5 New Publications from RCC Alumni

Julia Blanc is a former RCC research associate. Her new book Ökokatholizismus: Sozialethische Analysen zu ausgewählten Ländern und Institutionen in Europa (volume 21 in the Nachhaltigkeitsforschung series) was published by the Metropolis Verlag in 2017. The book gives new perspectives on the involvement of the Catholic Church in environmental issues. Blanc’s approach to understanding developments in the Church’s relationship to the environment is both new and enlightening within the field of environmental theology. The book is written in German.

 

 

 

 

Former RCC fellow Stefan Dorondel has recently co-authored When Things Become Property: Land Reform, Authority, and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia, together with Thomas Sikor, Johannes Stahl, and Phuc Xuan To (volume 3 in the Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy series by Berghahn Books, 2017). In the context of postsocialist land and forest reforms, the book describes how forcing natural resources to become targets of property law has not aided governments in attempts to develop economies, politics, or the environment.

 

 

Carmel Finley is a former RCC fellow who drafted portions of her new book All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Overfishing (University of Chicago Press, 2017) during her stay at the center. In it, Finley examines how government subsidies propelled small-scale, coastal fisheries towards becoming a global industry that has left fish stocks depleted and many species nearing extinction.

 

 

 

 

Roman Köster is a longstanding RCC affiliate. His recent publication Hausmüll: Abfall und Gesellschaft in Westdeutschland 1945–1990 (2017) is the 15th volume in the RCC’s Umwelt und Gesellschaft series published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht. Köster examines the social, political, and economic challenges arising after the phenomenal increase in consumerist culture and waste production in West Germany following the Second World War. This book is written in German.

 

 

 

Former RCC fellow Louis Warren has just published God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America (Basic Books, 2017). Warren explores the Rain Dance as practiced by different Native American Indians at the turn of the century during times of conquest and resistance. He challenges the common misconception that such practices were a failed attempt to return to traditional ways, and instead reveals how maintaining their rituals and customs indeed helped to maintain religion, culture, and identity throughout the reshaping of the modern world.