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Today, one out of every nine prisoners is serving a life sentence. Even though a proportion is serving a sentence of life without parole, the majority of lifers will at one point be released to society. We know, however, very little on what happens to those sentenced with life imprisonment after release. As they have been removed from society for decades, their re-entry process cannot be equated to that of other delinquents who have served much shorter prison sentences. To shed light on this question, this book discusses the life histories of more than sixty homicide offenders who completed a life sentence. Some were re-incarcerated, while others were able to build a life beyond bars. Against the backdrop of tough-on-crime policies, the book takes the reader on a journey into the lives of these men and women, the events that lead to their incarceration, and the struggles they faced upon release. The goal of this book is to offer the reader a unique insight into the lives of long-term incarcerated individuals and to provide them with a new understanding on how to explain their successes and failures post-release. Not only does the book move forward our theoretical understanding of crime throughout the life course, it also provides a basis for future discussion for policy and legislature changes in the context of the goals, costs and effects of long-term imprisonment.

We are in a struggle for the very soul of democracy, and all that we hold dear - interdependence, reason, compassion, respect for all human beings, and stewardship of the natural world that sustains us,– is under direct, unabashed assault. This book is meant for those who are concerned about dangers to our democracy, and to our social health as a nation. It is for those who desire to work for social justice, and to respond to essential protests by enacting progressive change. The stories offered in this book provide examples of the critical work being done to create generative interdependence: a community that fully values diversity and connection, that nurtures creativity and scientific rigor, and that embodies responsibility for others and the freedom to find new and better ways of living out, and creating, expansive human communities of connection, respect and cooperation. In this book, we will explore the worlds of social enterprise, impact investing, and other attempts to create economic systems that are environmentally sound and economically just. And we will study the way in which universities and colleges are educating students to be critical participants in creating a truly just and sustainable social order. In each of these instances, activists are working from positions of power to transform institutional practices and structures to foster justice and equality. Their work, “after the protests are heard,” aims at actually enacting social change once injustices are brought to light.

The global financial crisis showed deep problems with mainstream economic predictions, as well as the vulnerability of the world's richest countries and the enormous potential of some poorer ones. China, India, Brazil, and other counties are growing faster than Europe or America and have weathered the crisis better. Is their growth due to following conventional economic guidelines or to strong state leadership and sometimes protectionism? These issues are basic to the question of which countries will grow in coming decades, as well as the likely conflicts over global trade policy, currency standards, and economic cooperation. This is the third part of a trilogy comprised of the first three books in the Possible Future series.

When United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth plane hijacked in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the gash it left in the ground became a national site of mourning. The flight's forty passengers became a media obsession, and countless books, movies, and articles told the tale of their heroic fight to band together and sacrifice their lives to stop Flight 93 from becoming a weapon of terror. This book argues that by memorializing these individuals as patriots, we have woven them into the much larger story of our nation—about what it means to be truly American. The book examines the symbolic impact and role of the Flight 93 disaster in the nation's collective consciousness, delving into the spontaneous memorialization efforts that blossomed in Shanksville immediately after news of the crash spread; the ad-hoc sites honoring the victims that in time emerged; and the creation of an official, permanent crash monument in Shanksville like those built for past American wars. The book also analyzes the cultural narratives that evolved in films and in books around the events on the day of the crash and the lives and deaths of its “angel patriot” passengers, uncovering how these representations of the event reflect the myth of the authentic American nation—one that Americans believed was gravely threatened in the 9/11 attacks. The book unveils how, in the wake of 9/11, America mourned much more than the loss of life.

Arab New York is an ethnographic exploration of how everyday life and politics intersect in the diverse and complex Arab communities of New York City. The book argues that politics and contention move into everyday social spaces in order to circumvent many of the most challenging barriers to Arab American political participation. To show this, it studies Arab communities in practice, places where Arab Americans identify together as Arab and engage in collective work: in particular, community organizations providing services to newly immigrated Arabs and social movement organizations advocating on behalf of freedom and justice in their countries of origin. The book covers issues of forming community in diaspora, young women’s political engagement, differences between different approaches to pro-Palestine activism, and the challenges and possibilities of organizing on behalf of the Arab spring revolutions. Through detailed portraits of community organizations and activist groups, Arab New York helps explain why politics is everywhere for Arab Americans, and how their experiences of contestation, exclusion and acceptance shape their lives.

This book brings together empirical work on polyamory on the one hand and feminist, queer, and critical race theory on the other fill a theoretical gap in understanding the role of monogamy in legitimating and perpetuating relations of social and cultural inequality. The two central theoretical goals in the book are to (1) begin unpacking the links between compulsory and institutionalized monogamy and heteromasculine privilege and dominance as it intersects with race and sexuality, and (2) develop a theoretical framework for identifying and cultivating what the author calls polyqueer sexualities—sexual and relationship intimacies that include more than two people and that, through plurality, open up possibilities to “undo” race and gender hierarchies in ways that would not otherwise arise within the context of dyadic sex or monogamy. Given the role of compulsory monogamy in legitimating and perpetuating race, gender, and sexual inequalities, the author argues that polyqueer challenges to mononormativity can, if done collectively, undo at least part of those systems of domination within the context of intimate relationships both in terms of their symbolic meaning and their embodied practice. The author does so by exploring narratives of cheating, constructions of the “Down Low,” and erotic threesomes, as well as her own experiences of polyamory.

This collection expands scholarly understandings of citizenship in an age in which the material body and its health, vitality, and natural and social environments not only create and discipline the citizen-subject, but also provide the conditions necessary for its recognition and political agency. Together, the chapters consider biocitizenship as a unique mode of biopolitical governance, but also as a response and sometimes a resistance to it. Looking closely at the ways in which the body and citizenship interanimate each other, the collection moves away from biocitizenship as a static form of biomedical subjectivity or category of belonging and redefines it as a dynamic and essential—sometimes generative, and sometimes limiting—element of biopolitics. The book has three primary goals: to serve as the first multidisciplinary forum on biocitizenship, bringing together a variety of voices from different fields (including voices from outside the academy); to redefine biocitizenship as a broad mode of political action linked to health, bodies, and life; and to critically interrogate both the “bio” and “citizenship” of biocitizenship.

Black women’s voices are infrequently theoretically centered in health literatures about how they experience and co-create their health, and it is even rarer for Black girls to be taken into account as reliable knowers. Black Women’s Health explores the real-life meanings and everyday practices of health (i.e., mental, physical, emotional, and sexual) for the African American mothers and daughters whose narratives comprise the research. The book draws from extensive fieldwork and focus groups conducted with African American mothers and their adolescent daughters ages 12–18 in North Carolina in their discussions about health, sexuality, intimacy, and transitions to “womanhood” in a variety of contexts. In this case, micro-theory draws on multiple concepts to reveal patterns of intergenerational health practices and communication. The methodological framework draws from a Black feminist and intersectional theoretical orientation to situate Black women’s and girls’ health. Black Women’s Health is thus the first scholarly book to treat the health status of African American mothers and daughters as integrally linked. Black Women’s Health probes the various ways in which African American mothers discuss vital issues with their daughters, and how their daughters co-construct, interpret, and resist maternal and cultural narratives of health, sexuality, and racial identity. These direct accounts highlight how African American women and girls navigate their health and intimate relationships, as well as the various health disparities rooted in the racism, sexism, and class marginality they experience.

In the current historical moment borders have taken on heightened material and symbolic significance, shaping identities and the social and political landscape. “Borders”—defined broadly to include territorial dividing lines as well as sociocultural boundaries—have become increasingly salient sites of struggle over social belonging and cultural and material resources. How do contemporary activists navigate and challenge these borders? What meanings do they ascribe to different social, cultural, and political boundaries, and how do these meanings shape the strategies in which they engage? Moreover, how do these social movements confront internal borders based on the differences that emerge within social change initiatives? This book explores these important questions through case studies situated in geographic contexts around the globe. By conceptualizing struggles over identity, social belonging, and exclusion as extensions of border politics, the book captures the complex ways in which geographic, cultural, and symbolic dividing lines are blurred and transcended, but also fortified and redrawn. The book places right-wing and social justice initiatives in the same analytical frame to identify patterns that span the political spectrum. It offers a lens through which to understand borders as sites of diverse struggles, as well as the strategies and practices used by diverse social movements in today's globally interconnected world.

How do interracial couples negotiate ethnoracial boundaries? Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage from the United States to Brazil takes a novel approach to answering this question by examining how contemporary black-white couples make sense of ethnoracial boundaries in their lives. Based on over 100 qualitative interviews with husbands and wives in black-white couples in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, Boundaries of Love unpacks the cultural repertoires of race-mixing in these two post-Atlantic slavery societies and shows how different approaches to race mixture - celebrated in Brazil versus illegal for much of U.S. history - influence the meanings that contemporary interracial couples give to their lives and social interactions. Employing an innovative “critical constructivist” approach to race and ethnicity, Boundaries of Love compares the experiences of couples involving black men and white women with those of black women with white men in these two diverse, multicultural settings. It reveals the influence of ethnoracial boundaries on: dating preferences throughout the life course in their “romantic career;” comparisons between their own racial identity and how their spouse sees their blackness or whiteness; how parents identify their children and its implications for affirmative action eligibility; how white families handle the introduction of a black in-law; and the compromises couples make spending time together in public. Through its fresh qualitative comparative approach, Boundaries of Love provides a unique perspective on racial dynamics in the United States and Brazil and clearly illuminates the familiar adage that race is a social construction.

Why are there so few women in science? This book uses the experiences of successful women scientists and engineers to answer the question of why elite institutions have so few women scientists and engineers tenured on their faculties. Women are highly qualified, motivated students, and yet they have drastically higher rates of attrition, and they are shying away from the fields with the greatest demand for workers and the biggest economic payoffs, such as engineering, computer sciences, and the physical sciences. The book shows that these continuing trends are not only disappointing, they are urgent: the U.S. can no longer afford to lose the talents of the women scientists and engineers, because it is quickly losing its lead in science and technology. Ultimately, these biases and barriers may lock women out of the new scientific frontiers of innovation and technology transfer, resulting in loss of useful inventions and products to society.

Brown Bodies, White Babies contributes to an active field of literature on reproductive technologies while addressing understudied aspects of surrogacy within this scholarship. With notable exceptions, feminist analyses of surrogacy have largely focused on the gendered implications of the practice and minimized the role of race. Brown Bodies, White Babies takes intersectionality as a crucial starting point, examining the ways in which identity categories come together to form nexuses of privilege and oppression. Fertility clinics, surrogacy agencies, and intended parents often dismiss the role of race in gestational surrogacy arrangements as inconsequential, particularly in comparison to the race of egg and sperm donors who will contribute their genetic material. A surrogate is measured instead by markers of appropriate femininity, including the completeness of her own biological family, and the perceived authenticity of her altruistic motivations. Yet gender identity is not isolated from socially identified race, and thus the race of the surrogate takes on varying levels of importance in relation to other intersectional constructs. As new media narratives of surrogacy are constantly being produced and innovations in reproductive technologies advance at a rapid rate, it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep pace. However, the arguments and theoretical frameworks that underpin this research remain relevant, largely because this project resonates beyond the specificity of ARTs and draws historicized comparisons that tap into a much longer tradition of cross-racial reproductive labor.

Building a Better Chicago explores the complex ecosystem of nonprofits within Chicago and highlights the tensions between formal nonprofits and informal grassroots organizations. As scholars of urban neighborhoods argue, such field-level analysis allows one to more fully understand how relationships between community members within the neighborhoods and external agencies and groups frame neighborhood dynamics. Throughout the text, the author analyzes how urban elites, nonprofit staff, and residents use interorganizational trust and mistrust to respond to large-scale redevelopment initiatives. As part of this, the author analyzes the New Communities Program, a ten-year, multimillion-dollar urban redevelopment initiative that was led by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national community development intermediary. Problematizing normative understandings of organizational trust and mistrust, the author examines the ways that Chicago’s poor Black and Mexican American communities leveraged collective skepticism as a tactical tool in order to ensure more equitable redevelopment occurred in their neighborhoods. Organizational trust is not always a positive force—rather, it can be co-opted as a mode of control, used to minimize dissent and to socialize members into a homogenous organizational culture. This book demonstrates how organizational mistrust, or collective skepticism, can yield a number of positive outcomes.

There are people dedicated to improving the way we eat, and people dedicated to improving the way we give birth. A Bun in the Oven is the first comparison of these two social movements. In this book Barbara Katz Rothman traces the food and the birth movements through three major phases over the course of the 20th century in the United States: from the early-20th-century era of scientific management; through to the consumerism of post–World War II with its “turn to the French” in making things gracious; to the late-20th-century counterculture midwives and countercuisine cooks. Katz Rothman then looks at today’s world of risk management in both arenas. The book explores the tension throughout all of these eras between the industrial demands of mass management and profit making, and the social movements—composed largely of women coming together from very different feminist sensibilities—that are working to expose the harmful consequences of industrialization, and make birth and food both meaningful and healthy. In both movements, issues of the natural, the authentic, and the importance of “meaningful” and “personal” experiences get balanced against discussions of what is sensible, convenient, and safe, operating in a context of commercial and corporate interests that place profit and efficiency above individual experiences and outcomes. A Bun in the Oven brings new insight into the relationship between our most intimate, embodied personal experiences, the industries that control them, and the social movements that resist the industrialization of life and seek to birth change.

This book situates the current crisis in the historical trajectory of the capitalist world-system, showing how the crisis was made possible not only by neoliberal financial reforms but by a massive turn away from manufacturing things of value towards seeking profit from financial exchange and credit. Much more basic than the result of a few financial traders cheating the system, this is a potential historical turning point. The book establishes why the system was ripe for crisis of the past, and yet why this meltdown was different. It concludes by asking whether as deep as the crisis is, it may contain seeds of a new global economy, what role the US will play, and whether China or other countries will rise to global leadership. This is the first part of a trilogy comprised of the first three books in the Possible Future series.

The Business of Birth examines the effects of malpractice and reproductive rights laws on maternity care practices in the US from 1995 to 2015. It is a common public belief that frivolous malpractice claims and women’s choices shape hospital birth practices. This book uses mixed methods to demonstrate that this belief is inaccurate. The Business of Birth carefully documents how there are interconnected systems of laws and policies, or legal “regimes,” that influence birth practices in unexpected ways. When it comes to malpractice, the standard of care that defines malpractice is internal to the medical profession. This means that tort laws do not exert the external pressure that physicians believe they do, although professional associations, liability insurers, risk managers, and hospital legal counsel reinforce a fear of liability risk. This fear can encourage obstetricians to intervene into labor and birth with scientifically unsupported technology or procedures with known risks. But reducing liability risk can encourage risky practices that promote organizational efficiency over patient safety. The Business of Birth also examines the implications of reproductive rights laws for maternity care practices, defining states that protect women’s reproductive rights as woman-centered and those that protect fetuses as fetus-centered. Reproductive justice theory argues that pregnant women’s rights during childbirth are connected to laws governing the full spectrum of reproduction. Woman-centered approaches to pregnancy and abortion promote choice, informed consent, and the right to bodily integrity when women give birth, while fetus-centered regimes limit women’s rights and choices during birth.

Camming is based on a five-year mixed-methods study of the erotic webcam industry, and tells a pornographic story about the multibillion-dollar online sex industry colloquially called “camming.” Through camming, millions of people from all over the globe have found decent wages, friendship, intimacy, community, empowerment, and pleasure. This deeply rich book is filled with the stories of a diverse sample of cam models from around the world. This book is not a utopian tale. Cam models, like all sex workers, must grapple with exploitation, discrimination, harassment, and stigmatization. Using an intersectional lens, Jones is attentive to how the overlapping systems of neoliberal capitalism, White supremacy, patriarchy, cissexism, heterosexism, and ableism shape all cam models’ experiences in this new global sex industry. This thorough examination of the camming industry provides a unique vantage point from which to understand and theorize around gender, sexuality, race, and labor in a time when workers globally face increasing economic precariousness and worsened forms of alienation, and desperately desire to recapture pleasure in work. Despite the serious issues cam models face, Jones’s focus on pleasure will help people better understand the motivations for engaging in online sex work, as well as the complex social interactions between cam models and customers. In Camming, Jones pioneers an entirely new subfield in sociology—the sociology of pleasure. The sociology of pleasure can provide new insights into the motivation for social behavior and assist sociologists in analyzing social interactions in everyday life.

More than 1.3 million Korean Americans live in the United States, the majority of them foreign-born immigrants and their children, the so-called 1.5 and second generations. While many sons and daughters of Korean immigrants outwardly conform to the stereotyped image of the upwardly mobile, highly educated super-achiever, the realities and challenges that the children of Korean immigrants face in their adult lives as their immigrant parents grow older and confront health issues that are far more complex. This book explores how earlier experiences helping immigrant parents navigate American society have prepared Korean American children for negotiating and redefining the traditional gender norms, close familial relationships, and cultural practices that their parents expect them to adhere to as they reach adulthood. The book explores issues such as the children's childhood experiences, their interpreted cultural traditions and values in regards to care and respect for the elderly, their attitudes and values regarding care for aging parents, their observations of parents facing retirement and life changes, and their experiences with providing care when parents face illness or the prospects of dying. The book provides a new look at the linked lives of immigrants and their families, and the struggles and triumphs that they face over many generations.

Based on a multimethod study that centers on interviews with over 30 conservationists, field biologists, ecologists, paleontologists and over 3 years of my fieldwork on urban beaches in the New York City area, the Florida Keys, and international conferences, Catch and Release explores the interspecies relationships between humans and horseshoe crabs—our multiple sites of entanglement and enmeshment as we both come to matter. As I show, crabs and humans make each other in particular ways. Humans have literally harvested the life out of horseshoe crabs for multiple purposes; we interpret them for understanding geologic time, we bleed them for biomedical applications, we collect them for agricultural fertilizer, we eat them as delicacies, we rescue them for conservation, we capture them as bait, we categorize them as Endangered. In contrast, the crabs make humans matter by revealing our species vulnerability to endotoxins, offering opportunities for career opportunities and profiteering off of crab bodies, and fertilizing the soil of agricultural harvest for human food. In these acts of harvesting, I consider how horseshoe crabs and humans make meaning of events such as the Anthropocene (the epoch of geologic time that attributes climate change and species decline to human activities), global warming, and biomedical innovation.

This book explores the twenty-first-century consequences of immigration through an examination of how the so-called second generation is faring educationally in six countries: France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. This book brings together a team of renowned social science researchers from around the globe to compare the educational achievements of children from low-status immigrant groups to those of mainstream populations in these countries, asking what we can learn from one system that can be usefully applied in another. The chapters conclude that educational processes do, in fact, play a part in creating unequal status for immigrant groups in these societies. In most countries, the youth coming from the most numerous immigrant populations lag substantially behind their mainstream peers, implying that they will not be able to integrate economically and civically as traditional mainstream populations shrink. Despite this fact, the comparisons highlight features of each system that hinder the educational advance of immigrant-origin children, allowing the chapters to identify a number of policy solutions to help fix the problem. A comprehensive look at a growing global issue, the book represents a major achievement in the fields of education and immigration studies.