New Books in Economics

We live today in a global web of interdependence, connected technologically, economically, politically, and socially. As a result of these expanding and deepening interdependencies, it has become impossible fully to control--or foretell--the effects of our actions. The world is rife with unintended consequences. The first law of human ecology--which declares that we can never do merely one thing--is a truth we ignore at our peril. In Indra's Net and the Midas Touch, Leslie Paul Thiele explores the impact of interdependence and unintended consequences on our pursuit of sustainability.Unfortunately, good intentions provide no antidote to the law of unintended consequences, and proffered cures often prove worse than the disease. Biofuels developed for the purpose of reducing carbon emissions, for example, have had the unintended effect of cutting off food supplies to the needy and destroying rain forests. We must fundamentally transform our patterns of thinking and behavior. Thiele offers the intellectual and moral foundations for this transformation, drawing from ecology, ethics, technology, economics, politics, psychology, physics, and metaphysics. Awareness of our interconnectedness, he writes, stimulates creativity and community; it is a profound responsibility and a blessing beyond measure.Leslie Paul Thiele is Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Director of Sustainability Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Environmentalism for a New Millennium: The Challenge of Coevolution, The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative, and other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities--Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others--increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems that laid waste to the urban fabric and displaced the working poor, small industrial cities seem to be part of America's past, not its future. And yet, Catherine Tumber argues in this provocative book, America's gritty Rust Belt cities could play a central role in a greener, low-carbon, relocalized future.As we wean ourselves from fossil fuels and realize the environmental costs of suburban sprawl, we will see that small cities offer many assets for sustainable living not shared by their big city or small town counterparts, including population density and nearby, fertile farmland available for new environmentally friendly uses.Tumber traveled to twenty-five cities in the Northeast and Midwest--from Buffalo to Peoria to Detroit to Rochester--interviewing planners, city officials, and activists, and weaving their stories into this exploration of small-scale urbanism. Smaller cities can be a critical part of a sustainable future and a productive green economy. Small, Gritty, and Green will help us develop the moral and political imagination we need to realize this.Catherine Tumber, a journalist and historian, is the author of American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality: Searching for the Higher Self, 1875–1915. She is a Research Affiliate in the Community Innovators Lab in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Katie Wells, a Postdoctoral Fritz Fellow with Georgetown University's Tech and Society Initiative, and Kafui Attoh, Associate Professor of Urban Studies in the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, talk about their new book, Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of a City (co-authored with Declan Cullen) (Princeton UP, 2023), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Disrupting D.C. examines how various actors took on a "let Uber deal with it" mindset about social problems, not so much because they had great faith in Uber but because they have profound distrust in city government.Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech. He studies human life with technology, with particular focus on the relationship between government, business, and technological change. His first book, Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Vinod Thomas' book Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) presents essential insights on the interaction between rising risks and raising the bar for resilience during the climate crisis. Its timeliness lies in applying important findings on risk and resilience to runaway climate change. When risk and resilience are brought together in the context of climate catastrophes, three key messages emerge.The first is that accounting for the root causes of these calamities, and not just their symptoms, is essential to slowing the spike in these events. It is therefore vital to link carbon emissions from human activity to the sharp rise in climate disasters globally. The second is that growth economics and policy must factor in the failure of governments and businesses to tackle spillover harm from economic activities, as seen dramatically with global warming. With climate risks rising, this calls for a fundamental revision in the teaching and practice of business and economics. And third, prevention must become a far bigger part of resilience building, with greater preparedness for more intense destruction built into interventions. This emphasis on prevention deems disaster recovery as not just returning to how things were but building back better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s going on underground and on the sea bed. It turns out what goes on down there is a significant source of US power – which has been documented by Henry Farrell in his co-authored book (with Abraham Newman), Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt, 2023). Listen to him describe it all with Owen Bennett-Jones.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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

The practice of international development continues to change as more is understood about what works. A shift from a deficit or problem-solving approach to a strengths-based approach is a significant reframing for international development. A strengths-based approach aims to reveal assets, strengths or what is working within an individual, group, community or organization, then uses these strengths as a way to achieve change and preferred futures. Reframing Aid: A Strengths-Based Approach for International Development (Practical Action, 2023) by Dr. Keren Winterford, Deborah Rhodes, and Christopher Dureau sets out the thinking, practical action and evidence-base to inform a sector-wide transformation. For many, this is a radical or even revolutionary shift, but for others, the writing is already on the wall.The authors set out the strong theoretical and practical basis of a strengths-based approach; explore insight through the lens on power, culture and psychology; and provide examples of how the approach is already applied in practice within the project cycle, monitoring and evaluation, dominant current approaches and sectors of international development.The theory and rich descriptions of how a strengths-based approach works, will give development workers, governments, researchers, policy makers and donors in the global north and south the confidence to continue or try new this approach to creating change. These fresh perspectives offer a much-needed alternative to the deficit-based/problem solving paradigm that dominates, but is no longer relevant to shared global efforts for social justice and environmental sustainability.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/economics

Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre of constructing neoliberalism? How might corporatism have advanced neoliberalism? And, more controversially, were the trade unions only victims of neoliberal change, or did they play a more contradictory role? In How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia’s Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project (Haymarket 2019), Elizabeth Humphrys examines the role of the Labour Party and trade unions in constructing neoliberalism in Australia, and the implications of this for understanding neoliberalism's global advance. These questions are central to understanding the present condition of the labour movement and its prospects for the future.Dr Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist and the Head Of Discipline, Social And Political Sciences at University of Technology Sydney. She is interested in the impact of economic crisis and climate change on workers, and how workplaces can be made safer and more equitable. She takes a multidisciplinary approach, also drawing on sociology and history, to develop policy and strategies for social change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Big Tech locked us into their systems by making their platforms hard to leave by design. The impossibility of staying connected to people on their platforms after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it's an intentional business strategy.In The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso, 2023), Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.This book comes out September 5, 2023. See seizethemeansofcomputation.org for book details.Note: Cory mentioned that the book website is seizethemeansofcommunication.org it is actually seizethemeansofcomputation.org.Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and Chair in the Department of History at Rutgers University, tells the history of these objects and things, from the early years of peddlers through to modern gadgets, and everything in between. In telling this story the book tells a history of America itself, looking at the rise of consumerism, advertising, television, and corporate life, as well as tracking changes in morals, sentiments, humour, and personal habits. Packed with brilliant details, and sweeping in scope, the book will be widely read across the humanities and social sciences, as well as by anyone seeking to understand the modern world.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

In 1986 the Khian Sea, carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia, began a two-year journey, roaming the world's oceans in search of a dumping ground. Its initial destination and then country after country refused to accept the waste. The ship ended up dumping part of its load in Haiti under false pretenses, and the remaining waste was illegally dumped in the ocean. Two shipping company officials eventually received criminal convictions.In The Toxic Ship: The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade (University of Washington Press, 2023), Simone M. Müller uses the ship's voyage as a lens to elucidate the global trade in hazardous waste—the movement of material ranging from outdated consumer products and pesticides to barges filled with all sorts of toxic discards—from the 1970s to the present day, exploring the story's international nodes and detailing the downside of environmental conscientiousness among industrial nations as waste is pushed outward. Müller also highlights the significance of the trip's start in Philadelphia, a city with a significant African American population. The geographical origins shed light on environmental racism within the United States in the context of the global story of environmental justice. Activism in response to the ship's journey set an important precedent, and this book brings together the many voices that shaped the international trade in hazardous waste.Simone M. Müller is DFG Heisenberg Professor for Global Environmental History and Environmental Humanities at the University of Augsburg, Germany and the author of Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks. Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics