Judith Butler's "Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Justice" (2004) was published in the "Radical Thinkers" series of Verso Books. The book is a series of essays written after Sept 11, 2001, collected in this short publication of ~150 pages (of writing, excluding Notes). In the Preface, the author suggests in the years following Sept 11 intellectuals and journalists did not uphold their duty to justice, wherein an injustice muted critical discourse and public debate. The specifics of the essays are less timely today, but raise general questions about power – power over media and what can be spoken in the public sphere, power over what can and cannot be asked or discussed, power over life and death, the power to decide whose life should be mourned and whose ignored. The creation of binaries of the with-us-or-against-us type, stifled the ability to engage, Butler for example suggest that opposing war was equated with sympathizing or justifying terrorism.  While the details have changed, the processes persist and the arguments in this book remain relevant. Worth a read.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im's "What is an American Muslim? Embracing Faith and Citizenship" (2014) is an Oxford publication, written in what seems like a world away in terms of US identity politics. The book is largely not what the title reads "What is..." but rather "What should...". Although the author has produced some interesting works (for example, a 1995 book Human Rights in Cross Cultural Context), this one does not stand out. In the ten years since publication, there have been 26 citations, several of which are critical book reviews. This book sat on my shelf for some years, and I can't recall where or how this book came to my attention. Some (debate-starting) notes:

"To realize this vision of citizenship and meaning for themselves, and to uphold it for others, American Muslims must join general political and social life—in solidarity and common cause with other citizens—and begin exercising their rights to democratic self-governance. To earn the rights of citizenship, Muslims must assume the responsibilities of citizens. In engaging a proactive citizenship, American Muslims should seek to integrate on their own terms as persons and communities, rather than abandoning their religious self-determination through passive assimilation. This includes the constant evolution and reformation of American Muslims' identities in relation to national identity." (p. 6-7)

"The idea of an Islamic state that enforces Sharia as the positive law of the state is, from an Islamic point of view, both conceptually untenable and practically counterproductive. It is untenable because, once Sharia norms are enshrined in law, they cease to be the religious law of Islam and become the political will of that state. Moreover, given the wide diversity of opinion among Muslim scholars and schools of thought, enacting any of those norms as state law will mean having to select among competing views that are equally legitimate. Since that selection will be made by whoever happens to be in control of the state, the outcome will be political, rather than religious. Why will this process be counterproductive? By suppressing competing views, it will necessarily deny some Muslims their religious freedom. I am therefore advocating the institutional separation of religion and the state, while recognizing and regulating the unavoidable connection between religion and politics." (p. 22)

"My own answer for such questions, for which I believe to be religiously accountable, is that Islamic religious doctrine is historically contextual, a product of human interpretation, and not immutable or divine as such. Accordingly, I would first oppose the application of any Sharia norm as the positive law of the state, as explained in chapter 1. Second, I would oppose the community-based practice of dated human interpretations of Sharia that are no longer appropriate in today's context." (p. 172) 

Emerging out of a 2016 workshop organized by the Forum for Social Studies in Addis Ababa (also the publisher of the book), the 2018 publication "Land, Landlessness and Poverty in Ethiopia" presents cases / chapters from four regions in Ethiopia (SNNP, Amhara, Oromia, Tigray). The book is edited by Dessalegn Rahmato, and covers a topic he has been alerting our attention to for several years - landlessness. The full book is available for download here. Notes from the Introduction by Dessalegn:

"Landlessness is an important subject for close examination because it is an overarching problem with implications for poverty, social stability and the environment. Despite this, however, it has not attracted serious investigation and there are not many in-depth analyses of the subject and its ramifications. The problem is in large measure a product of demographic pressure, land scarcity and the insufficiency of access to non-farm employment in the rural areas. Landlessness is now growing to be a significant problem, and, in some of the densely settled communities, it has reached crisis levels, causing serious concern among kebelle and woreda authorities. The problem is an indicator of poverty, and no program of poverty reduction can succeed without addressing it in a meaningful way. There is a generational factor at work here: the tenure regime in place disadvantages young peasants who, by law, should have been provided farm plots by the kebelles concerned but are not because there is no arable land to distribute. This generational divide has the potential to erode social stability and cohesion. As is discussed by all the researchers in their work, the response of the young to landlessness has been varied but of particular significance has been the phenomenon of out-migration from the rural areas. Such migration may be to bigger urban centers in search of employment (this is evident in Addis Ababa), but the migration that has drawn public attention because of the dangers involved is the illegal migration to foreign countries such as the Middle East and South Africa and the victimization of would-be migrants by people smugglers and the human tragedy it has caused." (p. 4)

"Landlessness is a serious and growing problem in all rural areas, and yet it has not been given the attention it deserves by local authorities. For the purposes of the study, the following definition of landlessness was adopted by the research teams: any individual living in a rural community who has no rights to land registered in his or her name is considered landless. Having temporary access to land under a rental arrangement does not disqualify the person in question from being described as landless. In many cases, a landless person has no access to land of any kind, no employment and no income. The first point to bear in mind is that landlessness is at the heart of the generational fault-line facing rural society. Invariably, those suffering from the misfortune of having no rights to land are the young, and young males appear in the picture more prominently than young females. The major factors that were found to be responsible for rising landlessness included demographic change and consequent land shortage; large-scale investments in commercial agriculture, manufacturing and infrastructure; land degradation; and the paucity of non-farm (or off-farm) employment opportunities." (p. 6) 

Rupert Russell's "Price War$: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World" (2022) is a mass market book, however as a PhD holder from Harvard I picked this up to see if there are any interesting insights. With the exception of parts relating to Ukraine and Trump, the majority of the content of the book seemed dated between 2008 and 2014, which is reflected in the endnotes / bibliography as well. It would have been useful to know when all the trips were made, but most often this is not mentioned by the author, although points of reference suggest many of these also did not take place recently (reducing the journalistic value of a mass market book like this).

Although not a novel point, some interesting notes on algorithm trading:

"The computers are scanning headlines from all over the world, searching for chaos, looking for a small disturbance that could send prices higher and—before anyone has even read the headline, let alone verified it—trade automatically. The sheer volume of the algorithmic trades magnifies the mere suggestion of chaos— such as an army approaching a refinery—into an all-too-real price shock..." (p. 87) 

"The closer I got to understanding prices, the weirder they became. They were supposed to be synthesising information, coordinating global supply chains, moving people and goods and services to the most productive parts of the economy. Instead, prices were caught up in a social game that revolved not around reality but around collective perception of a reality, an orthodoxy. Just as in a cult or a religion, it is through the quick and public embrace of the emerging orthodoxy that material benefits are accumulated, be they wealth or status. In the long term, orthodoxies often crumble. But in the short term they can appear invincible, as unquestionable arbiters of truth and fortune." (p. 89)