Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 93 - July 2020): Social Economy

Publisher : MIT Press

Examining the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability. Drones with night vision are tracking elephant and rhino poachers in African wildlife parks and sanctuaries; smart submersibles are saving coral from carnivorous starfish on Australia's Great Barrier Reef; recycled cell phones alert Brazilian forest rangers to the sound of illegal logging. The tools of artificial intelligence are being increasingly deployed in the battle for global sustainability. And yet, warns Peter Dauvergne, we should be cautious in declaring AI the planet's savior. In AI in the Wild, Dauvergne avoids the AI industry-powered hype and offers a critical view, exploring both the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability. Dauvergne finds that corporations and states often use AI in ways that are antithetical to sustainability. The competition to profit from AI is entrenching technocratic management, revving up resource extraction, and turbocharging consumption, as consumers buy new smart devices (and discard their old, less-smart ones). Smart technology is helping farmers grow crops more efficiently, but also empowering the agrifood industry. Moreover, states are weaponizing AI to control citizens, suppress dissent, and aim cyberattacks at rival states. Is there a way to harness the power of AI for environmental and social good? Dauvergne argues for precaution and humility as guiding principles in the deployment of AI.

Print Price: $29.95

Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing

The inside story of the world's most fascinating and lucrative crop from gonzo journalist-turned-hemp farmer Doug Fine. Hemp, the non-psychoactive variant of cannabis (or marijuana) and one of humanity's oldest plant allies, has quietly become the fastest industry ever to generate a billion dollars of annual revenue in North America. From hemp seed to hemp fiber to the currently ubiquitous cannabinoid CBD, this resilient crop is leading the way toward a new, regenerative economy that contributes to soil and climate restoration--but only if we do it right. In American Hemp Farmer, maverick journalist and solar-powered goat herder Doug Fine gets his hands dirty with healthy soil and sticky with terpenes growing his own crop and creating his own hemp products. Fine shares his adventures and misadventures as an independent, regenerative farmer and entrepreneur, all while laying out a vision for how hemp can help right the wrongs of twentieth-century agriculture, and how you can be a part of it.

Print Price: $19.95

Publisher : Taylor & Francis Group

This book describes how to architect and design Internet of Things (loT) solutions that provide end-to-end security and privacy at scale. It is unique in its detailed coverage of threat analysis, protocol analysis, secure design principles, intelligent loT's impact on privacy, and the effect of usability on security. The book also unveils the impact of digital currency and the dark web on the loT-security economy. It's both informative and entertaining. "Filled with practical and relevant examples based on years of experience ... with lively discussions and storytelling related to loT security design flaws and architectural issues."-- Dr. James F. Ransome, Senior Director of Security Development Lifecycle (SOL) Engineering, Intel 'There is an absolute treasure trove of information within this book that will benefit anyone, not just the engineering community. This book has earned a permanent spot on my office bookshelf."-- Erv Comer, Fellow of Engineering, Office of Chief Architect Zebra Technologies 'The importance of this work goes well beyond the engineer and architect. The IoT Architect's Guide to Attainable Security & Privacy is a crucial resource for every executive who delivers connected products to the market or uses connected products to run their business."-- Kurt Lee, VP Sales and Strategic Alliances at PWNIE Express "If we collectively fail to follow the advice described here regarding loT security and Privacy, we will continue to add to our mounting pile of exploitable computing devices. The attackers are having a field day. Read this book, now."-- Brook S.E. Schoenfield, Director of Advisory Services at IOActive, previously Master Security Architect at McAfee, and author of Securing Systems

Print Price: $79.95

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Liberalism is a critically important topic in the contemporary world as liberal values and institutions are in retreat in countries where they seemed relatively secure. Lucidly written and accessible, this book offers an important yet neglected Russian aspect to the history of political liberalism. Vanessa Rampton examines Russian engagement with liberal ideas during Russia's long nineteenth century, focusing on the high point of Russian liberalism from 1900 to 1914. It was then that a self-consciously liberal movement took shape, followed by the founding of the country's first liberal (Constitutional-Democratic or Kadet) party in 1905. For a brief, revelatory period, some Russians - an eclectic group of academics, politicians and public figures - drew on liberal ideas of Western origin to articulate a distinctively Russian liberal philosophy, shape their country's political landscape, and were themselves partly responsible for the tragic experience of 1905.

Price: $99.99
Format : eBook Available

Publisher : Columbia University Press

Until the early nineteenth century, political philosophy and economics were dining companions. Both took up fundamental questions of how we should feed one another. But with the rise of corporate capitalism, modern economics lost sight of its primary task and turned away from the complexities of real people's sustenance in favor of the single-minded pursuit of money. In Meals Matter, Michael Symons returns economics to its roots in the distribution of food and the labor required. Setting the table with vivid descriptions of conviviality, he offers a gastronomic rebuttal to the narrow worldview of mainstream economics. Engaging with a wide variety of thinkers--including Epicurus, Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the gastronomer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and economic theorists from François Quesnay and Adam Smith through the neoliberals--Symons traces how we went astray and how we can find our way back to a more caring, sustainable way of life. He finds hope for shared "table pleasure" in institutions like community gardens, street markets, and banquets and in eating fresh, local, and "slow" food. An innovative, historically based argument at the intersection of food history and social thought, Meals Matter challenges us to reject the economics of greed in favor of a community-based economics of sharing and gastronomic enjoyment.

eBook Price: $34.99

Publisher : Syracuse University Press

On April 23, 1929, the second annual Transcontinental Foot Race across America, known as the Bunion Derby, was in its twenty-fifth day. Eddie ?the Sheik? Gardner, an African American runner from Seattle, was leading the race across the Free Bridge over the Mississippi River. Along with the signature outfit that earned him his nickname--a white towel tied around his head, white shorts, and a white shirt--Gardner wore an American flag, a reminder to all who saw him run through the Jim Crow South that he was an American and the leader of the greatest footrace in the world. Kastner traces Gardner's remarkable journey from his birth in 1897 in Birmingham, Alabama, to his success in Seattle, Washington, as one of the top long-distance runners in the region, and finally to his participation in two transcontinental footraces where he risked his life, facing a barrage of harassment for having the audacity to compete with white runners. Kastner shows how Gardner's participation became a way to protest the endemic racism he faced, heralding the future of nonviolent efforts that would be instrumental to the civil rights movement. Shining a bright light on his extraordinary athletic accomplishments and his heroism on the dusty roads of America in the 1920s, Kastner gives Gardner and other black bunioneers the attention they so richly deserve.

Price: $75.00
Format : eBook Available

Publisher : Rutgers University Press

Revolutionizing Women's Healthcare is the story of a feminist experiment: the self-help movement. This movement arose out of women's frustration, anger, and fear for their health. Tired of visiting doctors who saw them as silly little girls, suffering shame when they asked for birth control, seeking abortions in back alleys, and holding little control over their own reproductive lives, women took action. Feminists created "self-help groups" where they examined each other's bodies and read medical literature. They founded and ran clinics, wrote books, made movies, undertook nationwide tours, and raided and picketed offending medical institutions. Some performed their own abortions. Others swore off pharmaceuticals during menopause. Lesbian women found "at home" ways to get pregnant. Black women used self-help to talk about how systemic racism affected their health. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell engagingly chronicles these stories and more to showcase the creative ways women came together to do for themselves what the mainstream healthcare system refused to do.

eBook Price: $29.95

Publisher : MIT Press

Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and many of us are not reluctant to argue with someone who disagrees. But when we take an unyielding stand on something we regard as an eternal truth, we forget that ethics evolve over time. What was once broadly acceptable is now completely unacceptable. For example, burning heretics is no longer considered a just punishment. Child marriage is not applauded as a family value. Many shifts in the right vs. wrong pendulum are affected by advances in technology. In Right/Wrong, Juan Enriquez reflects on the evolution of ethics in a technological age.

Print Price: $24.95

Publisher : McFarland & Company

African Americans have made substantial contributions to the sporting world, and vice versa. This wide-ranging collection of new essays explores the inextricable ties between sports and African American life and culture. Contributors critically address important topics such as the historical context of African American participation in major U.S. sports, social justice and responsibility, gender and identity, and media and art.

Print Price: $39.95

Publisher : Cornell University Press

When American evangelicals flocked to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century to fulfill their Biblical mandate for global evangelism, their experiences abroad led them to engage more deeply in foreign policy activism at home. Lauren Frances Turek tracks these trends and illuminates the complex and significant ways in which religion shaped America's role in the late-Cold War world. In To Bring the Good News to All Nations, she examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s, assesses the effectiveness of Christian efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes, and considers how those same groups promoted the imposition of economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that stifled evangelism. Using archival materials from both religious and government sources, To Bring the Good News to All Nations links the development of evangelical foreign policy lobbying to the overseas missionary agenda. Turek's case studies--Guatemala, South Africa, and the Soviet Union--reveal the extent of Christian influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Evangelical policy work also reshaped the lives of Christians overseas and contributed to a reorientation of U.S. human rights policy. Efforts to promote global evangelism and support foreign brethren led activists to push Congress to grant aid to favored, yet repressive, regimes in countries such as Guatemala while imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on nations that persecuted Christians, such as the Soviet Union. This advocacy shifted the definitions and priorities of U.S. human rights policies with lasting repercussions that can be traced into the twenty-first century.

eBook Price: $23.99