users) to imagine their own digital technique, acknowledge their vast expertise, and see its immense value.

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