New Books in Economic and Business History

Journalist Katherine Blunt, who writes about renewable energy and utilities for the Wall Street Journal, talks about her new book, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book tells the fascinating story of how declining performance at an electrical utility eventually led to wildfires and staggering loss of human life. Blunt and Vinsel also talk about what this story means for the future of electricity utilities in the face of global climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone in supplying coin and credit to needy borrowers. Across much of Western Europe, foreign Christians likewise engaged in professional moneylending, and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion from the communities in which they settled. No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 2023) examines how mass expulsion became a pervasive feature of European law and politics—with tragic consequences that have reverberated down to the present.Drawing on unpublished archival evidence ranging from fiscal ledgers and legal opinions to sermons and student notebooks, Dr. Rowan Dorin traces how an association between usury and expulsion entrenched itself in Latin Christendom from the twelfth century onward. Showing how ideas and practices of expulsion were imitated and repurposed in different contexts, he offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society.Uncovering the protean and contagious nature of expulsion, No Return is a panoramic work of history that offers new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the circulation of norms and ideas in the age before print, and the intersection of law, religion, and economic life in premodern Europe.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

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.In this episode, our co-hosts Aswin Punathambekar and Jing Wang discusses the book Platforms and Cultural Production (2021) by Thomas Poell, David B. Nieborg, and Brooke Erin Duffy.You’ll hear about: How this collaborative project came about, given each of the authors has distinct interests and disciplinary orientations; Given the two keywords of “platforms” and “cultural production,” how did the authors make sense of these keywords in relation to broader processes of digital infrastructures and imaginaries; How three key sections – social media, games, and journalism – were identified by the authors to explain the idea of “platformization”; How the platforms work as multi-sided markets and the approaches to account for the dynamism and lifecycles at work in platform economies; A discussion of Twitter as a useful case of platformization to grasp the challenges of platform governance; Why the authors chose to specifically focus on the role and agency of cultural producers; How to study cultural practices in various platforms across a wide variety of sociopolitical contexts in both Global North and South; The structural inequalities of platform economies, the precarity of the platform-dependent labor market, and the efforts of cultural producers to face insecurity; The cultural meanings of “creativity” and “authenticity” and the tension between the profit-driven platform logic and the individual search for belonging in social media such as TikTok; The relevance of cultural production and platforms to understanding the present and future of democratic governance and civic life in the post-truth era; The next collaborative project, such as a second volume, conferences, and research networks. About the bookPoell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. You can find the book from Polity Press HERE.Authors:Thomas Poell is Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam, program director MA Media Studies, and director of the Research Priority Area on Global Digital Cultures.David B. Nieborg is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information.Brooke Erin Duffy is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, where she is also a member of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty.Co-Hosts: Aswin Punathambekar is Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.Editor & Producer: Jing Wang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the Biden Administration's student loan relief coming down the pike, Annika sits down with Dr. Beth Akers, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in higher education finance. Beth discusses the issue of student debt, and what the Biden relief plan will and will not achieve.You can find more information about Dr. Akers and her recent writing and appearances here.Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historian Richard John, professor of journalism at Columbia University, talks about his book, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Network Nation is a history of the telegraph and telephone in the United States, and one of its key findings is that, from the very beginning of these technologies, thinking about the state, regulation, and ideas of political economy was at the heart of business strategy. John and Vinsel also talk about the nature of historical research and why it is so important to go back to primary sources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over six million prime-age men are neither working nor looking for work; America's low unemployment rate hides the fact that many men have dropped out of the workforce altogether. Our workforce participation rate is on par with that seen during the Great Depression.Why does this problem affect men so acutely? Why is it so specific to America? What are these missing men doing with their time? How do we differentiate between leisure and idleness? Demographer and economist Nicholas Eberstadt, author of Men Without Work (Templeton Press, 2022), discusses these trends and what they mean for America's future.Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the 1940s to 1960s, Iran developed into the world's first “petro-state,” where oil represented the bulk of state revenue and supported an industrializing economy, expanding middle class, and powerful administrative and military apparatus. In Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2022), Gregory Brew outlines how the Pahlavi petro-state emerged from a confluence of forces – some global, some local. He shows how the shah's particular form of oil-based authoritarianism evolved from interactions with American developmentalists, Pahlavi technocrats, and major oil companies, all against the looming backdrop of the United States' Cold War policy and the coup d’état of August 1953. By placing oil at the center of the Cold War narrative, Brew contextualizes Iran's pro-Western alignment and slide into petrolic authoritarianism. Synthesizing a wide range of sources and research methods, this book demonstrates that the Pahlavi petro-state was not born, but made, and not solely by the Pahlavi shah.Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip Scranton, University Board of Governors Professor Emeritus of the history of industry and technology at Rutgers University-Camden, talks about his book, Business Practice In Socialist Hungary, Volume 1: Creating The Theft Economy, 1945-1957, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Scranton’s book examines how leaders in socialist Hungary planned and developed business enterprises in the shattered post-World War II economy and how workers, farmers, and citizens both supported and resisted these aims. Scranton and Vinsel also talk about what this project means for business history, which has tended to focus far too often on Western, rich, capitalist nations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Microchips are both important and in short supply. So how important? And what can be done to make them more plentiful? Also, what are the geopolitical implications of having the production of microchips concentrated in relatively few hands. Owen Bennett Jones talks microchips with Julian Kamasa of the Centre for Security Studies in Zurich.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

In her detailed cultural history of technological change, Electrifying Mexico, Diana Montaño argues that ordinary Mexicans became electrifying agents who actively negotiated the extent and manner electricity entered their lives and lived spaces in Mexico City. An Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Montaño's teaching and research interests broadly include the construction of modern Latin American societies with a focus on technology and its relationship to nationalism, everyday life and domesticity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices