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Copy refers to RSF, Volume 1, issues 1 & 2
 
Widening inequality has received much attention recently, but most of the focus has been on the top one percent or the middle class. The problems of those at the very bottom of society remain largely invisible. Along with the Great Recession, factors such as rising housing costs, welfare reform, mass incarceration, suppressed wages, and pervasive joblessness have contributed to deepening poverty in America. In this inaugural double issue of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, a distinguished roster of poverty scholars from multiple disciplines focuses on families experiencing “severe deprivation”: acute, compounded, and persistent economic hardship.
 
Over twenty million families in America live in deep poverty, on incomes below half the federal poverty threshold, yet Liana Fox and colleagues find that government taxes and transfers lift millions of families out of deep poverty each year. Searching even further below  the poverty line, Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert  find that the number of children in households experiencing chronic  extreme poverty—living on $2 or less per day—increased by over 240  percent between 1996 and 2012. Focusing on the elderly, Helen Levy shows that failing health exacerbates low-income seniors’ hardship by driving up their out-of-pocket medical spending. Other contributors examine the relationship between violence and severe deprivation.
 
Through longitudinal interviews with former prisoners in Boston, Bruce Western reveals the ubiquity of violence in the life course of disadvantaged young men. And Laurence Ralph draws on years of ethnography in Chicago to document how families and communities cope with the trauma of gun violence. Other studies in this
issue show that mass incarceration has changed the nature of poverty  in recent decades, with consequences ranging from increased levels of deprivation among children of incarcerated parents to housing insecurity among parolees, which increases their risk for recidivism. Finally, several papers devise novel methods and concepts relevant to the study of severe deprivation. Kristin Perkin and Robert Sampson develop an innovative measure of “compounded disadvantage” that groups individual and ecological hardship, while Megan Comfort and colleagues pioneer a new approach to ethnographic fieldwork that combines embedded social work with participant observation.
 
This issue provides in-depth analyses of the causes and human costs of extreme disadvantage in one of the richest countries in the world and offers a new paradigm for understanding the changing face of poverty in America. In an age of economic extremes, understanding how and why severe deprivation persists will be vital for policymakers and practitioners attempting to deliver relief to the nation’s most marginalized families.
 

 

Copy refers to RSF, Volume 1, issues 1 & 2
 
Widening inequality has received much attention recently, but most of the focus has been on the top one percent or the middle class. The problems of those at the very bottom of society remain largely invisible. Along with the Great Recession, factors such as rising housing costs, welfare reform, mass incarceration, suppressed wages, and pervasive joblessness have contributed to deepening poverty in America. In this inaugural double issue of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, a distinguished roster of poverty scholars from multiple disciplines focuses on families experiencing “severe deprivation”: acute, compounded, and persistent economic hardship.
 
Over twenty million families in America live in deep poverty, on incomes below half the federal poverty threshold, yet Liana Fox and colleagues find that government taxes and transfers lift millions of families out of deep poverty each year. Searching even further below  the poverty line, Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert  find that the number of children in households experiencing chronic  extreme poverty—living on $2 or less per day—increased by over 240  percent between 1996 and 2012. Focusing on the elderly, Helen Levy shows that failing health exacerbates low-income seniors’ hardship by driving up their out-of-pocket medical spending. Other contributors examine the relationship between violence and severe deprivation.
 
Through longitudinal interviews with former prisoners in Boston, Bruce Western reveals the ubiquity of violence in the life course of disadvantaged young men. And Laurence Ralph draws on years of ethnography in Chicago to document how families and communities cope with the trauma of gun violence. Other studies in this
issue show that mass incarceration has changed the nature of poverty  in recent decades, with consequences ranging from increased levels of deprivation among children of incarcerated parents to housing insecurity among parolees, which increases their risk for recidivism. Finally, several papers devise novel methods and concepts relevant to the study of severe deprivation. Kristin Perkin and Robert Sampson develop an innovative measure of “compounded disadvantage” that groups individual and ecological hardship, while Megan Comfort and colleagues pioneer a new approach to ethnographic fieldwork that combines embedded social work with participant observation.
 
This issue provides in-depth analyses of the causes and human costs of extreme disadvantage in one of the richest countries in the world and offers a new paradigm for understanding the changing face of poverty in America. In an age of economic extremes, understanding how and why severe deprivation persists will be vital for policymakers and practitioners attempting to deliver relief to the nation’s most marginalized families.



 

Race in America is a multidisciplinary analysis of race and injustice by some of the nation’s foremost scholar-activists who helped shape the course of the struggle for civil rights during the recent past.  These essays provide a historical retrospective, an assessment of where we are now, and an outline of possibilities for the future.
    The major controversial issues in race relations, in the past and in the present, such as affirmative action, educational segregation, racial practices of labor unions, legal strategies for protest movements, the persistence of racism in American institutions, and the sources of resistance to change are discussed at length by major authorities in their respective fields.
    Many of the most important events in recent American history come alive in these pages as the strategies and programs, the victories and defeats of the civil rights movement are rigorously examined.  A unique aspect of the book is that the human experience of active participants in this rich history is evoked through personal and often poignant accounts, such as those of Kenneth B. Clark, who in a memorable autobiographical essay describes a long life devoted to the pursuit of racial justice, and Patricia J. Williams, who relates the contemporary struggles of African American women to the historical context of slavery and its aftermath.
    As no other book can, this collection provides the basis for the critical insights and historical perspectives that are essential for an understanding of the central issue still confronting American society:  race and racism.

This is distinguished historian John Hope Franklin's eloquent and forceful meditation on the persistent disparity between the goal of racial equality in America and the facts of discrimination.

In a searing critique of Thomas Jefferson, Franklin shows that this spokesman for democracy did not include African Americans among those "created equal." Franklin chronicles the events of the nineteenth century that solidified inequality in America and shows how emancipation dealt only with slavery, not with inequality.

In the twentieth century, America finally confronted the fact that equality is indivisible: it must not be divided so that it is extended to some at the expense of others. Once this indivisibility is accepted, Franklin charges, America faces the monumental task of overcoming its long heritage of inequality.

Racial Equality in America is a powerful reminder that our history is more than a record of idealized democratic traditions and institutions. It is a dramatic message to all Americans, calling them to know their history and themselves.

Are Americans less prejudiced now than they were thirty years ago, or has racism simply gone "underground"? Is racism something we learn as children, or is it a result of certain social groups striving to maintain their privileged positions in society?

In Racialized Politics, political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists explore the current debate surrounding the sources of racism in America. Published here for the first time, the essays represent three major approaches to the topic. The social psychological approach maintains that prejudice socialized early in life feeds racial stereotypes, while the social structural viewpoint argues that behavior is shaped by whites' fear of losing their privileged status. The third perspective looks to non-racially inspired ideology, including attitudes about the size and role of government, as the reason for opposition to policies such as affirmative action. Timely and important, this collection provides a state-of-the-field assessment of the current issues and findings on the role of racism in mass politics and public opinion.

Contributors are Lawrence Bobo, Gretchen C. Crosby, Michael C. Dawson, Christopher Federico, P. J. Henry, John J. Hetts, Jennifer L. Hochschild, William G. Howell, Michael Hughes, Donald R. Kinder, Rick Kosterman, Tali Mendelberg, Thomas F. Pettigrew, Howard Schuman, David O. Sears, James Sidanius, Pam Singh, Paul M. Sniderman, Marylee C. Taylor, and Steven A. Tuch.

A critical assessment of the impact of the administration of President Ronald Reagan on public discourse in the United States

The authors show that more than any president since John F. Kennedy, Reagan’s influence flowed from his rhetorical practices. And he is remembered as having reversed certain trends and cast the U.S. on a new course. The contributors to this insightful collection of essays show that Reagan’s rhetorical tactics were matters of primary concern to his administration’s chief political strategists.

The history of the Vine and Olive Colony in Demopolis, Alabama, has long been clouded by romantic myths. The notion that it was a doomed attempt by Napoleonic exiles in America to plant a wine- and olive-growing community in Alabama based on the ideals of the French Revolution, has long been bolstered by the images that have been proliferated in the popular imagination of French ladies (in Josephine-style gowns) and gentlemen (in officer’s full dress uniforms) lounging in the breeze on the bluffs overlooking the Tombigbee River while sturdy French peasants plowed the rich soil of the Black Belt. Indeed, these picturesque images come close to matching the dreams that many of the exiles themselves entertained upon arrival.

 

But Eric Saugera’s recent scholarship does much to complicate the story. Based on a rich cache of letters by settlement founders and promoters discovered in French regional archives, Reborn in America humanizes the refugees, who turn out to have been as interested in profiteering as they were in social engineering and who dallied with schemes to restore the Bonapartes and return gloriously to their homeland.

 

The details presented in this story add a great deal to what we know of antebellum Alabama and international intrigues in the decades after Napoleon’s defeat, and shed light as well on the other, less glamorous refugees: planters fleeing from the revolution in Haiti, whose interest was much more purely agricultural and whose lasting influence on the region was far more durable.

 Red, White, and Blues, a new anthology from the award-winning editors of Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America and Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality, offers a chorus of contemporary American poets on the idea of liberty, democracy, patriotism, and the American Dream;a twenty-first-century "Song of Myself” for the entire country.

The poems in Red, White, and Blues reflect our collective memory—from icons of pop culture to national disasters and times of unrest. Yet they are not simply reflections of the headline news or political diatribes of the day; instead, they provide roadmaps of American history—roadmaps of where we’ve been, who we are, and where we’re going as a nation.

Poets as diverse as Martín Espada and Paisley Rekdal, J. P. Dancing Bear and Vivian Shipley seek to answer questions that resonate within the heart of our national identity—what does it mean to be an American? What is the American Dream? How does one define patriotism? Regardless of ethnicity, gender, or class, each poet’s answer to such questions proves that our experiences unite us more than they divide us.

Red, White, and Blues is an ambitious collection of the finest contemporary poetry on the subject of America and the indefatigable spirit of its citizens. Its poems don’t pull punches, nor do they celebrate without cause. They show spirit and excitement, outrage and joy, solemnity and ambiguity—all reflections of our wonderfully diverse nation.

Work hard in school, graduate from a top college, establish a high-paying professional career, enjoy the long-lasting reward of happiness. This is the American Dream—and yet basic questions at the heart of this competitive journey remain unanswered. Does competitive success, even rarified entry into the Ivy League and the top one percent of earners in America, deliver on its promise? Does realizing the American Dream deliver a good life? In Redefining Success in America, psychologist and human development scholar Michael Kaufman develops a fundamentally new understanding of how elite undergraduate educations and careers play out in lives, and of what shapes happiness among the prizewinners in America. In so doing, he exposes the myth at the heart of the American Dream.

Returning to the legendary Harvard Student Study of undergraduates from the 1960s and interviewing participants almost fifty years later, Kaufman shows that formative experiences in family, school, and community largely shape a future adult’s worldview and well-being by late adolescence, and that fundamental change in adulthood, when it occurs, is shaped by adult family experiences, not by ever-greater competitive success. Published research on general samples shows that these patterns, and the book’s findings generally, are broadly applicable to demographically varied populations in the United States.

Leveraging biography-length clinical interviews and quantitative evidence unmatched even by earlier landmark studies of human development, Redefining Success in America redefines the conversation about the nature and origins of happiness, and about how adults develop. This longitudinal study pioneers a new paradigm in happiness research, developmental science, and personality psychology that will appeal to scholars and students in the social sciences, psychotherapy professionals, and serious readers navigating the competitive journey.

The concept of "American" literature is not the exclusive province of any one nation. Thanks to the historical circumstances that governed the European conquest and settlement of the Americas, we can and should approach the writings of English and French Canada, the United States, Spanish America, and Brazil as a cohesive group of American literature, worthy of study without constant reference to European texts. Now, Rediscovering the New World makes a timely addition to this expanding field on Inter-American scholarship that should help lead tothe formation of a new canon.

This adventurous and ambitious work begins with an examination of Pre-Columbian literature (and shows that his powerful tradition remains alive and well in the twentieth century), then confronts the narratives of discovery and conquest, the New World epic, identity as the Ur-theme of American literature, miscegenation as another integral theme, and regionalism as a shaping force. Other striking these and juxtapositions include a comparison of Henry James and Machado de Assis as the first two great New World novelists, modernism as both a distinct literary movement and an amorphous body of aesthetic principles, and the conflict between "civilization" and "barbarism."

More in the exploratory spirit of the French Canadian voyageur than in the spirit of the conquistador, Rediscovering the New World is the first scholarly work in English to integrate an international set of American literary cultures. It should inspire other explorers as the field of Inter-American literary relations continues to evolve.

Religious institutions are often engaged in influencing the beliefs and values that individuals hold. But religious groups can also challenge how people think about democracy, including the extension of equal rights and liberties regardless of viewpoint, or what is commonly called political tolerance.

The essays in Religion and Political Tolerance in America seek to understand how these elements interrelate. The editor and contributors to this important volume present new and innovative research that wrestles with the fundamental question of the place of religion in democratic society. They address topics ranging from religious contributions to social identity to the political tolerance that religious elites (clergy) hold and advocate to others, and how religion shapes responses to intolerance.

The conclusion, by Ted Jelen, emphasizes that religion’s take on political tolerance is nuanced and that they are not incompatible; religion can sometimes enhance the tolerance of ordinary citizens.

Do Americans, in all their cultural diversity, share any fundamental consensus? Does such a consensus, or anything else, make America exceptional in the modern world?

Since 1960 most historians have answered no--except perhaps for the current nostalgia for the Eisenhower years (the "Ozzie and Harriet" years of popular recollection) of middle-class American prosperity.

In Republic of the Dispossessed social historian Rowland Berthoff maintains not only that there was--and still is--a middle-class consensus and that America is exceptional in it but that it goes back some five hundred years. The consensus stems from all those European peasants and artisans who, from 1600 to 1950, fled dispossession in the Old World. They brought with them basic social values that acted as a template for middle-class American values. To consider modern American society as exceptional--that is, as distinctive and different from any contemporary European pattern of thought--is therefore, in Berthoff's theory, not at all the "illogical absurdity" that current conventional wisdom makes it.

The Berthoff thesis, as he develops it in these ten essays from throughout the course of his career, is well worth a second look by those within and beyond the field of social history. It suggests that the ideal--both peasant and classical republican-- of maintaining a balance between personal liberty and communal equality has long inspired American reaction to the drastic modern changes of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration.

Observing that most Americans still see themselves as independent, basically equal, middle-class citizens, Berthoff explains the current apprehension among Americans that at the end of the twentieth century they are once again being dispossessed-- thus, the current emphasis on "traditional values." Because that problem is the same that worried their European ancestors as much as five hundred years ago, Berthoff argues, the time has come to face the question head-on.

In Restless Nation, James M. Jasper isolates a narrative that lies very close to the core of the American character. From colonial times to the present day, Americans have always had a deep-rooted belief in the "fresh start"—a belief that still has Americans moving from place to place faster than the citizens of any other nation.

From the rise of the Pan-Maya Movement in Guatemala and the Zapatista uprising in Mexico to the Water and Gas Wars in Bolivia and the Idle No More movement in Canada, the turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed a notable surge in Indigenous political action as well as an outpouring of texts produced by Native authors and poets. Throughout the Americas—Abiayala, or the “Land of Plenitude and Maturity” in the Guna language of Panama—Indigenous people are raising their voices and reclaiming the right to represent themselves in politics as well as in creative writing.

Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala explores the intersections between Indigenous literature and social movements over the past thirty years through the lens of insurgent poetics. Author Hannah Burdette is interested in how Indigenous literature and social movements are intertwined and why these phenomena arise almost simultaneously in disparate contexts across the Americas.

Literature constitutes a key weapon in political struggles as it provides a means to render subjugated knowledge visible and to envision alternatives to modernity and coloniality. The surge in Indigenous literature and social movements is arguably one of the most significant occurrences of the twenty-first century, and yet it remains understudied. Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala bridges that gap by using the concept of Abiayala as a powerful starting point for rethinking inter-American studies through the lens of Indigenous sovereignty.

John Muthyala's Reworlding America moves beyond the U.S.-centered approach of traditional American literary criticism. In this groundbreaking book, Muthyala argues for a transgeographical perspective from which to study the literary and cultural histories of the Americas.

By emphasizing transnational migration, border crossing, and colonial modernity, Reworlding America exposes how national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural boundaries have been continually created and transgressed—with profound consequences for the peoples of the Americas.

Drawing from cultural studies, anthropology, literature, and history, Muthyala examines the literatures of the Americas in terms of their intimate relationship to questions of cultural survival, identity formation, and social power. He goes beyond nationalist, ethnocentric, and religious frameworks used to conceptualize American literary history and examines the connection between modernity and colonialism.

Reworlding America's significance extends into the realm of education, history, ethnography, and literary and cultural studies and contributes to the larger project of refashioning the role of English and American studies in a transborder, postnational global culture.

Rio del Norte chronicles the upper Rio Grande region and its divers peoples across twelve thousand years of continuous history. Based on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological research, Rio del Norte is a tour de force, highlighting the unbroken history of the upper Rio Grande.

Beginning with the mammoth hunters of eleven millennia ago, Carroll Riley adeptly eaves the threads of twelve thousand years of continuous history through the introduction of agriculture, the rise of the Basketmaker-Pueblo (Anasazi) people, and the extraordinary "quickening" that occurred along the Rio Grande and its tributaries as the Anasazi era ended.

At that time large towns appeared, some holding several thousand people who practiced irrigation-based agriculture, maintained complex social and political organizations, and had a rich artistry. This "golden age" was continuing when Spaniards contacted, then colonized and missionized the region. In 1680 the Pueblos joined in a powerful record and ousted the invaders. Although the Spanish returned, the Pueblos have maintained important parts of their cultural heritage to the present.