New Books in Public Policy

Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance.” This is the starting point for the rather curious story of the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and how they created a new system with a strong independent nuclear safety regulator that has refused to back down even as the political tides have changed, and what this has meant for energy policy in Japan in the past dozen years. Koppenborg’s history of nuclear power regulation in Japan also seriously considers the implications of this dramatic break for regimes in other countries. This case study provides a complex and thought-provoking contribution to discussions of the role of nuclear power and independent regulation in global efforts to decarbonize our energy supply.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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Princeton University Press’ Our Compelling Interests series focuses on diversity, in racial, gender, socioeconomic, religious, and other forms. Some of the titles in this series so far include The Walls around Opportunity: The Failure of Colorblind Policy for Higher Education by Gary Orfield, Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise By Eboo Patel, and The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy, by Scott E. Page.Earl Lewis is the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of history, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Public Policy and director of the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan. From March 2013-2018, he served as President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.Nancy Cantor is Chancellor of Rutgers University – Newark. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Medicine, she previously led Syracuse University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was provost at the University of Michigan, where she was closely involved in the defense of affirmative action in 2003 Supreme Court cases Grutter and Gratz.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In the third episode of our Global Policing series, Elizabeth and John spoke back in 2020 with anthropologist Laurence Ralph about The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence (U Chicago Press, 2020). The book relates the decades-long history in which hundreds of people (mostly Black men) were tortured by the Chicago Police. Fascinatingly, it is framed as a series of open letters that explore the layers of silence and complicity that enabled torture and the activist movements that have helped to uncover this history and implement forms of collective redress and repair. Elizabeth and John ask Laurence about that genre choice, and he unpacks his thinking about responsibility, witnessing, trauma and channels of activism. Arendt’s “banality of evil” briefly surfaces.Mentioned in this episode: Laurence Ralph, Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago (U Chicago Press, 2014) James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me Mahomedou Ould Slahi, Guantánamo Diary Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963, “banality of evil”; not optimism but hopefulness) Recallable …..Stuff Frederick Douglas, A Speech given at the Unveiling…… Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (here introduced by Angela Davis) Read Here:45 Global Policing 3 Laurence Ralph: Reckoning with Police Violence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies that promote workers' dignity and standing? Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back (Cambridge UP, 2023) explores how the history of political economy has been a contest between these two ideas about whom the work ethic is supposed to serve. Today's neoliberal ideology deploys the work ethic on behalf of the One Percent. However, workers and their advocates have long used the work ethic on behalf of ordinary people. By exposing the ideological roots of contemporary neoliberalism as a perversion of the seventeenth-century Protestant work ethic, Elizabeth Anderson shows how we can reclaim the original goals of the work ethic, and uplift ourselves again. Hijacked persuasively and powerfully demonstrates how ideas inspired by the work ethic informed debates among leading political economists of the past, and how these ideas can help us today. Elizabeth Anderson is the Max Mendel Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at University of Michigan. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (1995), The Imperative of Integration (2010), and Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (2017). She is a MacArthur Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, The New Yorker described her as 'a champion of the view that equality and freedom are mutually dependent [...] Anderson may be the philosopher best suited to this awkward moment in American life.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize opposition. Although backlash is not a new phenomenon, today's political landscape is distinguished by the frequency and pervasiveness of backlash in nearly every area of US policymaking, from abortion rights to the Affordable Care Act. Eric M. Patashnik develops a policy-centered theory of backlash that illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. Drawing on case studies of issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age (U Chicago Press, 2023) shows that backlash politics is fueled by polarization, cultural shifts, and negative feedback from the activist government itself. It also offers crucial insights to help identify and navigate backlash risks.Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed is one that is highly charged and to which there are no easy solutions. In Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform? (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr Kay Wilson does not shy away from these controversial debates. Examining the work that dignity can do, she makes the case for an holistic interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In thinking about mental health reform, she provides a core framework which may guide support and intervention in a way that compels respect for the dignity of the person. This book makes an important contribution to the literature. Its nuanced approach and fearlessness in delving into the hard issues should be required reading for policy makers, lawyers and mental health practitioners.  Dr Kay Wilson is a postdoctoral fellow at the convenor of The Disability Law Network at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She is also a co-editor of The Future of Mental Health, Disability and Criminal Law, (Routledge, 2023). Jane Richards is a Lecturer in Law at York Law School, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition Facts label that adorns millions of food products and has become an integral part of the food and information landscape in the United States. Frohlich’s story unfolds in part as an institutional history of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for the label, using the agency as a way to understand the ideological and policy debates about responsibility for communicating scientific information to the public, from regulation and gatekeeping to information brokering and nudging. From Label to Table is the story of how the contemporary American food information environment emerged out of this history of transformation from paternalism to “informationism.”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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Through compelling ethnography, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors (Routledge, 2022) reveals the creative and ambitious methods that social service providers use to house their clients despite the conflictual conditions posed by the policies and institutions that govern the housing process.Combining in-depth interviews, extensive fieldwork, and the author's own professional experience, this book considers the perspective of social service providers who work with people experiencing homelessness and chronicles the steps they take to navigate the housing process. With assertive methods of worker-client advocacy at the center of its focus, this book beckons attention to the many variables that affect professional attempts to house homeless populations. It conveys the challenges that social service providers encounter while fitting their clients into the criteria for housing eligibility, the opposition they receive, and the innovative approaches they ultimately take to optimize housing placements for their clients who are, or were formerly, experiencing homelessness.Weaving as it does between issues of poverty, social inequality, and social policy, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy will appeal to courses in social work, sociology, and public policy and fill a void for early-career professionals in housing and community services. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

School librarians have always connected learners’ life experiences, cultures, and communities to materials, projects, and processes. As schools look to make these connections within the classroom and to the curriculum, school librarians are perfectly poised to lead and model meaningful steps toward a culturally responsive mindset. Embracing Culturally Responsive Practice in School Libraries (ALA Editions, 2023) by Elisabet Kennedy celebrates how learners’ cultures shape everything from their communication to how they process information.This book translates complex concepts into accessible and practical school library strategies while challenging readers to embrace and nurture their personal and professional growth. An authentic and approachable guide to culturally responsive pedagogy aligned with the National School Library Standards, this book features an adapted framework with actionable steps and activities based on culturally responsive principles that directly relate to AASL Standards; scenarios offering context for learning, demonstrating conflicts, exploring potential harm, and suggesting strategies; and reflective exercises and challenges, introductory definitions, and resources for deeper exploration.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In an age of pandemics the relationship between the health of the city and good sanitation has never been more important. Colin McFarlane, through Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife (Verso, 2023), makes a call to action on one of modern urban life's most neglected issues: sanitation infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating consequences of unequal access to sanitation in cities across the globe. At this critical moment in global public health, Colin McFarlane makes the urgent case for Sanitation for All.The book outlines the worldwide sanitation crisis and offers a vision for a renewed, equitable investment in sanitation that democratises and socialises the modern city. Adopting Henri Lefebvre's concept of 'the right to the city', it uses the notion of 'citylife' to reframe the discourse on sanitation from a narrowly-defined policy discussion to a question of democratic right to public life and health. In doing so, the book shows that sanitation is an urbanizing force whose importance extends beyond hygiene to the very foundation of urban social life.Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by bouncers at bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy