New Books

MONA BHAN, associate professor of anthropology, co-edited and is a contributing author to the Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (Routledge, 2022). Bhan co-edited the handbook with Haley Duschinski, associate professor of anthropology at Ohio University and Deepti Misri, associate professor of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The trio co-wrote the introduction, “Critical Kashmir Studies: Settler Occupations and the Persistence of Resistance.” Bhan also co-wrote the section, “Third World Imperialism and Kashmir’s Sovereignty Trap” with Duschinski and wrote the opening to the section “Militarism, Humanism, Occupation.”

MATT HUBER, professor of geography and the environment, has written a new book, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso Books, 2022) that focuses on the material struggle of the working-class over access to energy, food, housing and transportation. Huber argues that these necessities are core industries that need to be decarbonized. The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of believing science or individual carbon footprints, says Huber, but rather a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such, he says, it will take a class struggle to solve. The capitalist class is the most significant driver of climate change, asserts Huber. Planetary working-class solidarity and the unionization of the energy industry will be the greatest tools in the climate movement, he says.

LOUIS KRIESBERG, professor emeritus of social conflict studies, and Bruce W. Dayton ’99 Ph.D. (PSc), senior research associate in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, have published Constructive Conflicts: From Emergence to Transformation, Sixth Edition (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2022). The book explains how large-scale political and social conflicts can be waged more constructively, with more positive consequences for those involved. Drawing on research from political science, sociology, social-psychology, neuroscience, cultural studies and other disciplines, Kriesberg and Dayton follow the lifecycle of social and political conflicts as they emerge, escalate, de-escalate, become settled, and often emerge again in new forms. The sixth edition presents new examples and cases of conflict episodes that have avoided extreme coercion or violence.

SHANA KUSHNER GADARIAN, professor and chair of political science and Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking, has co-authored Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID (Princeton University Press, 2022). The book is the culmination of research by Gadarian and co-authors Sara Wallace Goodman, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, and Thomas B. Pepinsky, Walter F. LaFeber Professor of Government and director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It draws on new data on public opinion to show how pandemic politics have touched all aspects of Americans’ lives—from the economy to race and immigration.

SABA SIDDIKI, associate professor of public administration and international affairs and Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy, is author of a new book, Institutional Grammar: Foundations and Applications for Institutional Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The book provides a general background on institutional analysis and institutional grammar (IG), both of which are approaches applied to understand the design and impact of institutions, or rules, used in governance. In addition to providing an introduction to these approaches, the book offers a comprehensive overview of a revised version of the IG developed by the authors, called the IG 2.0. The IG 2.0 is particularly well-suited for studying policy design drawing on diverse theoretical and analytical approaches, Siddiki says.

SIMON WESCHLE, assistant professor of political science, has published a new book, Money in Politics: Self Enrichment, Campaign Spending, and Golden Parachutes (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He maintains in the book that money in politics should be analyzed in a singular framework, widened to include how politicians enrich themselves while in office, spend campaign money to finance their re-election and accept lucrative jobs after leaving office. Putting these different forms of capital in one framework helps explain how money in politics impacts democracy, he asserts. Weschle explores cases of this internationally, using causally identified quantitative studies, qualitative cross-national comparisons and original survey experiments to follow the money in politics.