Stanford University Press Blog

A government report released earlier this week confirmed that the American economy will see a recession in 2008. Families across the country are facing foreclosure on their homes, and the dollar is at record lows.  In an article in The Chronicle Review, David Glenn asks why presidential candidates, especially Republicans, still propose tax cuts based on the now-debunked supply-side economic theory:

The hopes of the supply-side theorists of the 1970s, who proposed that revenue would often rise after tax cuts, have been thoroughly dashed by the last 30 years. Federal revenue fell after Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and again after George W. Bush's 2001 cuts. The vast majority of economists now say that tax cuts must be matched by spending cuts, or deficits will ensue.

For an answer, he turns to The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, released this week by Stanford University Press. Author Isaac William Martin argues that “Republican political leaders (falsely but successfully) interpreted Proposition 13's success in California in 1978 as a broad mandate for cutting income taxes as well as property taxes,” a policy that has shaped and symbolized the party every since.

Martin’s showcasing of how the Republican Party came to so deeply associate itself with tax cuts helps us understand why President Bush stands so firmly by his economic policies in the face of economic upheaval. 

Creating Sustainable Value

Chris Laszlo argues in his latest book, Sustainable Value: How the World’s Leading Companies Are Doing Well by Doing Good, that far from being a cost to society and business, sustainability is emerging as a huge opportunity for both.  CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies—General Electric, Toyota, and Wal-Mart, to name just a few—are motivated by the desire to gain competitive advantage in a business environment transformed by rising fuel prices, widespread concern over the impact of climate change, and heightened consumer awareness of health and environmental issues. For more information on the book visit: www.sustainablevaluebook.com

Reforming Sociology

In the January 2008 issue of Contemporary Sociology, Theodore Gerber described On Sociology, Second Edition by John Goldthorpe as “useful, erudite, and occasionally provocative.” Goldthorpe, one of the leading minds in the field of sociology and one of the architects of rational action theory (RAT), “finds sociology in a troubling state of disarray,” primarily due to a disconnect between research and theory.

This expanded and updated edition of On Sociology argues for a more empirically rigorous approach to sociology and illustrates the dangers of the pluralism that currently rules within sociology: Goldthorpe hopes that RAT will “serve not as a basis of exclusion but rather as an exemplar of shared standards, in relation to which methodological discussion and debate can be carried on expressive of a genuine pluralism rather than of a merely convenient, ‘anything goes’ counterfeit.”

In his review, Gerber discusses the limits of Goldthorpe’s proposal, pointing to the difficulty to establishing empirical regularities when doing sociological research. This critique should spark exactly the serious debate that Goldthorpe would like to see among sociologists.

Policy vs. Hope

The Texas and Ohio primaries are coming to a close and many speculate that the results could clinch the democratic presidential nomination for either Senator Barack Obama or Senator Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have been seesawing in terms of votes in a very unpredictable year of primaries and caucuses. But Obama has been on a winning streak, sweeping the last eleven primaries straight.

Many speak of Obama’s charisma and his campaign of hope that has enthralled disillusioned citizens. Hip-hop artist Will.I.Am composed a music video featuring clips of Obama's "Yes We Can" speech and a multitude of celebrity cameos. To date, the video has received over 5.5 million hits on YouTube. In January, Caroline Kennedy Schlosser wrote an Op-ed in the New York Times, endorsing Obama and likening him to her late father, perhaps the most inspirational and hopeful president in our nation’s history.

But not everyone is swept up in Obama mania. Hillary Clinton has criticized his campaign for relying on false hope and rhetoric instead of experience and a track record of successful policy.  According to a MSNBC article, Clinton is quoted as saying, “I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change…And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."

Stanford University Press author Hirokazu Miyazaki disagrees. Miyazaki, a professor of Anthropology at Cornell University and author of The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge (2004), has focused his research on the question, “How do we keep hope alive?” In a guest column for the Ithaca Journal, Miyazaki analyzes Obama’s campaign and contends that Clinton and others are perhaps underestimating the American people’s hunger for hope.
 
He says, “Research on hope in diverse cultures shows that one individual's hope often can replicate itself, in a specific way, in the lives of many other individuals. The rhetoric of hope may seem general, abstract and intangible; but the effect of hope is often quite specific, personal and substantive.”

“Imagine what would happen if every American who has long endured disappointment, fear and hopelessness suddenly regained hope about the future. By that very fact, the most radical change imaginable would already have happened.”

The policy vs. hope debate and the presidential primaries will continue on through the end of June.

Charles Gati, E.E. Cummings, and Hungary 1956

In a newly released paperback, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, Charles Gati relates new facts about the Hungarian revolution and its suppression by the Soviet Union in a political thriller that combines the immediacy of an eyewitness account (the author was a 22-year-old reporter in Budapest during the uprising) with the experience and expertise of a scholar. Gati points out, “The Hungarians need to hear what happened 50 years ago--and Americans need to hear that in the future we will not say we seek clearly unattainable goals abroad for political ends at home.”

Denying neither Hungarian heroism nor Soviet brutality, Failed Illusions fundamentally alters our picture of what happened during the 13-day uprising that began on October 23, 1956. Gati finds that the young revolutionaries were brave but their expectations unrealistic, and their leader, Imre Nagy, a reform communist who headed the revolutionary government, could not rise to the occasion by steering a realistic course between his people’s demands and Soviet interests.

Gati’s account exposes a crucial gap between words and actions in U.S. policy. In his view the United States was all talk, no action, and offered mixed signals at best. It encouraged the revolutionaries with promises of “liberation” and the “rollback” of Soviet power from Eastern Europe. The book exposes Washington’s ambivalence by citing Vice President Nixon, who said at a top-secret NSC meeting in July 1956 that “it wouldn’t be an unmixed evil” for the U.S. if the Soviets were to invade Hungary. Interestingly, U.S. failure to aid the Hungarian revolutionaries is also the subject of a poem by E.E. Cummings, Thanksgiving 1956.

With the decrease in American casualties in Iraq, the attention of the American public has shifted elsewhere. There are many signs, however, that the situation is likely to explode again soon: the ceasefire called by Moqtada al-Sadr on August 29, 2007, is due to expire later this month, and tensions among Sunnis in Anbar Province have become worrisome.

The first book in Stanford’s new Security Studies imprint addresses this situation.  Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror by Robert Cassidy, a U.S. Army officer and fellow with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, argues that the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is best understood not as a conventional war, but as a global insurgency and counterinsurgency. Cassidy analyzes al Qaeda in this light and looks at the military cultures of the U.S., Britain, and Russia to see how they have adapted to fight a global counterinsurgency and how they will still need to change in order to be successful. He examines past successes in counterinsurgency and argues that armies should adapt a “less is more” philosophy as the GWOT moves ahead.

Stanford Security Studies aims to inform the thoughts and actions of policy makers, policy analysts, military officers, and those in government agencies and think tanks. Stanford Security Studies books are rooted in evolving theory and sound empirical research, bridging the divide between scholarship and practice to stimulate and deepen the debate on conflict and the application of force. Look for upcoming books on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US military’s misconstrued high-tech revolution, and needed reforms to our disaster response.

The Social Ramifications of Retail

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics fast approaching, international eyes will be on China and its burgeoning economy more than ever. Some estimate the number of foreign visitors to China at over a million this July, which will most likely generate handsome tourism dollars from lodging, food, and retail shopping. According to an article by Josh Adams in Asia Times, Olympic preparation has seen "Chinese consumers acquiring a taste for Western-style superstores and exclusive, big-name brands" as developers construct more large malls to accommodate the influx of foreign shoppers expected this summer. But China’s economic boom is intensifying more than just retail space. Class differences and income disparities could also be on the rise.

Adams says, "While Prada boutiques and Tissot displays are seemingly de rigueur for many Chinese malls looking to display their stylish credentials, focusing on the wealthy elite may have effectively alienated them from the country's massed ranks of aspiring middle-income families."
   
Social difference in the retail world is an issue that Amy Hanser tackles in her book Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China (2008). Hanser, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, utilizes her personal experience working as a salesclerk in various retail stores in the city of Harbin to support this unique exploration of inequality in China.
   
With the goal of understanding how economic and social transformations reshape social relations in urban China, Hanser studies how different retail sites (among them a state-owned department store with working-class clientele, a high-end private department store, and a low-end clothing bazaar) represent various social strands within Harbin society. Hanser details how interactions between salesclerks and shoppers in these retail environments play out ideas of social difference, inequality, and entitlement.
   
Will Beijing's growth in luxury stores (and there are more on the way) exacerbate unequal relations between salesclerks and customers? According to Adams' article, these new mega malls may not survive long enough to make that impact. "10% or 20% of China's malls will realize their true profit potential…these places are just too big and too pricey…As the market becomes increasingly saturated the underperformers will naturally find themselves squeezed out."

The Stake of a Reputation

We all have secrets, but the ease with which information is transmitted via YouTube, MySpace, and Google has made keep them much more difficult. Lawrence Friedman’s Guarding Life’s Dark Secrets, discussed in a recent Wilson Quarterly review by Gary Alan Fine, looks at our cultures attitudes about reputation by examining when the courts have protected our secrets and when they have not.

We tend to think of those our ancestors as being better behaved than we are today, but Friedman argues that their comportment did not always match the reputation that they carefully maintained. “Friedman emphasizes that life in ­19th-­century America was rough. Heavy drinking, fighting, and con games were com­mon in public spaces.” Society, and the laws that supported it, recognized that this behavior could never be completely suppressed.

“What resulted, [Friedman] says, was the ‘Victorian compromise,’ the practice by which (most) respectable citizens were protected from being discredited by their moral lapses, except when public notice demanded otherwise. It was a culture of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ For the middle class and the elite, it was a world of second chances. The working class served as society’s scapegoats. Thus, even though gambling was common at all levels of society, it was the gambling dens of the poor that were raided, not the salons of the wealthy. These miscreants, not so different from their fellow citizens, were discredited, isolated, and ­stigmatized.”

Today’s compromise has changed, as it is much more difficult to hide transgressions—instead, our public figures have perfected the art of the apology.

You can read the entire review here.

The Democratic presidential primary is forcing the country to pay attention to its own sexism and racism, bigotries we have swept under the rug for years. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, Gloria Steinem called sexism “the most restricting force in American life,” reinforced by NYTimes columnist Bob Hubert’s statement, “if there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America.” A San Francisco Chronicle op-ed has declared that “the race is now about race,” and the question of whether we are more misogynistic or more racist suddenly becomes of the utmost importance.

In The Difference “Difference” Makes, Deborah Rhode argues that “a central problem for American women is the lack of consensus that there is a significant problem. Gender inequalities in leadership opportunities are pervasive; perceptions of inequality are not.” It will be interesting to see how Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, propelled as it is by her husband’s career, influences this balance: her candidacy is bringing attention to institutionalized and individual misogynies, but her extraordinary chance at becoming President could be used to further dismiss the real obstacles that most women face in assuming leadership.

Despite the 1990s movement, exemplified by Tiger Woods and examined in Making Multiracials by Kimberly DaCosta, to create widespread recognition of multiracial and multiethnic identities, Barack Obama is identified, and appears to self-identify, as African-American. At the same time, he is a figure of potential reconciliation, presenting himself as a symbol that we can all move beyond black and white. Like Clinton, Obama’s position as a political leader is a challenge to the way American society conceives of its minority groups (discussed by Stephen Steinberg in Race Relations).

New Pathways to Fighting Poverty

 Author David Grusky is looking to further strengthen the fight against poverty with the new magazine Pathways. Grusky, a professor of Sociology at Stanford and founding director of its Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, serves as editor of the magazine. This role is not new to Grusky, as he has edited several books for Stanford University Press including Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics with Stephen L. Morgan and Gary S. Fields (2006) and Poverty and Inequality with Ravi Kanbur (2006), in addition to co-authoring Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men with Maria Charles (2004).  All of his titles have been tremendous additions to SUP’s Studies in Social Inequality series.

Describing the goals of Pathways, Grusky says, "It provides new trend data detailing how some types of inequality are taking off, others are declining, and yet others are stable. It describes which interventions are working and which aren't. And it brings to the public new research that is changing how we understand the sources of and solutions to poverty and inequality."

The magazine has had quite the auspicious, and timely, beginning with its inaugural issue featuring essays from this year's top Democratic presidential nominees: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. The candidates discuss their policies on reducing poverty and revitalizing the economy, discussions that dovetail nicely with the upcoming February 5 primary elections.

Pathways has received press in our area with articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and Stanford News Service. The magazine is published four times a year and is free to readers courtesy of the Elfenworks Foundation.