Contesting the Last Frontier


Book Description

Women of color, including Asian Pacific American (APA) women, have made considerable inroads into elective office in the United States in recent years; in fact, their numbers have grown more rapidly than those of white women. Nonetheless, focusing only on success stories gives the false impression that racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are not barriers for APA candidates to public office. It also detracts attention from the persistent and severe under-representation of all women and nonwhite men in elective office in the United States. In Contesting the Last Frontier, Pei-te Lien and Nicole Filler examine the scope and significance of the rise of Asian Pacific Americans in US elective office over the past half-century. To help interpret the complex experiences of these political women and men situated at the intersection of race, gender, and other dimensions of marginalization, Lien and Filler adopt an intersectionality framework that puts women of color at the center of their analysis. They also draw on their own original dataset of APA electoral participation over the past 70 years, as well as in-depth interviews with elected officials. They examine APA candidates' trajectories to office, their divergent patterns of political socialization, the barriers and opportunities they face on the campaign trail, and how these elected officials enact their roles as representatives at local, state, and federal levels of government. In turn, they counter various tropes, including the model minority myth that suggests that Asian Americans have attained a level of success in education, work, and politics that precludes attention to racial discrimination. Importantly, the book also provides a look into how APA elected officials of various origins strive to serve the interests of the rapidly expanding and majority-immigrant population, especially those disadvantaged by the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and nativity. Ambitious and comprehensive, Contesting the Last Frontier fills an important gap in American electoral history and uncovers the lived experiences of APA women and men on the campaign trail and in elective office.




Contesting Neoliberalism


Book Description

Neoliberalism's "market revolution"--realized through practices like privatization, deregulation, fiscal devolution, and workfare programs--has had a transformative effect on contemporary cities. The consequences of market-oriented politics for urban life have been widely studied, but less attention has been given to how grassroots groups, nongovernmental organizations, and progressive city administrations are fighting back. In case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives, this book examines how struggles around such issues as affordable housing, public services and space, neighborhood sustainability, living wages, workers' rights, fair trade, and democratic governance are reshaping urban political geographies in North America and around the world.




Fight for the Final Frontier


Book Description

Fight for the Final Frontier uses the concepts associated with irregular warfare to offer new insights for understanding the nature of strategic competition in space. Today’s most pressing security concerns are best considered using an irregular warfare lens because incidents and points of potential conflict fall outside the definition of armed conflict. While some universal rules of combat apply across all domains, conflict in space up-ends and flips those assumed standards of understanding. John Klein provides a solution to reckoning with the many malicious, nefarious, and irresponsible behaviors in the space domain by using the irregular warfare framework. This offers a new paradigm through which one can view and study conflict, outside traditional combat, involving state and non-state actors. A “war” in space will be utterly unlike any that have happened on Earth, though scholars can provide lessons from past conflict to understand the flashpoints in the heavens. Providing the needed foundational understanding, Fight for the Final Frontier makes the case that irregular warfare in the space domain is shaped by the fundamental nature of all warfare, along with universal principles of strategy and the essential unity of all strategic experience. Going one step further, John Klein outlines the new arenas for battle, new areas of conflict and competition, and the necessary concepts for operating in this bold new frontier.




The Consequential Frontier


Book Description

"A lucid, bright and essential work of reporting, analysis and genuine care. Peter Ward has given us a new way to think about private endeavors in space. Superb."⁠—Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors This in-depth work of reportage dares to ask what’s at stake in privatizing outer space Earth is in trouble—so dramatically that we’re now scrambling to explore space for valuable resources and a home for permanent colonization. With the era of NASA’s dominance now behind us, the private sector is winning this new space race. But if humans and their private wealth have made such a mess of Earth, who can say we won’t do the same in space? In The Consequential Frontier, business and technology journalist Peter Ward is raising this vital question before it’s too late. Interviewing tech CEOs, inventors, scientists, lobbyists, politicians, and future civilian astronauts, Ward sheds light on a whole industry beyond headline-grabbing rocket billionaires like Bezos and Musk, and introduces the new generation of activists trying to keep it from rushing recklessly into the cosmos. With optimism for what humans might accomplish in space if we could leave our tendency toward deregulation, inequality, and environmental destruction behind, Ward shows just how much cooperation it will take to protect our universal resource and how beneficial it could be for all of us.




Breaking the Two-party Doom Loop


Book Description

American democracy is in deep crisis. But what do we do about it? That depends on how we understand the current threat.In Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, Lee Drutman argues that we now have, for the first time in American history, a genuine two-party system, with two fully-sorted, truly national parties, divided over the character of the nation. And it's a disaster. It's a party system fundamentally at odds withour anti-majoritarian, compromise-oriented governing institutions. It threatens the very foundations of fairness and shared values on which our democracy depends.Deftly weaving together history, democratic theory, and cutting-edge political science research, Drutman tells the story of how American politics became so toxic and why the country is now trapped in a doom loop of escalating two-party warfare from which there is only one escape: increase the numberof parties through electoral reform. As he shows, American politics was once stable because the two parties held within them multiple factions, which made it possible to assemble flexible majorities and kept the climate of political combat from overheating. But as conservative Southern Democrats andliberal Northeastern Republicans disappeared, partisan conflict flattened and pulled apart. Once the parties became fully nationalized - a long-germinating process that culminated in 2010 - toxic partisanship took over completely. With the two parties divided over competing visions of nationalidentity, Democrats and Republicans no longer see each other as opponents, but as enemies. And the more the conflict escalates, the shakier our democracy feels.Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop makes a compelling case for large scale electoral reform - importantly, reform not requiring a constitutional amendment - that would give America more parties, making American democracy more representative, more responsive, and ultimately more stable.




Hiding Politics in Plain Sight


Book Description

Hiding Politics in Plain Sight examines the costs of market mechanisms, especially cause marketing, as a strategy for change. Industry and corporate-connected individuals use market mechanisms to brand issues like breast cancer widely, shaping public understanding. But framed as consensus-based social issues rather than contentious political issues, they essentially hide politics in plain sight.




Homestead Kitchen


Book Description

The first cookbook from homesteaders and co-stars of Discovery’s Alaska: The Last Frontier Eve and Eivin Kilcher features appealing recipes for anyone looking to live more sustainably, healthfully, and independently, regardless of where and what they call home. Eve and Eivin Kilcher, stars of the hit Discovery show Alaska: The Last Frontier, are experts in sustainable living. Homesteaders by choice, the couple has had to use their self-reliance skills to survive harsh winters in the Alaskan wilderness and raise a thriving family. In their debut book, the Kilchers share 85 original family recipes and advice on gardening, preserving, and foraging. The tips and techniques they have cultivated from their family and through necessity will help anyone looking to shrink their environmental footprint and become less dependent on mass-produced food and products. Stunningly photographed in and around their handmade home and farm, Homestead Kitchen illustrates that taking on small-scale sustainable projects is not only possible in a suburban/urban setting, but ultimately a more responsible and gratifying way to live.




The Saltwater Frontier


Book Description

Andrew Lipman’s eye-opening first book is the previously untold story of how the ocean became a “frontier” between colonists and Indians. When the English and Dutch empires both tried to claim the same patch of coast between the Hudson River and Cape Cod, the sea itself became the arena of contact and conflict. During the violent European invasions, the region’s Algonquian-speaking Natives were navigators, boatbuilders, fishermen, pirates, and merchants who became active players in the emergence of the Atlantic World. Drawing from a wide range of English, Dutch, and archeological sources, Lipman uncovers a new geography of Native America that incorporates seawater as well as soil. Looking past Europeans’ arbitrary land boundaries, he reveals unseen links between local episodes and global events on distant shores. Lipman’s book “successfully redirects the way we look at a familiar history” (Neal Salisbury, Smith College). Extensively researched and elegantly written, this latest addition to Yale’s seventeenth-century American history list brings the early years of New England and New York vividly to life.




The Pearl Frontier


Book Description

Remarkable for its meticulous archival research and moving life stories, The Pearl Frontier offers a new way of imagining Australian historical connections with Indonesia. This compelling view from below of maritime mobility demonstrates how, in the colonial quest for the valuable pearl-shell, Australians came to rely on the skill and labor of Indonesian islanders, drawing them into their northern pearling trade empire. From the 1860s onward the pearl-shell industry developed alongside British colonial conquests across Australia's northern coast and prompted the Dutch to consolidate their hold over the Netherlands East Indies. Inspired by tales of pirates and priceless pearls, the pearl frontier witnessed the maritime equivalent of a gold rush; with traders, entrepreneurs, and willing workers coming from across the globe. But like so many other frontier zones it soon became notorious for its reliance on slave-like conditions for Indigenous and Indonesian workers. These allegations prompted the imposition of a strict regime of indentured labor migration that was to last for almost a century before giving way to international criticism in the era of decolonization. The Pearl Frontier invites the reader to step outside the narrow confines of national boundaries, to see seafaring peoples as a continuous population, moving and in communication in spite of the obstacles of politics, warfare, and language. Instead of the mythologies of racial purity, propagated by settler colonies and European empires, this book dissects the social and economic life of the port cities around the Australian-Indonesian maritime zone and lays open the complex, cosmopolitan relationships which shaped their histories and their present situations. Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers bring together their expertise on Australian and Indonesian history to challenge the isolationist view of Australia's past. This book explores how Asian migration and the struggle against the restrictive White Australia policy left a rich legacy of mixed Asian-Indigenous heritage that lives on along Australia's northern coastline. This book is an important contribution to studies of the coastal, or Pasisir, culture of Southeast Asia, that situates the local cultures in a regional context and demonstrates how Indonesian maritime peoples became part of global migration flows as indentured laborers. It offers a hitherto untold story of Indonesian diaspora in Australia and reveals a degree of Indian-Pacific interconnectedness that forces us to rethink the construction of regional boundaries and national borders.




Ordinary Democracy


Book Description

Written with and for citizens who feel overwhelmed by political and economic forces outside of their control, Ordinary Democracy makes a compelling argument for the adequacy of democratic politics to address the challenges associated with neoliberalism and the growth of emergency politics. It rejects cynicism about democratic citizenship by focusing on the practices of ongoing movements, bridging the social detachment that has separated academic investigations of democracy and activists in the past in order to add another layer to the public philosophy produced within these movements.