Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2022 -

Years of legal oil exploration lead to polluted, undrinkable water in a region. Because the activity is legal, this is not a crime despite the harm it has caused. Nurse (criminology, Nottingham Trent Univ., UK) makes a compelling argument that demonstrates, as in this example, how current legal and social systems do not accurately cover the malfeasance of corporations. Corporations are often seen as benign entities incapable of crime and thus fall under regulations rather than criminal law. In this view, any wrong is the result of bad individuals within a corporation rather than the corporation itself. However, the emerging field of green criminology suggests that the very nature of capitalism and production means that corporate harm to the environment is an inevitable outcome. This environmental harm impacts people in the same way as street-level crime but on a larger scale. Cleaning up corporate greenwash comes down to two things: embracing a new paradigm in which corporations are not viewed as inherently good actors but have certain goals not necessarily compatible with environmental and social well-being and adjusting the criminal justice system to reflect this new paradigm. A clear-eyed introduction to green criminology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners.

Challenging the conventional models for social change--namely, appeals to human rights or appeals to institutional policies--Okeja (philosophy, Rhodes University, South Africa) provides an alternative route for addressing political problems. It is paved by implementing an African practice of public deliberation. In the first three chapters, Okeja diagnoses contemporary problems within Africa. Okeja's constructive move--that is, the productive account of African public culture--is made next. The final chapters illuminate Okeja's positive solution through conceptual creativity. Throughout Deliberative Agency, Okeja excels at both rigorous description and analysis. The case for a uniquely African remedy to political problems, a remedy that involves articulating and hearing the voices of all members of society, makes this book both challenging and inspiring. Those voices, Okeja claims, not only diagnose the present moment but also offer a new political imaginary. This excellently written book will greatly interest those working in Africana studies, political philosophy, and political science and those with interests in contemporary African political thought and democracy. It is one of the best books this reviewer has read on African political philosophy in the past decade.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Areas of limited statehood are ubiquitous and defy Weberian assumptions about the organized state and its projection of authority in the conduct of effective governance. This is the starting point for a richly theorized, empirically well-supported vision of multilevel governance in international relations theory. Borzel and Risse (both, Freie Universitat, Berlin) set out to explain governance in areas of limited statehood, particularly those within "failed," or "weak," states and those within prototypical "modern" nation-states. In setting these parameters, they break down the dichotomy that has informed international relations theory for the past century: the expectation of hierarchical government at the state level and anarchic governance internationally. The book is equally divided between theory development (the first three chapters and the conclusion) and theory testing. For the latter, four chapters delve empirically into how a range of governing actors (state, non-state; legal, illegal; national, subnational, transnational, international) satisfy security, human rights, health, environmental, and economic needs. Strongly embedded in the scholarship of the past 50 years and informed by the constructivist turn of the past 30, this work is essential for organizing, challenging, and retheorizing most of the concepts central to this subfield of political science.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty.

This book takes on the question of reparations for the damage wrought by colonialism and slavery. Drawing on the efforts of anti-colonial activists of the 20th century, Taiwo (philosophy, Georgetown Univ.) calls for a constructive approach to reparations to establish a new world order based on justice. Rather than relying solely on abstract generalities, this argument draws on the historical foundations of discrimination and a remarkably diverse range of intellectual influences. Taiwo fairly compares his approach to other frameworks justifying reparations, such as harm and relationship repair. A brief review cannot do justice to this study's skillful interdisciplinary weaving of history, ethics, and political philosophy. For example, Taiwo employs the Male slave revolt in Brazil in 1835 as a recurring motif in each chapter to help illustrate his points. For readers unfamiliar with the philosophical foundation of reparations, this book provides a well-written introduction. Conservative and libertarian critics of reparations should also consider reading this book, even though Taiwo makes clear he will not defend his approach against these perspectives. This eloquent cri de coeur deserves a wide audience.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and general readers.

Most people understand freedom as an unqualified political good, a North Star for both politics and personhood. In Ugly Freedoms, Anker (American studies, George Washington Univ.) complicates that common assessment. The book explores how the modern liberal conception of freedom--especially in its American manifestations--has always been bound up with the exploitation and domination of human beings and the world. The book's first chapter--which reads John Locke's depiction of the liberal individual alongside the brutal story of the Barbadian sugar plantations that lie in the background of Locke's thinking--is particularly evocative. Anker successfully raises questions about the history and underlying theory of the American liberal order in ways that provoke serious reflection. She also endeavors to show how some of what is conventionally understood as ugly might, in fact, help people think about what would constitute a better kind--a truly freer kind--of freedom. The book's final chapter--on "guts, dust, and toxins"--memorably challenges some of the central categories of modern liberal thought, particularly the idea of the self-determining individual. Anker's interventions offer a lively, energetic rethinking of the foundations and future of liberalism.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.