Rice University’s School of Social Sciences is home to a group of leading scholars who seek to find solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues through a societal lens. This spring, political scientist Jae-Hee Jung, sociologist Kevin J. A. Thomas, and anthropologist Gökçe Günel authored books that explore topical questions about morals, societies, and resilience.
Shared Morals: The Role of Moral Rhetoric in Party Politics
Jae-Hee Jung, assistant professor of political science, joined the School of Social Sciences in 2025. With an interest in Western democracies, Jung centers her research on comparative party politics, political behavior, and political psychology.
Jung’s second book, Shared Morals: The Role of Moral Rhetoric in Party Politics, explores moral rhetoric, its role in party politics, and how it influences the views and actions of citizens in Western democracies. Jung notes a distinction in party discussions between using moral rhetoric to highlight right versus wrong and pragmatic arguments that focus on matters such as cost versus benefits.
Drawing upon election manifestos and survey data from Western democracies, as well as focused studies in the British context, Jung’s research posits that moral rhetoric is an integral component of politics and party messaging. Through this exploration, it is revealed that moral rhetoric in party politics can engage and represent citizens, across the political spectrum.
“Politics and morality are unavoidably linked. Politicians have a choice of how much they want to lean into moral intuition in their campaigns and messages. But it has been unclear how to systematically conceptualize moral appeals and what role they play in political competition. The book provides answers,” said Jung. “Although it might seem like political disagreement is insurmountable and morality only adds more fuel, the book argues that moral rhetoric, when used inclusively, can appeal broadly and be an important way that politicians represent us.”
In Shared Morals: The Role of Moral Rhetoric in Party Politics, Jung shows that there is potential for moral appeal to foster unity within and across party lines. Her work demonstrates that parties share common moral intuitions and that people expect morality to be part of political discourse.
Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery
Kevin J.A. Thomas joined Rice in the summer of 2025 as the director of the Houston Population Research Center, Demography at the Kinder Institute of Urban Research and Distinguished Professor of Sociology. Thomas specializes in research that focuses on international migration, demography, children and families, and racial and ethnic inequality.
His fourth book, Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery, explores the aftermath of epidemics and how survivors and societies move forward. To address this topic, Thomas interviewed 250 survivors of the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Thomas found that although governments felt successful in various emergency response actions taken during the epidemic, there was a lack of care and assistance provided to address the epidemic’s social consequences in the aftermath. He asserts in his book that this dearth of recovery support had larger negative impacts on those who were already disadvantaged or marginalized.
“It is easy to forget about communities affected by epidemics after media attention shifts to the next crisis,” said Thomas. “However, survivors in these communities continue to face significant challenges as they go through the process of recovery. A major reason for this, the book argues, is the tendency for policy makers to give limited attention to the long-term social consequences of epidemics."
Despite the observed shortcomings of post-epidemic recovery assistance, Life After Epidemics also discusses the resilience demonstrated within these communities as they rebuilt their lives and forged ahead.
Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations
Gökçe Günel, associate professor of anthropology, has been a faculty member at Rice since 2019. Günel investigates how infrastructure transforms amid concerns about energy and climate change.
Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations is Günel’s second book, which examines the emergence of a Turkish-built floating power plant in Ghana and analyzes how such inventive infrastructure shapes South-South relations and embodies broader imaginations of energy futures. It provides a counternarrative to the belief that new energy systems completely replace existing ones. Günel highlights the interplay of different energy producers and discusses how societies utilize and transform them together to enhance production, coining the term “energy accumulation.”
Located on the West African coast, the floating power plant Ayşegül Sultan serves as the book's entry point. Through this lens, Günel demonstrates how energy-related decisions of nations and corporations impact technologies and their paths forward.
“In the coming decades, energy demand will grow in the Global South, perhaps shifting away from what energy industry professionals deem traditional demand centers, such as Europe and North America, toward countries in Africa,” said Günel. “By answering energy-related questions from an ethnographic perspective, the book seeks to critique assumptions regarding linear progress and demonstrate how South-South relations may structure the future of energy and climate change. While this book mainly draws on examples from Ghana’s electricity sector, its conclusions can issue warnings regarding contemporary global energy and climate change policy trends.”
Overall, Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations challenges prevailing narratives about energy infrastructures, transitions, and alliances. Günel is currently coauthoring a book titled Patchwork Ethnography: A Methodological Guide, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in January 2027.