New Books in Economics

Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and
peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled
with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his
grandmother’s overflowing backyard garden, author Andrew Flachs has
embarked on a multi-continent, decades-long look at agriculture and its
value.

The dominant view of agriculture has focused only on what
we produce. It sees value in terms of capital gains or yield efficiency,
masking how our global food system produces tremendous amounts of food
commodities while failing to feed people, support rural communities, or
enhance ecological well-being. Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields (University of Arizona Press, 2026) asks us to look more deeply and more humanely at what we perceive to be most valuable in our agricultural systems.

This
book draws on fifteen years of anthropological research, taking readers
to fields in South India, Eastern Europe, and North America, where
people are already feeding the future amid global change. From these
fields, Flachs shows us how a radical rethinking of the value of small
farms and farmers is already happening. Bringing together conversations
in agriculture, economics, anthropology, and the environmental
humanities, Flachs deftly shows how small farms reproduce social and
ecological relationships that are the only sustainable path forward.

For
anyone who is curious about the food on their plate and the people who
helped to get it there, Feeding the World as if People Mattered will
offer a new way to find value in the food we grow and the people who
grow it.

Dr. Andrew Flachs researches food and
agriculture systems, exploring genetically modified crops, heirloom
seeds, and our own microbiomes. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania,
he graduated from Oberlin College with dual Bachelor of Music and
Bachelor of Arts degrees in 2010. He earned his PhD from Washington
University in St. Louis in April 2016 and was a 2016-2017 Volkswagen
Exchange Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Heidelberg University
Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies. He is currently
an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University. His work
among farmers in North America, the Balkans, and South India
investigates ecological knowledge and technological change in
agricultural systems spanning Cleveland urban gardens and Indian GM
cotton fields. His research has been supported by public and private
institutions including the Department of Education, the National
Geographic Society, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the
Social Science Research Council, while his writing on agricultural
development has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed publications as
well as public venues including Sapiens, Salon, and the National
Geographic magazine. His work has been recognized by eight
international awards, including most recently as a finalist for the
Society for Economic Anthropology Kate Browne Creativity in Research
Award and the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Book Prize.

Sandra
Elizabeth is a graduate student enrolled at the Department of Sociology
in Shiv Nadar University, Delhi- NCR. She looks at rice farmers’ and
their way of life in Kuttanad, Kerala—which is dubbed as the state’s
rice granary. She can be reached out on X.  
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Ilene Fischer is the founder and CEO of Sophia Network, where she guides executive leaders through the turbulence of disruptive change, mergers, reorganizations, and breakthrough innovations – applying her signature Innovation Ecosystems methodology to turn strategic vision into reality. Earlier in her career, she was a partner at Charlie Kiefer’s Innovation Associates and managing director at the Tom Peters Company, and has been an advocate for women’s causes in an array of fields.

“Innovation theatre” in which changes are promised without ever happening is Ilene’s bete noire. Give me a corporate culture steeped in fear, and you can be sure that vital experimentation won’t be valued. In this interview, she makes a strong case for constant iteration that cuts across departmental silos in order to keep pace with the nine disruptive factors she sees as happening simultaneously in the business world today. Is AI big? Yes. But so is what quantum computing makes possible. One of the biggest points she makes in this conversation is that companies are starved for multidisciplinary talent, and the talent they do manage is attract will leave promptly if not given a license to apply that talent and achieve results. Change starts with deep listening (no judging) and grows exponentially into a virtuous circle if done with respect; fail that test, and a vicious cycle will emerge instead.

Ilene's book Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Blueprint for Organizational Success and Engagement is published by John Murray Press, a division of Hachette. The book will be released on October 20 and is available for preorder now.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.
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Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide,
promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's
excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025)
presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste
itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental
reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the
country's waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially
disposable. Without their labor, however, the country cannot meet the
sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on
fieldwork that spans twenty years, including eleven months working
alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste
organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups,
Elana Resnick examines the power hierarchies that shape both waste
management and European geopolitics.

Instead of focusing on only environmental harms or toxic distributions, Refusing Sustainability approaches
Romani life-worlds as spaces of creative production, and also tells
several larger stories: of postsocialist racial capitalism,
environmental progressivism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the
power of women's friendships. Through these stories, Resnick illuminates
how ordinary people, racialized as discardable, resist systems that
simultaneously rely on and exclude them.
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Money is everywhere in our daily lives. It lurks in the swipe of a
card at the grocery store, in looming student-loan debts, in the prices
of things we want, and in our subconscious navigation of the modern
world. In this revelatory book, economists Mason and Jayadev explain how
and why money is so deeply misunderstood by the world it dominates—as
well as the dangerous social implications of this misunderstanding. Against Money (University of Chicago Press, 2026) tackles
the most dearly held “truths” of economics, arguing that the world of
money has never been an impartial representation of the world of things.
Instead, its existence in different forms—debt, capital, liquidity, and
interest—increasingly shapes events in the real world rather than just
reflecting them. Sometimes money enables new forms of cooperation; more
often it facilitates domination. Human existence is not just facilitated
by money but also governed by it.

J.W. Mason is an Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay
College, City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the
Groundworks Collective. He was formerly the Policy Director for the New
York State Working Families Party. Arjun teaches Economics at the
University. Arjun Jayadev is Professor of Economics at Azim Premji
University in India.
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Tissa Richards is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, and the award-winning author of No Permission Needed and Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage. Her mission is to help bold, high-capacity leaders become unshakable. A repeat tech founder and CEO who has raised millions in funding, Tissa advises a wide array of companies on innovation and performance.

In an era when trust is eroding, holding back and failing to communicate is a greater failing than ever. Rather than act like a turtle withdrawing into your shell, be bold: that’s the message here. The better route is to be in learning more, applying lessons learned from “failures” so that you can seize on the opportunities ahead. Most of all, remember that resiliency is a team sport; the lone hero won’t cut it in a world where exponential growth happens through the chemistry of a community that provides synergy. Case in point: Tissa mentions her interview with a former Executive at Campbell’s, whose Prickly Pear Council proved to be so successful in airing and resolving conflicts that eventually it no longer needed to exist.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics