Stanford University Press Blog

Climate Change’s Poisoned Culture

Climate change has joined sex, religion, and politics as an issue not to be discussed in polite conversation.

by ANDREW J. HOFFMAN

Public Domain image via Pixabay.

According to a survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, two-thirds of Americans rarely if ever discuss global warming with family or friends. Those that choose to open up the topic will find that it sharply divides people along ideological lines. A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that only 46% of Republicans believe that 'there is solid evidence the earth is warming', while the corresponding number for Democrats is 84%. How did this happen? When nearly 200 scientific agencies around the world (including those of every one of the G8 countries) and 97 per cent of the 11,944 peer-reviewed journal articles between 1991 and 2011 endorse the position that climate change is happening, why is there such an emotional and vitriolic debate over this single scientific issue?

The answer is because the public debate over climate change is no longer about science. It is about values, culture, worldviews and ideology. As physical scientists explore the mechanics and implications of anthropogenic climate change, social scientists explore the cultural reasons why people support or reject their scientific conclusions. What we find is that scientists do not hold the definitive final word in the public debate on this issue. Instead, the public interprets and validates conclusions from the scientific community by filtering their statements through our own worldviews.

America's Dispossessed

The foreclosure crisis is a crisis of invisibility.

by ISAAC MARTIN & CHRISTOPHER NIEDT

CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In the peak years of the foreclosure crisis, from 2007 to 2012, almost one American adult in twenty lost a home because of inability to afford the mortgage payments. That amounts to more than ten million people. Today, foreclosures continue to hamstring dreams of homeownership—and as of 2013, the rate of foreclosure in the United States was still hovering near a record high. 

 

Figure: A tsunami of dispossession: Annual average of the quarterly foreclosure start rate.
Sources: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Mortgage Bankers Association.

It is easy to forget that every vertical inch on this line graph represents hundreds of thousands of homeowners, each receiving an official notice that a banking institutions has initiated legal proceedings to repossess their home. But each and every foreclosure is the end of someone’s personal story.

On the Merits of Brevity

Print is not dead, and other lessons we’ve learned from the Stanford Briefs imprint.

Since its launch, 13 books have been published (or are soon-to-be published) under the Stanford Briefs imprint. 

In 2010 the Press received a book proposal that stirred some debate and ultimately catalyzed the launch of an unprecedented experimental imprint. The proposal—while insightful and engagingly written—bumped up against editorial resistance: the content was compelling, the book itself, however, was quite brief, much shorter than the traditional monograph typically published by academic presses. Editorial’s initial reaction was one of uncertainty: what to do with a too-short book with such promise? 

The perceived shortcoming of the manuscript in question—brevity—was spun on its head to become the central conceit of a new imprint.

After some editorial reflection, the perceived shortcoming of the manuscript in question—brevity—was spun on its head to become the central conceit of a new imprint: the Stanford Briefs. The proposal’s arrival dovetailed with advances in printing and publishing technologies that made short-form book publishing a practically feasible, and intellectually intriguing new model. New strides in digital distribution and print-on-demand options brought down the overhead costs that previously made short-form publishing financially unviable. Meanwhile, because the books were short, production timetables could be accelerated to offer readers timely and concise commentary on a variety of issues.

An Improbable Comeback

How Chile weathered one of the greatest natural disasters in recent history.

Collapsed building in Concepción. Photo by Claudio Nuñez. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikipedia.

In 2010 an 8.8 magnitude earthquake wracked Chile—the sixth-largest quake in the world since 1900. NASA estimates that the event moved Chile’s capital, Santiago, eleven inches to the West, and even tilted the Earth’s axis by three inches. On the ground, the shocks killed hundreds, displaced millions, and devastated nationwide infrastructure—schools, hospitals, roads, homes, and businesses—across a vast swath of the country’s midsection, paralyzing the country for weeks. Occurring at the twilight of Michelle Bachelet’s presidency, just days before the inauguration of Sebastián Piñera, Chile found itself in the grip of national catastrophe just as the nation’s top political leadership was in a period of transition. 

Circumstances were dire, the outlook was bleak, and the barriers to recovery seemed staggering—yet, within six weeks, all of Chile’s schoolchildren had returned to classes; by the end of the year—despite sustaining economic damages equivalent to one-fifth of the country’s total GDP—Chile’s economy was back on track, delivering a strong 6 percent annual growth rate at a time when the world economy was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. Chile’s restoration proved so swift and robust that it garnered accolades from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) who later that same year extended an invitation to Chile to become a full member of its trade forum.

The Stage Is Set

Envisioning a prosperous and progressive future for Latin America.

by ALEJANDRO TOLEDO

 

In the past two decades, Latin America has gone through a major transformation. You could even call it a renaissance. This renaissance could continue for many decades, transforming most Latin American countries into highly developed, socially more equal and deeply democratic societies. In these societies, today’s poor and lower middle classes would be full participants in vibrant, socially progressive, diverse national cultures, both part of and very influential in shaping the global knowledge economy. Yet, there is no assurance that the renaissance will continue; Latin America is at a crucial moment. Hard work, planning, and serendipity have led us to a time and place where we have a historic opportunity to make a giant leap forward.

Hard work, planning, and serendipity have led us to a time and place where we have a historic opportunity to make a giant leap forward.

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Latin American countries implemented national development strategies based on economic reform and democratic governance. In the 2000s, these reforms helped the region attain sustained economic growth of almost 4.5 percent per year since 2003. With hardly a ripple, Latin American economies just kept expanding through the economic crisis of 2008–2009. Two of the big economies, Argentina and Peru, have had much higher annual growth rates of about 7 to 7.5 percent.

Achieving these levels of economic expansion has opened up tremendous opportunities for changing Latin Americans’ lives and for further strengthening democracy in the region. The sustained nature of this growth has had a major impact on poverty reduction, at least in terms of how many people earn less than $2 per day, which is the way international agencies measure poverty, or $1 per day, which is the way these agencies measure extreme poverty. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), based on these measures, the percentage of people living under the poverty line decreased from 42 to 29 percent in 2000–2011, and those in extreme poverty decreased from 18 to 12 percent.

Discriminatory Design

How we train the gaze of science to think in prejudiced terms.

CC0 via Pixabay.

"Whose voices are missing at the lab bench?" asks Ruha Benjamin, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies and author of People’s Science. This question, posed in her recent TEDx Talk, forms the point of departure for Benjamin's discussion on discriminatory design in the medical sciences, in which she examines how latent prejudices shape scientific research—and how, in consequence, emergent biotechnologies can perpetuate prejudgment and discrimination. 

At the heart of this phenomenon, Benjamin notes, is the compulsion to locate problems within particular demographics, rather than thinking about issues more holistically. In her talk she shares three case studies of discriminatory design in the biotechnology field to reveal how prejudice perpetuates itself by shaping our assumptions and the research questions on which those assumptions are based. Without careful consideration, Benjamin cautions, we run the risk of unwittingly reproducing social inequalities across the gamut of race, gender, class, disability, and nationality.

Measuring Up

On the vexing history of assessing women’s literary achievements.

by MELISSA SODEMAN

"Their First Quarrel." Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson. Public Domain image via Wikipedia.

How do we measure women’s literary achievements? Today, the question is an uncomfortable one, carrying as it does the suggestion that critical assessments of poetry and fiction work on the model of a yardstick. But as Katherine Angel reveals in a recent LARB essay, some of our most well respected literary institutions do, in fact, operate by taking the measure of women writers, through sometimes oblique editorial practices that tend to shore up existing gender disparities. As she puts it, “one need only look at the pages of our literary magazines to see that women’s writing has a wholly different status culturally—Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, Eleanor Catton notwithstanding. Our idea of serious, intellectual writing appears to be overwhelmingly male.”

The question of how to assess women’s literary abilities was a vexed one in the eighteenth century as well. In the 1790s in particular, as British women writers were publishing in greater numbers than ever before but struggling to establish lasting literary reputations, two periodicals offered up their own idiosyncratic methods of assessing women’s literary abilities. On April 2, 1792, slotted between a theatrical review and a note about some particularly luscious hothouse peas served at a royal dinner, a newspaper called the Star printed the "Scale of the Female Genius of this Country in the Year MDCCXCII”: 

A Book Jacket on Steroids

Executive Editor, Eric Brandt, on publishing former Peruvian President, Alejandro Toledo.

by ERIC BRANDT

Alejandro Toledo was Peru's 48th president, holding office from 2001-2006.

On December 11, I finally received the email response I had been hoping for. It was from the Clinton Foundation and included an endorsement of Alejandro Toledo’s forthcoming book, The Shared Society:

As President of Peru, Alejandro Toledo confronted some of Latin America’s biggest challenges. Today, he shares his vision for the region’s future and offers a roadmap for promoting growth and creating the inclusive, prosperous society that is well within reach.

—President Bill Clinton

In my long career as an editor, I’ve never obtained a book endorsement from a former US president. In the following weeks, I would also receive endorsements from world-famous economist Francis Fukuyama and the former president of Brazil, Fernando Cardoso. As Toledo’s literary agent said, “This is going to be a book jacket on steroids!”

"When the Shah was shot…"

On the intellectual merits of fiction and the debut novel of Redwood Press.

by KATE WAHL

"Naser al-Din Shah" by Abul Hasan Ghaffari. Depiction of the Qajar monarch who features in Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's new novel, The Woman Who Read Too Much. Public Domain image via Wikipedia.

The email arrived with the morning download of author queries, manuscript reviews, and book proposals and recommendations. This one, from a Stanford colleague, subject line, “Greetings and an Inquiry,” opened with discussion of a speaker who had come to campus a few years earlier: Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, brilliant lecturer, previous book published by Bloomsbury, accomplished novelist. And that’s where I stopped short—a novelist. SUP does not publish fiction.

Some editorial instinct urged me to question my immediate “no fiction” response.

When culling book proposal submissions, the first pass is always the easiest: eliminate the “don’ts”—those manuscripts that don’t conform, in form or content, with our publishing agenda. And the line between nonfiction and fiction is often starkly drawn at publishing houses. But within my own acquisition area, Middle East studies, I’ve increasingly noticed works of fiction on syllabi alongside our Press monographs. Some editorial instinct urged me to question my immediate “no fiction” response.

No More Trees: A Story in Colophon Design

SUP’s Art Director on designing the Redwood Press mark.

by ROB EHLE

 

The Stanford University Press redwood tree doodle is about sixteen months old this February. I call it the Dwood for short. When we relocated the Press HQ to Redwood City in late 2013, Alan (the director) suggested it might be time for a new colophon—which is what stodgy book people call logos. So after about six months of scribbles, furrowed brows, more scribbles, courteous puzzlement, more scribbling, a couple snippy e-mails, two martinis with copious tears, and a coin toss, we had one. It isn’t easy to follow a classic like the stacked-books “S” that had been Stanford Press’s mark for about three decades. But when someone looked at my tree and said, “Rob, that is the least crappy work you have done in years,” I finally got the validation I’d been craving since I started here.

Introducing Redwood Press

We’re launching a new trade imprint (and we’re pretty stoked about it). 

 

For some time we’d been floating the idea: what if the Press started a new imprint, exclusively trade-oriented? On the strength of our brand, but without titular reference to the university, such an imprint would give editors more imaginative latitude, allowing them to experiment in new formats, and to extend the mission of the Press and its list to a wider audience. Enticing though the prospects were, the imprint remained a gleam in the collective eye of editorial—until now.

Redwood Press curates well-crafted books that spur thought and stir debate.

This week Stanford University Press announces the launch of Redwood Press, a new trade imprint. Under this name—a nod both to Stanford University’s home in Palo Alto (it’s a coastal redwood tree) and the Press’s new Redwood City headquarters—the Press will publish thought-provoking nonfiction and stimulating fiction for the general reader. Open to both academics as well as non-academic writers—journalists, novelists, and other influential voices—this imprint is geared toward big ideas and broad audiences.