Over the past five decades, prominent criminologist Gregg Barak has worked as an author, editor, and book review editor; his large body of work has been grounded in traditional academic prose. His new book, Chronicles of a Radical Criminologist, while remaining scholarly in its intent, departs from the typical academic format. The book is a a first-person account that examines the linkages between one scholar's experiences as a criminologist from the late 1960s to the present and the emergence and evolution of radical criminology as a challenge to developments in mainstream criminology. Barak draws upon his own experiences over this half-century as a window into the various debates and issues among radical, critical, and technocratic criminologies. In doing so, he revisits his own seminal works, showing how they reflect those periods of criminological development.
 
What holds this book together is the story of how resisting the crimes of the powerful while struggling locally for social justice is the essence of critical criminology. His seven chapters are divided into three parts—academic freedom, academic activism, and academic praxis—and these connected stories link the author's own academic career in Berkeley, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Chicago; Alabama; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and across the United States. Barak's eventful scholarly life involved efforts to overcome laws against abortion and homosexuality; to formalize protective practices for women from domestic violence and sexual assault; to oppose racism and classism in the criminal justice system; to challenge the wars on gangs, drugs, and immigrants; and to confront the policies of mass incarceration and the treatment of juvenile offenders.
 

Class in the Composition Classroom considers what college writing instructors should know about their working-class students—their backgrounds, experiences, identities, learning styles, and skills—in order to support them in the classroom, across campus, and beyond. In this volume, contributors explore the nuanced and complex meaning of “working class” and the particular values these college writers bring to the classroom.

The real college experiences of veterans, rural Midwesterners, and trade unionists show that what it means to be working class is not obvious or easily definable. Resisting outdated characterizations of these students as underprepared and dispensing with a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach, contributors address how region and education impact students, explore working-class pedagogy and the ways in which it can reify social class in teaching settings, and give voice to students’ lived experiences.

As community colleges and universities seek more effective ways to serve working-class students, and as educators, parents, and politicians continue to emphasize the value of higher education for students of all financial and social backgrounds, conversations must take place among writing instructors and administrators about how best to serve and support working-class college writers. Class in the Composition Classroom will help writing instructors inside and outside the classroom prepare all their students for personal, academic, and professional communication.

Contributors: Aaron Barlow, ​Cori Brewster, ​Patrick Corbett, ​Harry Denny, Cassandra Dulin, ​Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, ​Mike Edwards, ​Rebecca Fraser, ​Brett Griffiths, ​Anna Knutson, ​Liberty Kohn, ​Nancy Mack, ​Holly Middleton, ​Robert Mundy, ​Missy Nieveen Phegley, ​Jacqueline Preston, ​James E. Romesburg, ​Edie-Marie Roper, Aubrey Schiavone, Christie Toth, ​Gail G. Verdi

Filmmaker, film essayist, installation artist, writer: the Berlin artist Harun Farocki has devoted his life to the power of images. Over the thirty-plus years of his career, Farocki has explored not the images of life but rather the life of images that surrounds us in newspapers, cinema, books, television, and advertising. Harun Farocki examines, from different critical perspectives, his vast oeuvre, which includes three feature films, critical media pieces, children’s television features, “learning films” in the tradition of Brecht, and installation pieces. Interviews, a selection of Farocki’s own writings, and an annotated filmography complete a valuable biography of this pioneering artist and his legendary career.

In 2011, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) turned one hundred years old. But our profession is endlessly beginning, constantly transforming itself and its purpose as new voices and identities claim their rights in our classrooms and in our country. The recognition of such claims, however, does not occur without a struggle, without collective work.  
  Listening to our Elders attempts to capture the history of those collective moments where teachers across grade levels and institutions of higher education organized to insure that the voices, heritages, and traditions of their students and colleagues were recognized within our professional organizations as a vital part of our classrooms and our discipline. In doing so, Listening to Our Elders demonstrates this recognition was not always easily given. Instead, whether the issue was race, sexuality, class, or disability, committed activist organizations have often had to push against the existing limits of our field and its organizations to insure a broader sense of common responsibility and humanity was recognized. 
  Listening to Our Elders features interviews with Malea Powell (Native American Caucus), Joyce Rain Anderson (Native American Caucus), Jeffery Paul Chan (Asian/Asian American), James Hill (Black Caucus), James Dolmage (Committee for Disability Issue in College Composition), Geneva Smitherman (Language Policy Commitee), Carlota Cárdenas de Dwyer (Latino/a Caucus), Victor Villanueva (Latino/a Caucus), Louise Dunlap (Progressive Caucus), Karen Hollis (Progressive Caucus), Louie Crew (Queer Caucus), William Thelin (Working Class Culture and Pedagogy SIG), Bill Macauley (Working Class Culture and Pedagogy SIG).

The connection between people and companion animals has received considerable attention from scholars. In her original and provocative ethnography Livestock/Deadstock, sociologist Rhoda Wilkie asks, how do the men and women who work on farms, in livestock auction markets, and slaughterhouses, interact with—or disengage from—the animals they encounter in their jobs?

Wilkie provides a nuanced appreciation of how those men and women who breed, rear, show, fatten, market, medically treat, and slaughter livestock, make sense of their interactions with the animals that constitute the focus of their work lives. Using a sociologically informed perspective, Wilkie explores their attitudes and behaviors to explain how agricultural workers think, feel, and relate to food animals.

Livestock/Deadstock looks at both people and animals in the division of labor and shows how commercial and hobby productive contexts provide male and female handlers with varying opportunities to bond with and/or distance themselves from livestock. Exploring the experiences of stockpeople, hobby farmers, auction workers, vets and slaughterers, she offers timely insight into the multifaceted, gendered, and contradictory nature of human roles in food animal production.  

Arts education provides students with opportunities to build knowledge and skills in self-expression, imagination, creative and collaborative problem solving, and creation of shared meanings. Engagement in arts education has also been said to positively affect overall academic achievement, and the development of empathy. This book provides key insights from stakeholders across the teaching and learning spectrum and offers examples of pedagogical practice to those interested in facilitating arts education.

Over the last three decades, large-scale economic developments, such as technological change, the decline in unionization, and changing skill requirements, have exacted their biggest toll on low-wage workers. These workers often possess few marketable skills and few resources with which to support themselves during periods of economic transition. In Working and Poor, a distinguished group of economists and policy experts, headlined by editors Rebecca Blank, Sheldon Danziger, and Robert Schoeni, examine how economic and policy changes over the last twenty-five years have affected the well-being of low-wage workers and their families. Working and Poor examines every facet of the economic well-being of less-skilled workers, from employment and earnings opportunities to consumption behavior and social assistance policies. Rebecca Blank and Heidi Schierholz document the different trends in work and wages among less-skilled women and men. Between 1979 and 2003, labor force participation rose rapidly for these women, along with more modest increases in wages, while among the men both employment and wages fell. David Card and John DiNardo review the evidence on how technological changes have affected less-skilled workers and conclude that the effect has been smaller than many observers claim. Philip Levine examines the effectiveness of the Unemployment Insurance program during recessions. He finds that the program's eligibility rules, which deny benefits to workers who have not met minimum earnings requirements, exclude the very people who require help most and should be adjusted to provide for those with the highest need.  On the other hand, Therese J. McGuire and David F. Merriman show that government help remains a valuable source of support during economic downturns.  They find that during the most recent recession in 2001, when state budgets were stretched thin, legislatures resisted political pressure to cut spending for the poor. Working and Poor provides a valuable analysis of the role that public policy changes can play in improving the plight of the working poor. A comprehensive analysis of trends over the last twenty-five years, this book provides an invaluable reference for the public discussion of work and poverty in America. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

An economy that operates 24/7—as ours now does—imposes extraordinary burdens on workers. Two-fifths of all employed Americans work mostly during evenings, nights, weekends, or on rotating shifts outside the traditional 9-to-5 work day. The pervasiveness of nonstandard work schedules has become a significant social phenomenon, with important implications for the health and well-being of workers and their families. In Working in a 24/7 Economy, Harriet Presser looks at the effects of nonstandard work schedules on family functioning and shows how these schedules disrupt marriages and force families to cobble together complex child-care arrangements that should concern us all. The number of hours Americans work has received ample attention, but the issue of which hours—or days—Americans work has received much less scrutiny. Working in a 24/7 Economy provides a comprehensive overview of who works nonstandard schedules and why. Presser argues that the growth in women's employment, technological change, and other demographic changes over the past thirty years gave rise to the growing demand for late-shift and weekend employment in the service sector. She also demonstrates that most people who work these hours do so primarily because it is a job requirement, rather than a choice based on personal considerations. Presser shows that the consequences of working nonstandard schedules often differ for men and women since housework and child-rearing remain assigned primarily to women even when both spouses are employed. As with many other social problems, the burden of these schedules disproportionately affects the working poor, reflecting their lack of options in the workplace and adding to their disadvantage. Presser also documents how such work arrangements have created a new rhythm of daily life within many American families, including those with two earners and absent fathers. With spouses often not at home together in the evenings or nights, and parents often not at home with their children at such times, the relatively new concept of "home-time" has emerged as primary concern for families across the nation. Employing a wealth of empirical data, Working in a 24/7 Economy shows that nonstandard work schedules are both highly prevalent among American families and generate a level of complexity in family functioning that demands greater public attention. Presser makes a convincing case for expanded research and meaningful policy initiatives to address this growing social phenomenon.

Archival research of any magnitude can be daunting. With this in mind, Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa Mastrangelo have developed an indispensable volume for the first-time researcher as well as the seasoned scholar. Working in the Archives is a guide to the world of rhetoric and composition archives, from locating an archival source and its materials to establishing one’s own collection of archival materials. This practical volume provides insightful information on a variety of helpful topics, such as basic archival theory, processes, and principles; the use of hidden or digital archives; the intricacies of searching for and using letters and photographs; strategies for addressing the dilemmas of archival organization without damaging the provenance of materials; the benefits of seeking sources outside academia; and the difficult (yet often rewarding) aspects of research on the Internet.

Working in the Archives moves beyond the basics to discuss the more personal and emotional aspects of archival work through the inclusion of interviews with experienced researchers such as Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Peter Mortensen, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Kenneth Lindblom, and David Gold. Each shares his or her personal stories of the joys and challenges that face today’s researchers.          

Packed with useful recommendations, this volume draws on the knowledge and experiences of experts to present a well-rounded guidebook to the often winding paths of academic archival investigation. These in-depth yet user-friendly essays provide crucial answers to the myriad questions facing both fledgling and practiced researchers, making Working in the Archives an essential resource.

This collection of essays examines the relationship between environmental injustice and the exploitation of working-class people. Twelve scholars from the fields of environmental humanities and the humanistic social sciences explore connections between the current and unprecedented rise of environmental degradation, economic inequality, and widespread social injustice in the United States and Canada.

The authors challenge prevailing cultural narratives that separate ecological and human health from the impacts of modern industrial capitalism. Essay themes range from how human survival is linked to nature to how the use and abuse of nature benefit the wealthy elite at the expense of working-class people and the working poor as well as how climate change will affect cultures deeply rooted in the land.

Ultimately, Working on Earth calls for a working-class ecology as an integral part of achieving just and sustainable human development.

For over one hundred years, Navajos have gone to work in significant numbers on Southwestern railroads. As they took on the arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks, they turned to traditional religion to anchor their lives.

Jay Youngdahl, an attorney who has represented Navajo workers in claims with their railroad employers since 1992 and who more recently earned a master's in divinity from Harvard, has used oral history and archival research to write a cultural history of Navajos' work on the railroad and the roles their religious traditions play in their lives of hard labor away from home.

While Chicago has the second-largest Mexican population among U.S. cities, relatively little ethnographic attention has focused on its Mexican community. This much-needed ethnography of Mexicans living and working in Chicago examines processes of racialization, labor subordination, and class formation; the politics of nativism; and the structures of citizenship and immigration law. Nicholas De Genova develops a theory of “Mexican Chicago” as a transnational social and geographic space that joins Chicago to innumerable communities throughout Mexico. “Mexican Chicago” is a powerful analytical tool, a challenge to the way that social scientists have thought about immigration and pluralism in the United States, and the basis for a wide-ranging critique of U.S. notions of race, national identity, and citizenship.

De Genova worked for two and a half years as a teacher of English in ten industrial workplaces (primarily metal-fabricating factories) throughout Chicago and its suburbs. In Working the Boundaries he draws on fieldwork conducted in these factories, in community centers, and in the homes and neighborhoods of Mexican migrants. He describes how the meaning of “Mexican” is refigured and racialized in relation to a U.S. social order dominated by a black-white binary. Delving into immigration law, he contends that immigration policies have worked over time to produce Mexicans as the U.S. nation-state’s iconic “illegal aliens.” He explains how the constant threat of deportation is used to keep Mexican workers in line. Working the Boundaries is a major contribution to theories of race and transnationalism and a scathing indictment of U.S. labor and citizenship policies.

The Mississippi River occupies a sacred place in American culture and mythology. Often called The Father of Rivers, it winds through American life in equal measure as a symbol and as a topographic feature. To the people who know it best, the river is life and a livelihood. River boatmen working the wide Mississippi are never far from land. Even in the dark, they can smell plants and animals and hear people on the banks and wharves.

Bonnie Stepenoff takes readers on a cruise through history, showing how workers from St. Louis to Memphis changed the river and were in turn changed by it. Each chapter of this fast-moving narrative focuses on representative workers: captains and pilots, gamblers and musicians, cooks and craftsmen. Readers will find workers who are themselves part of the country’s mythology from Mark Twain and anti-slavery crusader William Wells Brown to musicians Fate Marable and Louis Armstrong.

Now available in paperback, this provocative study examines the street-level decisions made by police, caught between a sometimes hostile community and a maze of departmental regulations. Probing the dynamics of three sample police departments, Brown reveals the factors that shape how officers wield their powers of discretion. Chief among these factors, he contends, is the highly bureaucratic organization of the modern police department. A new epilogue, prepared for this edition, focuses on the structure and operation of urban police forces in the 1980s. "Add this book to the short list of important analyses of the police at work....Places the difficult job of policing firmly within its political, organizational, and professional constraints...Worth reading and thinking about." —Crime & Delinquency "An excellent contribution...Adds significantly to our understanding of contemporary police." —Sociology "A critical analysis of policing as a social and political phenomenon....A major contribution." —Choice

Contributors from a variety of institution types and perspectives consider who faculty writers are and who they may be in the future, reveal the range of locations and models of support for faculty writers, explore the ways these might be delivered and assessed, and consider the theoretical, philosophical, political, and pedagogical approaches to faculty writing support, as well as its relationship to student writing support.

With the pressure on faculty to be productive researchers and writers greater than ever, this is a must-read volume for administrators, faculty, and others involved in developing and assessing models of faculty writing support.

Working with Paper builds on a growing interest in the materials of science by exploring the gendered uses and meanings of paper tools and technologies, considering how notions of gender impacted paper practices and in turn how paper may have structured knowledge about gender. Through a series of dynamic investigations covering Europe and North America and spanning the early modern period to the twentieth century, this volume breaks new ground by examining material histories of paper and the gendered worlds that made them. Contributors explore diverse uses of paper—from healing to phrenological analysis to model making to data processing—which often occurred in highly gendered, yet seemingly divergent spaces, such as laboratories and kitchens, court rooms and boutiques, ladies’ chambers and artisanal workshops, foundling houses and colonial hospitals, and college gymnasiums and state office buildings. Together, they reveal how notions of masculinity and femininity became embedded in and expressed through the materials of daily life. Working with Paper uncovers the intricate negotiations of power and difference underlying epistemic practices, forging a material history of knowledge in which quotidian and scholarly practices are intimately linked.
 

Available for the first time in paperback is the critically acclaimed Working with Truman, a warm and lighthearted memoir of what it was like to work behind the scenes in the White House during Truman's term as president. Focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of those who worked closely with Truman and on the Truman not seen by the public, Hechler provides insight into one of our greatest presidents.

Packed with information and illustrations, Working with Your Woodland has given woodland owners all the basics necessary for making key decisions since it was first published in 1983. The revised edition reflects the fundamental changes in the way private woodlands are viewed. Today they must be seen as part of the whole earth rather than as owner-managed islands. Few owners are aware of the wide spectrum of compatible management objectives--such as encouragement of wildlife, development for recreation, and enhancement of scenic beauty--that can coexist with the more familiar timber and firewood potential of forested areas. Even fewer understand the purpose, techniques, environmental impacts, economics, or legalities of forest management. This edition provides necessary updating of the technological, environmental, tax, and legal concerns associated with woodland management. Three chapters have been completely rewritten, and there is new information on wetlands management, global warming, acid deposition, and rare or endangered species.