New Books in World Affairs

In today’s podcast, Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim explains how understanding harmonics of the earth provides a forward-thinking methodology to confront the challenges presented by the massive changes in the climate. In her book Song of the Earth: Understanding Geology and Why it Matters (Oxford University Press, 2021), Ervin-Blankenheim documents the history of geology, a Western epistemological exploit, properly contextualizing how geologists know what they know. Song of the Earth is framed the around three primary tenants: geologic time, plate tectonics and evolution. Through her magnificent use of brevity and clarity, the narrative, supported by the three tenants, documents the “biography of the Earth” consisting of a multiplicity of interactions occurring between geosphere-human, hydrosphere-human, biosphere-human spanning millions of years. Ervin-Blankenheim impresses throughout her narrative that life today represents only .1% of life that has existed throughout the history of the planet, yet we cannot understand the changes such as extinction without recognizing how the earth impacts life and how life impacts the earth. Without mindful recognition about the interconnectivity of ecosystem, the mechanics of extinction and survival will continue to remain opaque. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Ask you average high school student or undergraduate about nineteenth century US history and if nothing else, they likely know the phrase "manifest destiny." The idea that the United States was destined, even pre-ordained, to construct a continent-spanning nation is widely assumed to have been a motivating force in American political life in during the pre-Civil War era, and is similarly thought to have largely come to fruition. Not so, argues Dr. Daniel Joseph Burge, research coordinator and associate editor at the Kentucky Historical Society. In A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845-1872 (U Nebraska Press, 2022), Burge argues that the concept of manifest destiny was always controversial, partisan, and indeed, was ultimately a failure. Pro-expansionist writers like John O'Sullivan and politicians such as Henry Seward foresaw Cuba, Canada, and even Latin America as destined to become American states, but these places stubbornly retained their independence instead. Burge argues that historians have only reified the idea of Manifest Destiny in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, not questioning whether this idea was in fact the engine of expansion many assumed it to be. A Failed Vision of Empire joins a growing chorus of scholars who argue that manifest destiny was in fact neither American destiny, nor a reality which manifested itself at all.Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

International treaties are the primary means for codifying global human rights standards. However, nation-states are able to make their own choices in how to legally commit to human rights treaties. A state commits to a treaty through four commitment acts: signature, ratification, accession, and succession. These acts signify diverging legal paths with distinct contexts and mechanisms for rights change reflecting legalization, negotiation, sovereignty, and domestic constraints. How a state moves through these actions determines how, when, and to what extent it will comply with the human rights treaties it commits to. Using legal, archival, and quantitative analysis Committed to Rights: UN Human Rights Treaties and Legal Paths for Commitment and Compliance (Cambridge UP, 2021) shows that disentangling legal paths to commitment reveals distinct and significant compliance outcomes. Legal context matters for human rights and has important implications for the conceptualization of treaty commitment, the consideration of non-binding commitment, and an optimistic outlook for the impact of human rights treaties.Audrey L. Comstock is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University and Interim Director of the ASU Global Human Rights Hub. She received a PhD in Government from Cornell University. Her research focuses on the United Nations, international human rights law, negotiations, women's rights, and sexual exploitation and abuse.Lamis Abdelaaty is an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu or tweet to @LAbdelaaty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The Solar System. Dinosaurs. Donkey Kong. What is the missing link? Surprisingly enough, it's meteorites. They explain our past, constructed our present, and could define our future.Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong (William Morrow, 2022) argues that Earth would be a lifeless, inhospitable piece of rock without being fortuitously assaulted with meteorites throughout the history of the planet. These bombardments transformed Earth's early atmosphere and delivered the complex organic molecules that allowed life to develop on our planet. While meteorites have provided the raw materials for life to thrive, they have radically devastated life as well, most famously killing off the dinosaurs and paving the way for humans to evolve to where we are today.As noted meteoriticist Greg Brennecka explains, meteorites did not just set us on the path to becoming human, they helped direct the development of human culture. Meteorites have influenced humanity since the start of civilization. Over the centuries, meteorite falls and other cosmic cinema have started (and stopped) wars, terrified millions, and inspired religions throughout the world.With humor and an infectious enthusiasm, Brennecka reveals previously untold but important stories sure to delight and inform readers about the most important rocks on Earth.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (Oneworld, 2021), Dr. Clive Hamilton and Dr. Mareike Ohlberg explores how the Chinese Communist Party is determined to reshape the world in its image.The book details China’s decades-long infiltration of the West threatens democracy, human rights, privacy, security and free speech. Throughout North America and Europe, political and business elites, Wall Street, Hollywood, think tanks, universities and the Chinese diaspora are being manipulated with money, pressure and privilege. In this book, the authors reveal the myriad ways the CCP is fulfilling its dream of undermining liberal values and controlling the world.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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism & Barbarism (Indigo Press, 2022), Richard Seymour, one of the UK's leading left-wing writers, gives an account of his 'ecological awakening'. A search for transcendence, beyond the illusory eternal present. These essays chronicle the kindling of ecological consciousness in a confessed ignoramus. They track the first enchantment of the author, his striving to comprehend the coming catastrophe, and his attempt to formulate a new global sensibility in which we value anew what unconditionally matters.Nicholas Pritchard is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge interested in time and the sea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Have you ever read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises? When asked how he went bankrupt, a character replies, “Gradually, then suddenly.”In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Helsinki, discusses with Jonathan Fulton about his newly edited Routledge Handbook on China–Middle East Relations. Jonathan Fulton is assistant professor of political science at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.According to Fulton, China’s emergence as an important actor in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) brings to mind this piece of dialogue from Hemingway’s work. “Those of us watching China’s growing presence in the region have seen a gradual expansion of China’s influence and interests over the past decade, but those not paying attention would understandably be surprised by the apparent sudden depth and breadth of its presence”, explained Fulton. The Routledge Handbook on China-Middle East Relations brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights into how China’s growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. As the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East, China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. This portends a larger role in political and security affairs, as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing expatriate population in the region demands a more proactive role in contributing to regional order.Julie Yu-Wen Chen is professor of Chinese studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of the Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on the University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely to strike anyone at any age, and where famine could be just one bad harvest away, to one where in many countries excess food is more of a problem than a lack of it. Why have the reasons we die changed so much? How is it that a century ago people died mainly from infectious disease, while today the leading causes of death in industrialised nations are heart disease and stroke? And what do changing causes of death reveal about how previous generations have lived?University of Manchester Professor Andrew Doig provides an eye-opening portrait of death throughout history, looking at particular causes – from infectious disease to genetic disease, violence to diet – who they affected, and the people who made it possible to overcome them. Along the way we hear about the long and torturous story of the discovery of vitamin C and its role in preventing scurvy; the Irish immigrant who opened the first washhouse for the poor of Liverpool, and in so doing educated the public on the importance of cleanliness in combating disease; and the Church of England curate who, finding his new church equipped with a telephone, started the Samaritans to assist those in emotional distress.This Mortal Coil: A History of Death (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a thrilling story of growing medical knowledge and social organisation, of achievement and, looking to the future, of promise.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

"With the eurozone crisis going back to 2010, the refugee crisis that culminated in 2015, the crisis of the EU-Russia relationship going back to the Ukrainian Maidan revolution of 2013-14, to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, the EU has struggled to live up to the expectations it raised both in relation to its own people and neighbouring countries. This is not an accident".Could this really be by design? In European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency (Hurst in the UK, OUP in the US, 2022), Stefan Auer argues that the EU's hybrid form – falling somewhere between a multinational state and a multilateral organisation – comes closest to the ideals of Germany, its most powerful member. This attempt to bypass politics has weakened the EU in the many emergencies it has faced over the last 15 years. Today, he says, "Europeans do not have the luxury of living in a politics-less world".Stefan Auer is an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, having previously taught in Melbourne and Dublin and twice held Jean Monnet chairs. A prolific contributor to political science journals, he won the 2005 UACES Best Book in European Studies prize for his Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe (Routledge, 2004).*The authors' own book recommendations are: After Europe by Ivan Krastev (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) and Time of the Magicians: The Great Decade of Philosophy, 1919-1929 by Wolfram Eilenberger (2022).Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors (a division of Energy Aspects). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions.In States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance: Complexity Theory Applied to UN Statebuilding in the DRC and South Sudan (Oxford University Press, 2022) Dr. Adam Day addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. He proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces," these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence.Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs