ROCKING OUR PRIORS

During the World War I, the US federal government was short on civil servants and actively recruited women. Abhay Aneja, Silvia Farina, and Guo Xu find that men with multiple female colleagues were subsequently more likely to marry working women and father careerist daughters! Crucially, the effect is larger when men have many female colleagues and it becomes perfectly conventional. Paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32639

How can we improve government capacity and public services? In “Mission-Driven Bureaucrats”, Dan Honig argues that civil servants are often deeply committed, yet hobbled by strict rule books. Trapped by top-down strictures, civil servants may even become disillusioned. Unable to help, they quit. Government ministries can be so much more effective if motivated civil servants actually have the autonomy to be creative, independent, and fix local problems. How do we know this? 4 million individual observations, along with in-depth case research in Detroit, Senegal, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Liberia. We discuss: What do most efforts to improve public management get wrong? How does management style affect recruitment and effectiveness? How can managers build cultures where workers feel empowered? Get the book: https://danhonig.info/missiondrivenbureaucrats

Dive into the global evolution of same-sex marriage acceptance, from rapid cultural change in America to resistance in Africa and Asia. Explore historical shifts in marriage practices and the impact of secular enlightenment, feminism, and religious revival on LGBTQ+ rights. Uncover the roots of the Great GAY Divergence, where love battles against patrilineal loyalty and religious homophobia.

Aaron Rock-Singer is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. He has published two fantastic books, “Practicing Islam: Egypt’s Islamic Revival” and “In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East”. Aaron is truly brilliant, connecting both the macro and the micro. By examining structural shifts in education and urbanisation as well as Islamic print media, he shows how modernisation triggered counter-mobilisation. We discuss: How did colonialism change religiosity and religious practices in Egypt? Why were post-independence leaders relatively secular? What was the Islamic revival? What was new? Did the 1970s economic downturn raise support Islamists? Why was there a global religious revival in the 1970s? Why was female behaviour so central to religious revival? Would Egypt’s Islamic revival have occurred in the absence of Saudi funding and migration?

Discover the push to display the Ten Commandments in Louisiana's public schools, echoing a global religious revival in the 1970s. Explore how conservatives worldwide mobilized against liberal modernity, highlighting trends in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the U.S.

Professor Robert Hefner has a tremendous new book, “Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics”. It’s one of my favourite books of the year, drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research. Today, he joins “Rocking Our Priors”. We discuss: Indonesia’s religious history Why have Hinduism and Buddhism have largely faded in Indonesia? Why were madrasas were rare until the 19th century? What explains the rise in normative Islam? - Economic development and technological advances? - Backlash against secular schooling? - Criminality and demand for moral order? - Saudi funding - The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Michael Cook's "A History of the Muslim World" is my favourite book of 2024. Together, we discussed: - Did Islamic science weaken due to religious authoritarianism? - Why, in the Middle East and North Africa, were there so few peasant rebellions? - Theologically, how important was Ghazali? - What determined the rate at which people converted to Islam? - Why was there so much religious syncretism and diversity in the Ottoman Empire? - Why did the Muslim world fall behind economically? - Did the Ottoman Empire ban the printing press? - Why is South Asia the only place where Muslims ruled for hundreds of years yet remained a minority? - When you study the global history of Islam, what is the best indicator of how Muslim they really were? - Did colonialism trigger an Islamic backlash? - Why do Muslim countries often have weak state capacity? Timur Kuran blames waqfs. Do you agree? "A History of the Muslim World": https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691236575/a-history-of-the-muslim-world On my Substack, you can see my earlier reviews: https://www.ggd.world/p/a-history-of-the-muslim-world-by

Trust is down, worldwide. In India, Iran, Indonesia and Nigeria, less than 15% say that ‘most people can be trusted’. What’s going on? I suggest several likely mechanisms: 1) Generalised distrust is correlated with strong family bonds 2) Poorer countries have rapidly urbanised at a lower level of income 3) Rule of law varies worldwide 4) Political contestation and growing polarisation 5) Online connectivity has boomed, and is increasingly negative My Substack has graphs, data and further resources: https://www.ggd.world/p/whats-driving-the-global-decline

What led to the demise of foot-binding? by Dr Alice Evans

Who are the world's most influential philosophers? by Dr Alice Evans