New Books in Economic and Business History

In Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), Dr. Susanne A. Wengle shows how agrotechnology served—and undermined—Soviet and Russian political projects. “The book emphasises a tight connection between political change, technological change in food systems, and the transformation of everyday lives - a connection that we can grasp and understand through the lens of technopolitics.”Like all facets of daily life, the food that Russian farms produced and citizens ate—or, in some years, didn’t eat—underwent radical shifts in the century between the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Putin’s presidency. The modernization of agriculture during this time is usually understood in terms of advances in farming methods. Dr. Susanne A. Wengle’s important interdisciplinary history of Russia’s agriculture and food systems, however, documents a far more complex story of the interactions between political policies, daily cultural practices, and technological improvements.“A central augment of this book is that politics and technologies together drive a change in food systems and that we should think of food systems as technopolitical regimes. Technopolitics refers to the support of and reliance on agricultural technologies - from tractors to CRISPR techniques - in policy regimes that seek to realise particular political goals and utopias. A technopolitical regime is forged by privileged agents of change and the technologies they employ to grow crops and raise animals.”Examining governance, production, consumption, nature, and the ensuing vulnerabilities of the agrifood system, Dr. Wengle reveals the intended and unintended consequences of Russian agricultural policies since 1917. Ultimately, Black Earth, White Bread calls attention to Russian technopolitics and how macro systems of government impact life on a daily, quotidian level. “Food systems can be a lens to track interactions between domains of life that are too often seen as discrete and disconnected, such as rural production and urban consumption. They can also tell us about the interactions between human realms and the nonhuman realms of crops, livestock, climate and soil conditions.”This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To say that World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is an impressive achievement is a huge understatement. Based on years of research in over two dozen archives on three continents, this book won the Lindart-Williamson prize from the Economic History Association. World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation explores how Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Dr. Huff describes the occupation’s devastating economic impact on the region. Japan imposed country and later regional autarky on Southeast Asia, dictated that the region finance its own occupation, and sent almost no consumer goods. GDP fell by half everywhere in Southeast Asia except Thailand. Famine and forced labor accounted for most of the 4.4 million Southeast Asian civilian deaths under Japanese occupation. World War II and Southeast Asia presents a new understanding of Southeast Asian history and development before, during and after the Pacific War.Gregg is Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century and co-editor of and contributor to World War II Singapore: The Chōsabu Reports on Syonan-to. Gregg has large number of publications in the Journal of Economic History, Economic History Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Economic Papers, Cambridge Journal of Economics, World Development, Modern Asian Studies and Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diana Garvin’s Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women's Food Work (U Toronto Press, 2022) is an expansive and multifaceted look at women’s food work in Fascist Italy. From less-explored archives, Garvin has assembled a diverse set of sources―diaries, work songs, cookbooks, kitchen plans and utensils, factory records, and more―to tell the story of how women negotiated the daily tasks of producing and preparing food under a Fascist regime, its autarkic policies, and, as the war progressed, increasingly dire food rationing and shortages. Feeding Fascism is particularly attentive to the intersections of class, gender, and the politics and realities of women’s food work, as well as to the material culture of life under Fascism and what it says about the dialectic between practicality and patriotism, resistance and consent.Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (FSG Originals, 2020), Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising--the beating heart of the internet--is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008.From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers' attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself--much like subprime mortgages--is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet--and its free services--will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it.Tim Hwang is a writer, researcher, and currently the general counsel for Substack. He is the former director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative and previously served as the global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we talk to Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon about Wasteland with Words (Reaktion, 2010) and about microhistory as a method. Iceland is an enigmatic island country marked by contradiction: it’s a part of Europe, yet separated from it by the Atlantic Ocean; it’s seemingly inhospitable, yet home to more than 300,000. Wasteland with Words explores these paradoxes to uncover the mystery of Iceland. In Wasteland with Words Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon presents a wide-ranging and detailed analysis of the island’s history that examines the evolution and transformation of Icelandic culture while investigating the literary and historical factors that created the rich cultural heritage enjoyed by Icelanders today. Magnússon explains how a nineteenth-century economy based on the industries of fishing and agriculture—one of the poorest in Europe—grew to become a disproportionately large economic power in the late twentieth century, while retaining its strong sense of cultural identity. Bringing the story up to the present, he assesses the recent economic and political collapse of the country and how Iceland has coped. Throughout Magnússon seeks to chart the vast changes in this country’s history through the impact and effect on the Icelandic people themselves. Up-to-date and fascinating, Wasteland with Words is a comprehensive study of the island’s cultural and historical development, from tiny fishing settlements to a global economic power.Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2015, Professor Angus Deaton of Princeton University and his wife Professor Anne Case published a paper highlighting the rising mortality rate among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans. They described "deaths of despair" which were often related to drug and alcohol poisoning and suicide. They followed up with a widely read book: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton UP, 2020). In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones discusses the issue of life expectancy and asks what trends relating to life expectancy are likely to occur in the future.Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late nineteenth-century labor movement and to policymakers’ efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State (Princeton UP, 2021), Elisabeth Anderson shows that the regulatory welfare state began a half-century earlier, in the 1830s, with the passage of the first child labor laws. Agents of Reform tells the story of how middle-class and elite reformers in Europe and the United States defined child labor as a threat to social order, and took the lead in bringing regulatory welfare into being. They built alliances to maneuver around powerful political blocks and instituted pathbreaking new employment protections. Later in the century, now with the help of organized labor, they created factory inspectorates to strengthen and routinize the state’s capacity to intervene in industrial working conditions. Agents of Reform compares seven in-depth case studies of key policy episodes in Germany, France, Belgium, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Foregrounding the agency of individual reformers, it challenges existing explanations of welfare state development and advances a new pragmatist field theory of institutional change. In doing so, it moves beyond standard narratives of interests and institutions toward an integrated understanding of how these interact with political actors’ ideas and coalition-building strategies.Agents of Reform is a pathbreaking contribution to our understanding of the emergence of the welfare state and the role of social movements in political reform.Javier Mejia is an economist teaching at Stanford University, whose work focuses on the intersection between social networks and economic history. His interests extend to topics on entrepreneurship and political economy with a geographical specialty in Latin America and the Middle East. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Los Andes University. He has been a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at New York University--Abu Dhabi and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Bordeaux. He is a regular contributor to different news outlets. Currently, he is Forbes Magazine op-ed columnist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since its establishment, Social Security has become the financial linchpin of American retirement. Yet demographic trends—longer lifespans and declining birthrates—mean that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Without reforms, 83 million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of 20 percent in 2034. How did we get here and what is the solution? In Fixing Social Security: The Politics of Reform in a Polarized Age (Princeton University Press, 2022), R. Douglas Arnold explores the historical role that Social Security has played in American politics, why Congress has done nothing to fix its insolvency problem for three decades, and what legislators can do to save it. What options do legislators have as the program nears the precipice? They can raise taxes, as they did in 1977, cut benefits, as they did in 1983, or reinvent the program, as they attempted in 2005. Unfortunately, every option would impose costs, and legislators are reluctant to act, fearing electoral retribution. Arnold investigates why politicians designed the system as they did and how between 1935 and 1983 they allocated—and reallocated—costs and benefits among workers, employers, and beneficiaries. He also examines public support for the program, and why Democratic and Republican representatives, once political allies in expanding Social Security, have become so deeply polarized about fixing it. As Social Security edges closer to crisis, Fixing Social Security offers a comprehensive analysis of the political fault lines and a fresh look at what can be done—before it is too late.Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Engineering Expansion: The U.S. Army and Economic Development, 1787-1860 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021) threads together political science, history, economics, American political development, and administrative developments to understand the unique role that the United States’ Army played in laying the groundwork for so much of the growth and evolution both before and after the Civil War in the U.S. Political Scientist William Adler examines the understanding and place of the state in early America, digging at what really happened in the decades after the revolutionary war and the establishment of the new constitutional system. Adler highlights the interesting ways in which the U.S. Army was involved in governing this expanding territory, from providing engineering expertise, which was a scarcity at this time in the United States, to contributing to the development of economic dynamics in the young republic. As Adler notes, the U.S. Army was everywhere, but it was particularly present on the periphery of the country, in the expanding sectors of the country where the structures of the governmental system were far less present. And the research indicates that the Army had enormous latitude in what it was doing in these outposts. This antebellum period is often considered an era when the administrative state was rather weak, but Adler’s work argues that this is somewhat misleading. The Army spent this time, as the United States was involved in extensive territorial expansion, building a system of forts across the country, and in so doing, the Army became the mechanism that enforced the rule of law across the country. In this regard, while the military was established as a defensive and protective arm of the national government, it also took on the role as a coercive entity, having been allocated power from the federal seat of government to compel obedience to the law. Thus, the U.S. Army became central to national governance during this time.Adler’s research also explores the power of those at the top of the command structure in the U.S. Army since they were making decisions based on delegated powers from the national government. The men who ran the bureaus in the War Department held office for quite lengthy tenures, providing them with institutional memory and capacities had by few others in government. These men also worked with engineers and topographers as they surveyed the land that was being incorporated into the new republic. As a result, they contributed to the growth and development of the railroads and how certain parts of the country were favored for this kind of economic investment while other parts were not. The U.S. Army trained engineers, and in so doing, provided both the public and the private sector with expertise that did not otherwise exist. This also contributed to the foundation for the industrial revolution that would soon take shape in the United States. Engineering Expansion: The U.S. Army and Economic Development 1787-1860 is a fascinating analysis of how the American state operated after the establishment of the new constitutional system, and the powerful and little-known hand that the U.S. Army had in building and establishing the new country.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although there is often opposition to individual wars, most people continue to believe that the arms industry is necessary in some form: to safeguard our security, provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Not only conservatives, but many progressives and liberals, support it for these reasons. Indefensible puts forward a devastating challenge to this conventional wisdom, which has normalized the existence of the most savage weapons of mass destruction ever known.Indefensible: Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Arms Trade (Zed Books, 2017) is the essential handbook for those who want to debunk the arguments of the industry and its supporters: deploying case studies, statistics and irrefutable evidence to demonstrate they are fundamentally flawed, both factually and logically. Far from protecting us, the book shows how the arms trade undermines our security by fanning the flames of war, terrorism and global instability. In countering these myths, the book points to ways in which we can combat the arms trade's malignant influence, reclaim our democracies and reshape our economies.The book can be read here for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices