CRSC Books

Punishing the Poor The Neoliberal Government of the Social Insecurity

Loic Wacquant
2009

Loic Wacquant - The punitive turn of penal policy in the United States after the acme of the Civil Rights movement responds not to rising criminal insecurity but to the social insecurity spawned by the fragmentation of wage labor and the shakeup of the ethnoracial hierarchy. It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation...

Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

Steven Raphael
2013

Steven Raphael - Raphael and Stoll carefully evaluate changes in crime patterns, enforcement practices and sentencing laws to reach a sobering conclusion: So many Americans are in prison today because we have chosen, through our public policies, to put them there. They dispel the notion that a rise in crime rates fueled the incarceration surge; in fact, crime rates have steadily declined to all-time lows. There is also little evidence for other factors commonly offered to explain the prison boom, such as the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill since the 1950s...

When Police Kill

Franklin E. Zimring
2017

Franklin E. Zimring - Deaths of civilians at the hands of on-duty police are in the national spotlight as never before. How many killings by police occur annually? What circumstances provoke police to shoot to kill? Who dies? The lack of answers to these basic questions points to a crisis in American government that urgently requires the attention of policy experts. When Police Killis a groundbreaking analysis of the use of lethal force by police in the United States and how its death toll can be reduced.

Franklin Zimring compiles...

Sancho's Journal: Exploring the Political Edge with the Brown Berets

David Montejano
2012

David Montejano - Completing the story of the Mexican American struggle for inclusion and equal rights that he began in Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 and Quixote’s Soldiers, Montejano presents a rich ethnography of the street-level Chicano movement.

The City That Became Safe

Franklin Zimring
2011

Franklin Zimring - In The City That Became Safe, Franklin E. Zimring seeks out the New York difference through a comprehensive investigation into the city's falling crime rates. The usual understanding is that aggressive police created a zero-tolerance law enforcement regime that drove crime rates down. Is this political sound bite true-are the official statistics generated by the police accurate? Though zero-tolerance policing and quality-of-life were never a consistent part of the NYPD's strategy, Zimring shows the numbers are correct and...

Racial Formation in the United States- 3rd Edition

Michael Omi
Howard Winant
2014

Michael Omi - Twenty years since the publication of the Second Edition and more than thirty years since the publication of the original book, Racial Formation in the United States now arrives with each chapter radically revised and rewritten by authors Michael Omi and Howard Winant, but the overall purpose and vision of this classic remains the same: Omi and Winant provide an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they come to shape and permeate both identities and...

Globalization's Muse: Universities and Higher Education Systems in a Changing World

John Aubrey Douglass
C. Judson King
Irwin Feller
2009

John Aubrey Douglass - Universities have become a widely recognized route to full participation in the knowledge society. They serve as an unparalleled source of knowledge production, a foundation for modern science, an unequaled generator of talent, and a nearly required path for socioeconomic mobility. But how do we build, nurture, and sustain these crucial institutions? Globalization's Muse helps to answer those questions, informing both policymakers and educators of the profound efforts by governments and institutions, and reminding both groups that in this...

New Perspectives on Slavery and Colonialism in the Caribbean

Stephen Small
2012

Stephen Small - This reader consists of 11 articles that focus on slavery and the legacy of slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean. Analysis of slavery in the Caribbean, including variations in the nature, functioning and legacies of slavery across territories with different imperial masters – including the English, Spanish and French – has a long history and has produced a very substantial literature. There is far less work on the Dutch Caribbean, including Suriname. This reader makes a contribution to increasing our attention on the Dutch Caribbean, as well as its...

1981 – Black Liverpool Past and Present

Stephen Small
Jimi Jagne
2022

By Stephen Small and Jimi Jagne. 1981 – Black Liverpool Past and Present provides insight into the history of Liverpool’s Black communities through the eyes of two Liverpudlians: Jimi Jagne and Stephen Small. Centred around the 1981 Uprising as a pinnacle moment, the book contextualises Liverpool’s Black history before and after. In doing so, the book recognises the people who have shaped Liverpool and their stories of resistance and self-determination.

The Ordinal Society

Marion Fourcade
2024

By Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy: We now live in an “ordinal society.” Nearly every aspect of our lives is measured, ranked, and processed into discrete, standardized units of digital information. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy argue that technologies of information management, fueled by the abundance of personal data and the infrastructure of the internet, transform how we relate to ourselves and to each other through the market, the public sphere, and the state.

The personal data we give in exchange for convenient tools like Gmail and Instagram provides the...