New Books in Sociology
Episodes
Kristen M. Budd and David C. Lane, "Beyond Bars: A Path Forward from 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States" (Policy Press, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2023 marks 50 years of mass incarceration in the United States. This timely volume highlights and addresses pressing social problems associat...
Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol, "Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party" (Columbia UP, 2023)
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions fostered tight-knit communities, touching nea...
Resentment: The Complexity of an Emotion and its Effect on Politics
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Rob Schneider, Professor of History at Indiana University-Bloomington, ...
Rhoda Kanaaneh, "The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America" (U Texas Press, 2023)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From the overloaded courts with their constantly changing dates and appointments to the need to prove oneself the “right" kind of asylum seeker, the...
Evan C. Rothera, "Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States, Mexico, and Argentina, 1860–1880" (LSU Press, 2022)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, three violent national conflicts rocked the Americas: the Wars of Unification in Argentina, the War of t...
Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill, "Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets" (Columbia UP, 2022)
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition? Anxious Eater...
Eric B. Elbogen and Nico Verykoukis, "Violence and Mental Illness: Rethinking Risk Factors and Enhancing Public Safety" (NYU Press, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mass shootings have become a defining issue of our time. Whenever the latest act of newsworthy violence occurs, mental illness is inevitably cited as ...
Rachel O'Dwyer, "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" (Verso, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket. Wherever you look, money is being re-placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new ...
Stephanie Southworth and Sara Brallier, "Homelessness in the 21st Century: Living the Impossible American Dream" (Routledge, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An accessible and engaging introductory text on homelessness and housing policy, this timely book uses a sociopolitical framework for understanding is...
Angie Lederach, "Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia" (Stanford UP, 2023)
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What can collaborative research with Colombian campesino leaders teach us about building peace? In this episode, I talk with Angie Lederach, author of...
James N. Druckman and Elizabeth A. Sharrow, "Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1972 is often hailed as an inflection point in the evolution of women's rights. Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,...
Zeynep K. Korkman, "Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey" (Duke UP, 2023)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey (Duke UP, 2023), Zeynep K. Korkman examines Turkey’s commercial for...
Anne Allison, "Being Dead Otherwise" (Duke UP, 2023)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary Japan, death isn’t what it used to be. Anne Allison’s Being Dead Otherwise (Duke UP, 2023) examines the changing realities of d...
Taylor Lorenz, "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet—revealing how online influence and the c...
Naisargi N. Davé, "Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being" (Duke UP, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being (Duke UP, 2023), Naisargi N. Davé examines the complex worlds of animalists and animalism in ...
Rik Peels, "Life without God: An Outsider's Look at Atheism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Life without God: An Outsider's Look at Atheism (Cambridge UP, 2023), Rik Peels explores atheism from a new perspective that aims to go beyond th...
Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, "When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America" (North Atlantic Books, 2023)
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Think about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or di...
Daniel R. Reichman, "Progress in the Balance: Mythologies of Development in Santos, Brazil" (Cornell UP, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Progress and development have long been important issues in anthropology and social sciences. Based on extensive archives and ethnographic fieldwork, ...
Christian Krohn-Hansen, "Jobless Growth in the Dominican Republic: Disorganization, Precarity, and Livelihoods" (Stanford UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Dominican Republic has posted impressive economic growth rates over the past thirty years. Despite this, the generation of new, good jobs has been...
Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the p...
Lee Mcguigan, "Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech" (MIT Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How marketers learned to dream of optimization and speak in the idiom of management science well before the widespread use of the Internet. Algorithms...
Damani Partridge, "Blackness As a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin" (U California Press, 2022)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this bold and provocative new book, Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin (University...
Megan MacKenzie, "Good Soldiers Don't Rape: The Stories We Tell About Military Sexual Violence" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sexual violence is a significant problem within many Western militaries. Despite international attention to the issue and global #MeToo and #TimesUp m...
Kristin Surak, "The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires" (Harvard UP, 2023)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our lives are in countless ways defined by our citizenship. The country we belong to affects our rights, our travel possibilities, and ultimately our ...
Diana Rickard, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence" (NYU Press, 2023)
23 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Rickard examines how serialized ...
Jack Schneider and Ethan L. Hutt, "Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don't Have To)" (Harvard UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, ...
Rahul Ranjan, "The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities? And how are they used strategically to fu...
Phaedra C. Pezzullo, "Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care" (U California Press, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Addressing plastics can feel overwhelming. Guilt, shame, anger, hurt, fear, dismissiveness, and despair abound. Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution a...
Alba Griffin, "Reading the Walls of Bogota: Graffiti, Street Art, and the Urban Imaginary of Violence" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A cultural imaginary is a structuring space through which collective understandings of cultural and society phenomena are formed, reproduced, and acce...
Scott Selberg, "Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Personhood" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer's disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Per...
Jennifer D. Ortegren, "Middle-Class Dharma: Gender, Aspiration, and the Making of Contemporary Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Middle-Class Dharma: Gender, Aspiration, and the Making of Contemporary Hinduism (Oxford UP, 2023) is a contemporary ethnography of class mobility am...
Kathrin Eitel, "Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia: Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh" (Routledge, 2022)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kathrin Eitel's book Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia: Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh (Routledge, 2022) examines the recyclin...
Jamie Bronstein, "The Happiness of the British Working Class" (Stanford UP, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For working-class life writers in nineteenth century Britain, happiness was a multifaceted emotion: a concept that could describe experiences of hedon...
C. J. Pascoe, "Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High" (U California Press, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nice is not enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High (University of California Press, 2023) by Dr. C. J. Pascoe is a provocativ...
Kevin Funk, "Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries" (Indiana UP, 2022)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics ...
Lipika Pelham, "Passing: An Alternative History of Identity" (Oxford UP, 2021)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A slave woman in 1840s America dresses as a white, disabled man to escape to freedom, while a twenty-first-century black rights activist is 'cancelled...
Dana Berkowitz et al. ed., "Male Femininities" (NYU Press, 2023)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Innovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without women What counts as “male femininity”? Is it sim...
Moisés Kopper, "Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moisés Kopper's Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing (U Michigan Press, 2022) examines...
Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" (U California Press, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrificati...
Takeo Rivera, "Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity" (Oxford UP, 2022)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the “model minority.” While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists ...
Global Inequality: Are We Really Measuring What We Should Be Measuring?
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviewed Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachuset...
Hongwei Bao, "Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance" (Routledge, 2022)
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022), Hongwei Bao analyses queer theatre and performance in contemporary China. Boa documents...
Zachary Parolin, "Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zachary Parolin's book Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19 (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023) is interested in poverty during the COV...
Emilee Booth Chapman, "Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emilee Booth Chapman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, has a new book that examines the idea of the vote, and what thi...
Catherine Coveney et al., "Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, l...
Michèle Lamont, "Seeing Others: How Recognition Works-And How It Can Heal a Divided World" (Atria, 2023)
13 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can we challenge and change inequalities? In Seeing Others: How Recognition Works— and How It Can Heal a Divided World (Atria, 2023), Michele...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
The Future of Secularization: A Discussion with Ryan Cragun
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The statement ‘we live in a secular age’ is open to the obvious challenge that in some parts of the word, religion is a growing force in society. ...
Robyn Muir, "The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis" (Bristol UP, 2023)
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe. In The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Anal...
Nicole Fabricant, "Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore" (U California Press, 2022)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other c...
Maxim Samson, "Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World" (Profile Books, 2023)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our world has innumerable boundaries, ranging from the obvious - like an ocean - to subtle differences in language or climate. Most of us cross invisi...
Tiantian Zheng, "Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stability, and Intimate Partner Violence in Post-Socialist China" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, Tiantian Zheng's Violent Intimacy: Family Harmony, State Stabili...
Isabel Machado, "Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mobile is simultaneously a typical and unique city in the postwar United States. It was a quintessential boomtown during World War II. That prosperity...
Jeanne K. Firth, "Feeding New Orleans: Celebrity Chefs and Reimagining Food Justice" (UNC Press, 2023)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many high-profile chefs in New Orleans pledged to help their city rebound from the flooding. Several formed their own...
Shai M. Dromi and Samuel D. Stabler, "Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Sha...
Kerry P. C. San Chirico. "Between Hindu and Christian: Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics, and the Negotiation of Devotion in Banaras" (Oxford UP, 2022)
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On the second Saturday of each month, on the outskirts of the ancient city of Varanasi, Shiva's own city, thousands of shudra and Dalit devotees worsh...
Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek, "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time" (Verso, 2023)
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you're confronted by a p...
Altman Yuzhu Peng, "A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere" (Palgrave Pivot, 2020)
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere (Palgrave Pivot, 2020), Altman Yuzhu Peng articulates how feminism and pseudo-feminism be...
Elise Herrala, "Art of Transition: The Field of Art in Post-Soviet Russia" (Routledge, 2021)
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Art of Transition: The Field of Art in Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2022) investigates contemporary art in Russia since the end of the Soviet Unio...
Allan Punzalan Isaac, "Filipino Time: Affective Worlds and Contracted Labor" (Fordham UP, 2021)
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From spectacular deaths in a drag musical to competing futures in a call center, Filipino Time: Affective Worlds and Contracted Labor (Fordham UP, 2...
Romina Yalonetzky, "Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
02 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima (Academic Studies Press, 2021), Dr. Romina Yalonetzky introduc...
Kathryn J. Edin et al., "The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America" (Mariner Books, 2023)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in ...
Hava Rachel Gordon, "This Is Our School!: Race and Community Resistance to School Reform" (NYU Press, 2021)
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Parents, educators, and activists are passionately fighting to improve public schools around the country. In This Is Our School!: Race and Community ...
Emilia Bachrach, "Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2022)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures cha...
John Brackett, "Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness" (Duke UP, 2023)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live acts of the rock era. Performing over 2300 shows between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead’s r...
James S. Damico et al., "Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond" (Routledge, 2021)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond (Routledge, 2021) examines litera...
Jenna N. Hanchey, "The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO" (Duke UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO (Duke UP, 2023), Jenna N. Hanchey examines the decolonial pote...
Pothiti Hantzaroula, "Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity" (Routledge, 2020)
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Pothiti Hantzaroula about her book Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity (Routledge, 20...
Chuyun Oh, "K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media" (Routledge, 2022)
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media (Routledge, 2022) is about K-pop dance and the evolution and presence of its dance fandom on social m...
The Ideology of Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Robert Eberhart
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Eberhart, Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director of International Business at the University of San Diego, talks about his work...
Asad L. Asad, "Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life" (Princeton UP, 2023)
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Because immigration is such a recurring-and divisive-topic in the United States, it is easy to assume that we understand what it means for an immigran...
Elly Fishman, "Refugee High: Coming of Age in America" (The New Press, 2021)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lit Hub's Most Anticipated of 2021. Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award. A year in the life of a Chicago high school that has one of the high...
Marisa Holmes, "Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wal...
Alice Wilson, "Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman" (Stanford UP, 2023)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Dhufar Revolution was fought between 1965–1976, in an attempt to depose Oman's British-backed Sultan and advance social ideals of egalitarianism...
Jamie Rife and Donald W. Burnes, "Journeys Out of Homelessness: The Voices of Lived Experience" (Lynne Rienner, 2020)
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do individuals move from being homeless to finding safe, stable, and secure places to live? Can we recreate the conditions that helped them most? ...
Erica O. Turner, "Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past five years, American public schools have enrolled more students identified as Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Asian than white. At th...
On the (Still Bright) Future of Nostalgia
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I am joined on “America and Beyond” by historian Peter Fritzsche for an appreciation of The Future of Nostalgia (Basic Books), the landmark book...
Romit Chowdhury, "City of Men: Masculinities and Everyday Morality on Public Transport" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In South Asian urban landscapes, men are everywhere. And yet we do not seem to know very much about precisely what men do in the city as men. How do m...
Morgan L. W. Hazelton et al., "The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary" (Oxford UP, 2023)
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does it matter if judges are nice to each other? The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary (Oxford UP, 2023)argues tha...
Shelley Ingram and Willow G. Mullins, "Wait Five Minutes: Weatherlore in the Twenty-First Century" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The weather governs our lives. It fills gaps in conversations, determines our dress, and influences our architecture. No matter how much our lives may...
Jennifer Cearns, "Circulating Culture: Transnational Cuban Networks of Exchange" (UP of Florida, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“In this subtle and beautifully crafted ethnography, Cearns invites us to travel through the many Cuban circuits of exchange that give shape to muta...
Jean M. Twenge, "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future" (Atria, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is currently home to six generations of people: -the Silents, born 1925-1945 -Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964 -Gen X, born 1965-1979...
Ulbe Bosma, "The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment Over 2,000 Years" (Harvard UP, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes har...
Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove, "Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students’ fascination to create unique...
Renyi Hong, "Passionate Work: Endurance after the Good Life" (Duke UP, 2022)
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Passionate Work: Endurance after the Good Life (Duke UP, 2022), Renyi Hong theorizes the notion of being "passionate about your work" as an affe...
Whisper Networks: A Discussion with Carrie Ann Johnson
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is a Whisper Network? What can you gain from being in one, and what is expected of the network members? Not everybody is invited is into a Whispe...
Sharada Sugirtharajah, "Religious and Non-Religious Perspectives on Happiness and Wellbeing" (Routledge, 2022)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sharada Sugirtharajah's edited volume Religious and Non-Religious Perspectives on Happiness and Wellbeing (Routledge, 2022) explores the theme of ha...
Andrew Johnson, "If I Give My Soul: Faith Behind Bars in Rio de Janeiro" (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pentecostal Christianity is flourishing inside the prisons of Rio de Janeiro. To find out why, Andrew Johnson dug deep into the prisons themselves. He...
Edyta Roszko, "Fishers, Monks and Cadres: Navigating State, Religion and the South China Sea in Central Vietnam" (NIAS/University of Hawaii Press 2021
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This remarkable and timely ethnography explores how fishing communities living on the fringe of the South China Sea in central Vietnam interact with s...
Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Jieun Kiaer provides an in-depth discussion of emoji use in a glo...
Networked: The New Social Operating System
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, twe...
Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Avatar Or, {llSay(0, Hello, Avatar ); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. C...
Satsuki Takahashi, "Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape" (U Washington Press, 2023)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, anth...
Sophie Bjork-James, "The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family (Rutgers University Press, 2021) provides an account of how a theology of the ...
Kris Marsh, "The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing from stratification economics, intersectionality, and respectability politics, Kris Marsh's The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone i...
Karen E. Rignall, "An Elusive Common: Land, Politics, and Agrarian Rurality in a Moroccan Oasis" (Cornell UP, 2021)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Karen E. Rignall's book An Elusive Common: Land, Politics, and Agrarian Rurality in a Moroccan Oasis (Cornell UP, 2021) details the fraught dynamic...
Michael Ruse, "Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2017)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including human...
Sarah Muir, "Routine Crisis: An Ethnography of Disillusion" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Argentina, once heralded as the future of capitalist progress, has a long history of economic volatility. In 2001–2002, a financial crisis led to it...
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "From the Pandemic to Utopia: The Future Begins Now" (Routledge, 2023)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic forces us to rethink our contemporaneity. It has brought to the surface dimensions of human fragility that partially contradi...
Renny Thomas, "Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment" (Routledge, 2022)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment (Routledge, 2022) provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context...