University of Michigan Press Blog

UM Press author explains Congress' low approval ratings for Huffington Post, KPFK

David Jones, author of Americans, Congress, and Democratic Responsiveness: Public Evaluations of Congress and Electoral Consequences, was recently interviewed by the Huffington Post and KPFK in Los Angeles about the nation's growing dissatisfaction with its elected representatives. Here, he attempts to answer the question: What's the matter with Congress?

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this past week, Congress may now be the most unpopular it has ever been. Eighty-two percent of Americans say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Other recent polls reveal similarly poor ratings. In light of these dramatic findings it is natural to ask: what is the source of this displeasure, and why does it matter?
 
Traditionally, scholars have focused on two factors that influence public evaluations of Congress—the national economy and the legislative process—and certainly both of these factors have been at work recently. Americans do not like feeling that their standard of living is being threatened, but economic growth continues to be meager at best, dragging down evaluations of everyone in government. Americans also dislike the dithering and dickering that is endemic to the legislative process, and these are characteristics that were highlighted in news coverage of the debt ceiling debate over the past month.
 
A third influence, which has customarily been overlooked, is policy representativeness. As we demonstrate in our book Americans, Congress, and Democratic Responsiveness, Americans prefer Congress to pursue policies that more closely reflect their own policy inclinations. Whenever the policy direction of Congress—particularly the House of Representatives—seems out of step, public disapproval of Congress increases.

'Elly Peterson' author celebrates 40 years of the National Women's Political Caucus

Sara Fitzgerald is a former Washington Post reporter and author of Elly Peterson: "Mother" of the Moderates, a biography of one of the leading ladies in the Republican Party, who set the stage for a new generation of women in politics. She was a panelist recently at the 40th anniversary gathering of the National Women's Political Caucus.

Forty years ago this summer, 300 women gathered at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Washington to found the National Women’s Political Caucus.

In her memoir Getting Better All the Time, Liz Carpenter recalled, “It was a day that changed my life.” If she had not gotten so involved, she wrote, “I would have missed out on so much, so many friendships with remarkable women of all income levels, so much learning as we hammered at the doors of Congress and the legislatures, so much understanding of my own country and how the other great movements for fairness and equality took place.”

By the end of that hot weekend in July 1971, the caucus had committed itself to diversity—and that included Republican women.

Betty Friedan tried to recruit Elly Peterson to attend the founding meeting, but Peterson declined. Friedan wanted Peterson involved, she wrote a few years later, because she “had been the most powerful woman in the Republican party—its traditionally powerless lady vice-chairman.” Peterson, she said, was among the “politically oriented women who hadn’t been interested in women’s rights before,” who “were ready now to organize such a caucus.”

Recently the NWPC gathered at another Washington hotel to celebrate its 40th anniversary. There were workshops on campaign skills, and rousing speeches from feminist leaders such as Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood. But for me the high point was the Saturday luncheon, when four women who had been present at the first gathering shared their memories of it.

Moderates, the debt ceiling, and the future of the Republican Party: Sara Fitzgerald, author of 'Elly Peterson,' weighs in

A couple of months ago, The Washington Post mused, in a front-page story on the presidential campaign of Jon Huntsman Jr., “Can a Republican moderate survive?”

I smiled when I saw the headline because you might think I was crazy to set out to write a book that would be titled Elly Peterson: “Mother” of the Moderates.  It’s not as if the moderates are holding a national convention, with chapters in every state and city these days!

The current Republican establishment is not very interested in "moderates," and Democrats are not very interested in things that are labeled "Republican." And for someone like Elly Peterson who abandoned the Republican Party and eventually labeled herself an "independent," ... well, perhaps there's a support group somewhere on Facebook that fits the bill.

In the case of Huntsman, a former governor of Utah who stepped down as Barack Obama’s ambassador to China to seek the presidency, his aides were concerned early on that he might be labeled a moderate--the "M-word" one called it--because that is apparently viewed as cause for immediate disqualification among the voters likely to turn out in Republican presidential primaries.

They are probably right.

Q&A with Jennifer Gabrys, author of Digital Rubbish

Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics describes the materiality of electronics from a unique perspective, examining the multiple forms of waste that electronics create as evidence of the resources, labor, and imaginaries that are bundled into these machines. By drawing on the material analysis developed by Walter Benjamin, this natural history method allows for an inquiry into electronics that focuses neither on technological progression nor on great inventors but rather considers the ways in which electronic technologies fail and decay. Ranging across studies of media and technology, as well as environments, geography, and design, Jennifer Gabrys pulls together the far-reaching material and cultural processes that enable the making and breaking of these technologies.

Jennifer Gabrys is Senior Lecturer in Design and Convener of the Masters in Design and Environment in the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Listen to the podcast

Vodcast with Sara Fitzgerald, author of "Elly Peterson: Mother of the Moderates"

This is a vodcast with Sara Fitzgerald, the author of the forthcoming University of Michigan Press title, Elly Peterson: "Mother" of the Moderates. It chronicles the life and political history of Elly Peterson, one of the highest ranking women in the Republican Party. In 1964 she ran for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate and became the first woman to serve as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. During the 1960s she grew disenchanted with the increasing conservatism of her party, united with other feminists to push for the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive choice, battled Phyllis Schlafly to prevent her from gaining control of the National Federation of Republican Women, and became an independent.

 

A native of Michigan, Sara Fitzgerald worked for the Washington Post for 15 years as an editor and new-media developer. Prior to that, she worked as a reporter and editor for National Journal magazine, the St. Petersburg Times, the Miami Herald, and the Akron Beacon Journal.

See more Q&As with other University of Michigan Press authors at our YouTube page.

Powering the digital: Author of 'Digital Rubbish' tackles electronic waste

This is a guest blog by Jennifer Gabrys, author of Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics, available now. 

Electronic waste is an increasing environmental issue. As one of the fastest growing waste streams, e-waste quantities—which are notoriously difficult to gauge due to a whole host of issues including stockpiling in homes and ambivalent classification systems—are estimated to be anywhere between 20-25 million tons per year to 35-40 million tons per year. Some studies suggest that e-waste will “peak” at 70-75 million tons annually by 2015. While countries such as the US and UK have been major contributors to the flow of e-waste, developing countries including China and India are now contributing to the overall volume of waste—waste that is hazardous and difficult to recycle without suitable infrastructures.

As I document in Digital Rubbish, e-waste is clearly an issue of considerable environmental significance; yet it also speaks to our contemporary material cultures of technological fascination, repetitive consumption, built-in obsolescence, shambolic resource use, and labor inequalities. In Digital Rubbish, I address these political and affective aspects of electronics, and examine specific instances of electronic waste across resource-intensive manufacturing, information overload and product obsolescence. In order to make the book a negotiable size, many other “waste spaces” fell outside the scope of the study, including mining sites where materials necessary for electronic conduction are procured; and off-shoring of manufacturing to Southeast Asia where labor and resource issues emerge for factory workers and software programmers alike.

Q&A with Theo Cateforis, author of Are We Not New Wave?

New wave emerged at the turn of the 1980s as a pop music movement cast in the image of punk rock's sneering demeanor, yet rendered more accessible and sophisticated. Artists such as the Cars, Devo, the Talking Heads, and the Human League leapt into the Top 40 with a novel sound that broke with the staid rock clichés of the 1970s and pointed the way to a more modern pop style.

In Are We Not New Wave? Theo Cateforis provides the first musical and cultural history of the new wave movement, charting its rise out of mid-1970s punk to its ubiquitous early 1980s MTV presence and downfall in the mid-1980s. The book also explores the meanings behind the music's distinctive traits—its characteristic whiteness and nervousness; its playful irony, electronic melodies, and crossover experimentations.

Theo Cateforis is Assistant Professor of Music History and Cultures in the Fine Arts Department at Syracuse University.  His research is in the areas of American Music, Popular Music Studies, and Twentieth-Century Art Music. He was editor of the anthology The Rock History Reader.

Listen to the podcast

Stephen T. Ziliak Discusses ‘Cult of Statistical Significance’ on BBC Radio 4

Stephen T. Ziliak, co-author with Deidre N. McCloskey of The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s More or Less with Tim Harford to discuss the problems with significance testing. Harford’s program focuses on the way numbers and statistics are used and misused in the public realm, and for the April 15 episode he spoke with Ziliak about a recent Supreme Court decision that hinged on whether statistical significance was a meaningful standard by which to assess a company’s liability for a potentially dangerous product.

Harford began using an example of a bowl full of Smarties candy with colors other than orange and blue removed, from which the host would take a sample to determine which color was present in greater quantity. A random sample found 2 blue, 8 orange, which led Harford to ask, “Does that prove that there are more orange than blue Smarties in the jar?” As Harford munched away on his sample, co-host Hannah Barnes explained that statistical significance testing would assume an equal number of orange and blue Smarties and then calculate the likelihood of drawing 8 orange or more in a sample of ten.

“One reason I do not like the test of statistical significance,” Ziliak told BBC Radio 4, “is that it doesn’t tell you what you want. What you want to know is the probability of your hypothesis being true, given the available evidence. That would be very useful, for example, when you’re taking a pain relief pill. You’d like to know the probability of the benefits and costs of taking that medicine when that effect is actually there. The test of statistical significance does not give us that information. It reverses the problem entirely and says the following: what is the probability of seeing the data given that there’s no difference between the two medicines we’re examining?”

Snow in April? Author Paul Gross can tell you why Michigan's weather is wacky

A week ago, it was 80 degrees in Michigan. Today, it's snowing, with actual accumulation in some places. What gives? We turned to WDIV-TV meteorologist Paul Gross, author of Extreme Michigan Weather: The Wild World of the Great Lakes State, for help.

"As much as people don’t like the snow, we do get snow in April," he said. "Almost every day during the last half of the month has had at least some snow in the past, including many with record snowfall over an inch. We’ve also had a few May days with snow that had to be shoveled.

"The last day we’ve ever seen snowflakes in Detroit was flurries on May 31^st, 1910! And don’t forget that the biggest snow storm in Detroit history was on April 8^th, 1886… we got two FEET of snow!Hope this makes you feel better."

No, Paul, it really doesn't. But to learn more about the wacky weather we get here in Michigan, be sure to check out his book (or listen to a podcast of him discussing weird weather, on the same page). From heat waves to cold snaps, tornadoes to waterspouts to deep snow, it covers it all.

Inside Higher Ed piece by 'Mad at School' author is on scholarly job hunt for those with mental disabilities

Margaret Price, author of Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life, recently had a piece in Inside Higher Ed on how difficult the academic job search process can be for those with mental disabilities and how it might become more accessible.

"If this system were revised to become more accessible for academics with mental disabilities, all members of the academic world would benefit," she wrote. "A few relatively simple changes would have dramatic impact."

The full article is available online.

Price has been in the news recently, with a story about her work appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education and a blog response of her own to discussions about mental disabilities in an academic setting.