|
Cities of God and Nationalism: Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome as Contested World Cities
by Khaldoun Samman (Paradigm Publishers, 2006)
Far from spawning an age of tolerance, modernity has created the social basis of division and exclusion, Samman argues. His book elaborates this assertion as it explores the rich but divided histories of three cities located at the crossroads of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Samman, an assistant professor of sociology at Macalester, seeks to refocus attention on modernity, which has instilled troubling dilemmas from the outside. If we are to resolve deep conflicts, he argues, we must re-imagine the institutional basis on which modernity, rather than religion, is built.
 Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820-1920
by William H. Thiesen '82 (University Press of Florida, 2006)
Spanning the transition from wood to iron shipbuilding in America, Thiesen's history tells how practical and nontheoretical methods of shipbuilding began to be discarded by the 1880s in favor of technical and scientific methods. He describes the trans-Atlantic exchange of technical information that took place during this era and the role of the U.S. Navy in that transfer. Thiesen is a historian for the United States Coast Guard and formerly curator and director of operations of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.
 Fighting the 'big boxes': Stacy Mitchell '96 makes the case for small business and local control
In her new book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses(Beacon Press), Stacy Mitchell '96 takes on not just Wal-Mart but all its rivals and followers. Like Wal-Mart, she argues, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot et al are fueling many of the nation's most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement. Drawing upon about 150 interviews with small business owners and ordinary citizens throughout the U.S., she documents how some communities are fighting back.
'Wal-Mart is country music and RVs in the parking lot, while Target is urban and puts designers in its ads. But there is virtually no difference in how these two companies operate.' |
Mitchell, who majored in history at Mac, is a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self Reliance and chairs the American Independent Business Alliance. She lives in Portland, Maine. She talked with Macalester Today:
You write about a growing movement against big-box retailers, from Damariscotta, Maine, to Austin, Texas, to Bellingham, Wash.
There's so much more going on today than just a couple of years ago. It used to be that I could follow all of the citizens groups and independent business alliances. Now I can hardly keep track of it all, try as I might, which is very encouraging. There is this growing sense out there that people want to control their own future and the future of their communities. It's a choice between two business models, one dominated by global corporations, where both power and wealth flow out of the local community and where no one--from the Chinese girl who made the shirt to the woman who rings you up at Target--makes a decent living. And another one where business is small-scale, locally owned and rooted in the community.
What is most shocking is the degree to which the growth of the big-box retailers has been supported and underwritten by public policy. That's a tragedy in a country that supposedly values fairness and independence and where every politician goes on and on about small businesses being the backbone of the economy. There's a vast gap between rhetoric and reality. What government policy has done, systematically, is undercut small business in every conceivable way.
You argue that it's a "myth" that the big-box retailers create jobs and represent "inevitable" economic progress.
You have an empty field that gets developed and now there's a big store there and it employs 300 people. You can see why people think that's economic progress. There's a sense that these companies really are adding to the local economy, but the evidence suggests quite the opposite--that they take far more out of the economy than they put back in. There's a strong connection between the growth of corporate retailers and the shrinking of the middle class and the increase in the number of working poor. Those trends are very much connected to the expansion of the big boxes, for a variety of reasons, notably their impact on manufacturing jobs and on small businesses, two long-standing pillars of the American middle class.
No matter how much they may miss the local bookstore or the neighborhood drugstore, many people assume that the rise of the chains is inevitable, that these companies are the product of a kind of economic natural selection. But in fact they owe much of their current dominance to government policy. The big chains also impose a variety of hidden costs on society--costs that don't show up on their price tags and effectively distort the market.
 You are critical of the mayor of Boston for being against Wal-Mart moving into his community but wanting to strike a deal with Target.
He didn't explain the difference, and in fact there isn't any difference. When urban liberals shun Wal-Mart but embrace Target, it sends a message to people that the problem isn't a fundamentally destructive business model. It suggests that it's really about image: Wal-Mart is country music and RVs in the parking lot, while Target is urban and puts designers in its ads.
But there is virtually no difference in how these two companies operate--from wages to their impact on local businesses, the way they squeeze suppliers, the way they bully their way into communities, the ecological consequences of their huge stores.
|
Lord of the Sabbath
by W. Robert McClelland '52 (Trafford Publishing, 2006)
A Presbyterian minister, the author has written a first novel about a pastor whose adultery reveals surprising implications that complicate his marriage and ministry. McClelland, who has a doctorate from San Francisco Theological Seminary and was a Merrill Fellow at Harvard, has had careers in pastoral ministry, college and seminary teaching, and as a TV talk show host and weatherman. He lives in Grover, Mo.
Re-Envisioning Education and Democracy
by Ruthanne Kurth-Schai and Charles R. Green (Information Age Publishing, 2006)
This book by two Macalester faculty is an invitation for widespread participation in a complex process--re-envisioning education and democracy. Kurth-Schai, chair of educational studies, and Green, professor emeritus of political science, assert that both education and democratic governance are accountable to citizens, provide focal points for social criticism, advocacy and reform, and shape how power is shared, and that therefore, reform of both ought to be pursued together. Using highly readable stories in conjunction with theory and active approaches, the authors address, chapter by chapter, issues including "Crisis," "Intuition," "Risk," "Advocacy" and more, which must be addressed if public education and democracy are to be preserved and reformed.
Structural Interrelations of Theory and Practice in Islamic Law: A Study of Six Works of Medieval Islamic Jurisprudence
by Ahmad Atif Ahmad (Brill Academic Publishers, 2006)
This volume introduces six texts of Islamic jurisprudence, written by six jurists representing all four Sunni schools of Islamic law, who lived in areas as far apart as Uzbekistan, Iraq, Syria, Gaza (Palestine), Egypt and Algeria between the 10th and 16th centuries C.E. Ahmad's reading of these texts attempts to articulate an underlying structural interrelationship between theoretical and practical legal reasoning in the Islamic juristic tradition. Ahmad, who earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2005, is an assistant professor of Islamic studies at Macalester.
 The Magic Megaphone: How to get your projects unstuck and back on track in under 60 minutes
by Nick Montoya with Roger S. Peterson '67 (Megaphone Publishing Co., 2006)
The authors describe a simple, five-step process for getting personal and business projects out of the rut caused by committee disagreements, lack of direction or wordy mission statements. Montoya is a senior manager at Intel Corp. Peterson, a free-lance business writer and writing coach, spent 10 years in college textbook publishing during which he published 45 textbooks in psychology and education.
 The Sauropods: Evolution and Paleobiology
edited by Kristina Curry Rogers and Jeffrey Wilson (University of California Press, 2005)
Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals ever to walk the Earth, and they represent a substantial portion of vertebrate biomass and biodiversity during the Mesozoic Era. The story of sauropod evolution is told in an extensive fossil record of skeletons and footprints that span the globe and 150 million years of Earth history. This book is the first comprehensive scientific summary of sauropod evolution and paleobiology. Rogers is curator of paleontology at the Science Museum of Minnesota and a visiting assistant professor in geology at Macalester.
Graceful Speech: An Invitation to Preaching
by Lucy Lind Hogan '73 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)
In this introductory textbook, which may be the first preaching textbook written by a woman, Hogan explains the theological task of becoming a preacher, the craft of writing the sermon and the importance of communicating the Gospel in the present world. Ordained in the Episcopal Church, Hogan is professor of preaching and worship at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., a United Methodist seminary.
|
