Stanford University Press Blog

Summer Award Winners 2021

 

 

We're delighted to share a list of SUP books that have won awards this summer.

Anthropology

From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism, and American Anthropology »

MARK ANDERSON

• Winner of the 2020 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize in Historical Anthropology, sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at William & Mary.

Mafia Raj: The Rule of Bosses in South Asia »

LUCIA MICHELUTTI, ASHRAF HOQUE, NICOLAS MARTIN, DAVID PICHERIT, PAUL ROLLIER, ARILD E. RUUD, and CLARINDA STILL

• Longlisted for the 2021 ICAS Book Prize, English - Best Book in the Social Sciences, sponsored by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS).

Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene »

Edited by ANNA L. TSING, JENNIFER DEGER, ALDER SAXENA KELEMAN and FEIFEI ZHOU

Gold Medal in the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs) - Best Adult Non-Fiction Informational E-Book category, sponsored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

American Sociological Association Conference 2021

 

New Books and New SUP Authors

Recent Award Winners

ASA Resources

 

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New Books and New SUP Authors

Announcing new books, published in the last year. We’re offering 30% off these and other recent SUP Sociology titles with discount code S21XASA-FM through our virtual exhibit ».

For the best shipping rates on orders outside of North America use the discount code S21XAOM-FM at our international distributor, CAP.

 

 

Marcela Maxfield, SUP's Sociology Acquisitions Editor, says hello to ASA and explains her areas of interest.

 

Writing The AI Marketing Canvas

A Q&A with authors Raj Venkatesan and Jim Lecinski

RAJ VENKATESAN and JIM LECINSKI

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

What Inspired you to write The AI Marketing Canvas?

AI and machine learning are shuffling the deck on every level and in every category, just like digital and big data did a few decades back. This seismic shift will require Marketers to develop new thinking, new skill sets, new strategies and systems that will require the organizational culture to evolve as well.

Accordingly Marketers today are inundated with advice and information about AI and machine learning capabilities from trade books, podcasts, trade journals, opinion pieces posted on social media platforms, and more.  The problem is, most of this material on AI and Machine Learning being offered to marketing leaders either focuses on the technology itself from a computer science perspective or on the high concept implications of AI on society.  Further, much of the materials generated are vendor-driven and don’t provide what marketers need to move forward. 

Therefore we were inspired to write, “The AI Marketing Canvas” to provide marketers with answers to these two key questions: (1) How should modern marketers be thinking about artificial intelligence and machine learning? and (2) How should marketers be developing a strategy and plan to implement AI into their marketing toolkit?

The Future of Work Is Already Here

The impact of the pandemic and the key questions we should be asking

JASON WINGARD 

Used with permission. Credit: Ryan Brandenberg, Temple University

 

The Future Is Now 

It’s no secret that institutions of higher education and businesses have been grappling with the impact automation and digital technologies have had on the way people learn and work. And, although robots and artificial intelligence have played a role in rethinking and reshaping our approach to work, a phenomenon even more disruptive accelerated the arrival of the future of work: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Prior to the pandemic, efforts to keep pace with innovation and disruption affecting nearly every facet of workplace productivity provided the opportunity for organizations to assess their ability to prepare for, and evolve with, the changing employment landscape. And then, in the blink of an eye, that “opportunity” turned into an “imperative.” 

Seemingly instantaneously, employers and employees were required to adapt to new technologies and new ways of working. The swiftness with which many organizations adapted to these changes demonstrated the necessity of a nimble workforce that is prepared to both meet current demand and anticipate and adapt to future change.

The Great Skills Gap » explores the shifting of the skills and preparation that employers need from their talent pool, and how both higher education and business can collaborate to keep pace to support a workforce that is technically proficient and exceptionally agile in their capacity to think and act creatively and quickly learn new skills. As we all learned throughout the pandemic, agility, creativity and adaptability—along with a growing set of technical skills—are and will remain essential to being a successful worker in the future of work.

Why Become a Professor?

Andy Hoffman reflects on purpose and why we need engaged scholars now more than ever

ANDREW J. HOFFMAN

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

We are proud to present an adapted excerpt from The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World» by Andrew J. Hoffman.

 

Why did you choose to become a professor?

When I feel myself losing track of the purpose or meaning behind my work, I return to this simple question. And my answer is equally simple – I want my research, teaching, and outreach to have a positive imprint on the world around me. Citation counts, A-level publications, and an h-index pale in comparison to that simple outcome. 

Yet our reward systems elevate these metrics and they don’t come close to capturing my deeper purpose.  So, that leaves it to me to decide what is valuable and important in my academic pursuits.  I know that that kind of independence is hard to assert, especially when you are early in your academic career.  But as you advance, you will have more freedom to exercise your independence.  For me, I keep in mind the challenge from Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State marine ecologist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that academic scholars must abide by “scientists’ social contract” – that they have an obligation to provide a service to society, to give value for the money provided by public funding, government grants, and tuition revenue.[1]It is an obligation that is born out of both a societal need for the expertise that academics possess and a recognition of the responsibilities that come with the privileged life that academics lead.

I am writing this at a particularly precarious time.  The Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on our lives and our livelihoods.  People are suffering and society needs answers.  Yet many people are turning away from science, distrusting its conclusions and its motivations, and even questioning its assessment that the virus is real.  This is happening because we are now immersed in an array of confusing and conflicting messages that question facts, blur the line between opinion and fact, and dismiss formerly respected sources of information as merely political interests pushing a partisan agenda.  This, according to the RAND Corporation, is the existential crisis of our time.[2] If we do not improve the scientific literacy of our public and political discourse, how can we make sense of the challenging issues we face?  You can’t set policy or make informed decisions about nanotechnology, stem-cell research, nuclear power, climate change, vaccines and autism, genetically modified organisms, endocrine disruption, gun violence, or Covid-19 if you do not agree on a common set of facts to ground the conversation.