Stanford University Press Blog

Crime and Punishment

Under the Bush administration, the policing power of the US government has expanded extensively, from warrant-less wiretapping programs to enhanced interrogation techniques. In such an atmosphere, the growing field of police science is gaining attention.

The New Police Science examines the many meanings and components of police, from the preventive actions taken by the state (laws, regulations, etc.) to the enforcement and punishment of criminal justice systems. The editors point out:

it is clear that recent developments in the United States have suddenly made this…highly relevant. Agamben’s theorization of modern life as variations on the theme of ‘camp,’ with the concentration camp regarded not as an exception but as the foundation of law and sovereignty, seemed like one of those radical rants that Italian Marxists are famous for—until Guantánamo.

This collection, recently reviewed in Law & Politics Book Review, provides a valuable perspective for anyone interested in the ways power and justice are changing in modern America.

Bruce Fuller in the Media

Bruce Fuller, author of Standardized Childhood, agrees with presidential candidate Hilary Clinton that we, as a society, need to invest heavily in early childhood education. He takes a firm stance against funding universal preschool, however: studies show that the lasting benefits of preschool are mainly for those coming from low-income families, so that he where Fuller believes we should target our money and attention.

In a recent Op-Ed in the San Jose Mercury News, Fuller analyzes Clinton’s preschool proposal. He believes that “Clinton pinpoints the right problems,” but that her proposals “suffer from the political expediencies and loose thinking that sank Hollywood activist Rob Reiner's universal preschool plan last summer.”

As Virginia works to expand its preschool programs, the Washington Post turned to Fuller to comment upon the issue.

Fuller also expressed his views on the KQED show Forum yesterday, matching wits with David Kirk, author of The Sandbox Investment, who argued in favor of universal preschool.

From 1984 to 2008

A year before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China’s preparations are already well underway. Earlier this month, a celebration marked the one-year countdown to the Games, and already Beijing has undertaken massive reconstruction efforts, tested the environmental effects of decreasing car traffic within the city, and banned spitting.

While these efforts, and the economic boom accompanying them, will produce comforts and amenities for Olympic athletes and visitors, Stanford University Press author Ross Terrill argues in an August 22, 2007 New York Times Op-Ed that all of this spring cleaning has a sinister side as well: “banished from Beijing for the Olympics will be not only fractured English, but disabled people, Falun Gong practitioners, dark-skinned villagers newly arrived in the city, AIDS activists and other “troublemakers” who smudge the canvas of socialist harmony.”

Terrill compares the Beijing being build for the Olympics to the impossible promises Mao made, such as “mak[ing] the sun and moon change places,” promises he explored in Mao, A Biography. He urges us not to become too complacent about accepting the façade being built, less we forget the “Orwellian impulse to remake the truth” that lies behind it.

Let's talk about Race Relations

Is America living up to its motto E Pluribus Unum, the Latin for "From many, one" and rapidly advancing towards a melting pot? Have all races and ethnic groups enjoyed similar opportunities to assimilate into American culture? In his latest book, Race Relations: A Critique, sociologist Stephen Steinberg argues that the prediction of ultimate assimilation, replete in our history books, has been dead wrong with respect to African Americans.

In a recent interview with Znet magazine, Steinberg remarked that, “Today there is compelling evidence that Asians and light-skinned Latinos are following in the footsteps of earlier immigrants -- which is to say, footsteps leading to the melting pot. But it is another story altogether for peoples of African descent -- African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and immigrants from Africa. In effect, we are witnessing the emergence of a dual melting pot--one for blacks, the other for everybody else.”

As we arrive at the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath (of the failed, or to say the least, badly mismanaged relief and recovery efforts), which disproportionately affected one side of our “dual melting pot,” these questions are worth revisiting.

Michael Krasny Puts Pen to Paper

This fall, we will be publishing KQED host Michael Krasny's book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life.  The book will be available in bookstores on October 1.  In a recent article, Contra Cost Times columnist, Bill Mann writes that “Krasny interweaves tales of his youth with literary-interview excerpts and stories from his radio career. It is the latter I savored the most, especially the numerous stories about Krasny's tempestuous days at top-rated KGO show..”

In the book, Michael Krasny describes his experiences as host of Forum—the popular KQED show with a reputation for interviewing the country’s leading literary figures, intellectuals, and policymakers. Whether Krasny is asking Joyce Carol Oates what fires her imagination, examining with Ian McEwan why Saul Bellow is wildly popular among British novelists, considering Tony Kushner’s remark that it is harder being gay than Jewish, or discussing with Umberto Eco why he loves comic books—he is witty, amusing, and often politically charged. Brought together in Off Mike, these vignettes and commentary cast a provocative lens on our times. The book includes vignettes from 47 interviews, including Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Art Spiegelman, Tom Stoppard, Isabel Allende, and Joan Didion. (These links take you to Forum's audio interviews with these writers and artists.)   

The Law and Harry Potter

In Lex Populi [“law of the people,” playing off of vox populi], William MacNeil looks at how popular culture portrays and interacts with ideas of jurisprudence, examining Fight Club, The Lord of the Rings, the debate over Terri Schiavo’s right to die, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. When discussing Harry Potter, MacNeil draws our attention to the existence of house elves, small creatures who are enslaved to do their human masters’ bidding unless freed by being presented with clothing.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire reveals that there are hundreds of house elves working at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the shining light of all that has been good in Harry’s life. While Harry’s friend Hermione tries to free the house elves from their enslavement, the other students seem unconcerned, as do the house elves themselves, who appear to relish the opportunity to serve well and regard freedom with horror.

MacNeil contrasts the reactions of two house elves to freedom to show the difficulty of finding a legal system that meets the rights of all members of a community. Dobby relishes his freedom, but he “feels that, as far as freedom goes, there can be too much of a good thing. For instance, when Dumbledore offered to pay him ten Galleons a week—a standard wizarding wage… Dobby ‘beat... him down’ to one Galleon. Winky, on the other hand, perceives her freedom as a “‘disgrace’ and a source of ‘shame.’”

MacNeil argues that the novel shows “that rights discourse, and indeed the law itself, might be highly problematic strategies for change, something that you can’t live with, and can’t live without. For how do you change a system’s status inequities—its gender, race, and class ‘intersections’ overdetermined in the figure of Winky—through the very instrument of those inequities, namely the law?”

Japan vs. Iraq: What we did differently?

Going into the war in Iraq, President Bush invoked the American occupation of Japan after World War II, an occupation that transformed a feudal society into a democratic nation:

America has done this kind of work before. Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit -- for their sake, and our own. (September 7, 2003)

Now, historian Takeshi Matsuda presents a vivid description of the American occupation of Japan in Soft Power and its Perils (2007). He explains why the Japanese consented to the changes the American occupation brought, while we have seen the Iraqis become increasingly hostile to an American presence in their country.

One of the primary differences, in his view, is that the United States approached Japan with a genuine interest to understand Japanese culture and to create mutual understanding between the two nations. Matsuda argues that, while the American occupation was certainly geared toward a certain level of cultural imperialism, the US also prepared huge reserve of knowledge about how Japanese and American cultures would interact well before the occupation began:

“In contrast to the current situation in Iraq, the U.S occupation of Japan was a democratic experiment supported by American soft power, as well as hard power…U.S. preparation for the occupation of Japan began immediately after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—that is, four years before the actual occupation of the country.” In addition, “intergovernmental agencies in Washington also spent a great deal of effort defining the general objectives of the occupation of Japan and formulating programs need to meet the specific objectives of the United States.”

Matsuda argues for the importance of academics in shaping the perceptions of both countries of one another. Following World War II, there was an explosion of Japanese Studies in the US and American Studies in Japan, the latter often heavily subsidized by the US. According to Matsuda, this facilitated understanding between the two cultures, such that “U.S.-Japan cultural relations flourished and became full blown in later years in ways that few people would have ever dreamed.”