New Books in Sociology
Episodes
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...
Michael Roper, "Afterlives of War: A Descendants' History" (Manchester UP, 2023)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Afterlives of War: A Descendants' History (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Michael Roper documents the lives and historical pursuits of the...
Frank Jacob, "Wallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century" (Transcript Publishing, 2022)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory can help to better understand and describe developments of the 21st century. The contributors of Wallerst...
Flora Samuel, "Housing for Hope and Wellbeing" (Routledge, 2022)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Housing and neighborhoods have an important contribution to make to our wellbeing and our sense of our place in the world. Housing for Hope and Wellb...
Bianca Vienni-Baptista et al., "Foundations of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research" (Bristol UP, 2023)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Isabel Fletcher, and Catherine Lyall's Foundations of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research (Bristol University P...
Olga Fedorenko, "Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An ethnography of advertising in postmillennial South Korea, Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads (U Hawaii Press, 2022) d...
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, "Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England" (MIT Press, 2023)
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An intimate account of rural New England families living on the edge of homelessness, as well as the practices and policies of care that fail them. F...
Thurka Sangaramoorthy, "Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America" (UNC Press, 2023)
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (UNC Press, 2023) examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbe...
Courtney Adams Wooten, "Childfree and Happy: Transforming the Rhetoric of Women's Reproductive Choices" (Utah State UP, 2023)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Childfree and Happy: Transforming the Rhetoric of Womens' Reproductive Choices (Utah State University Press, 2023) examines how millennia of reprodu...
Jae DiBello Takeuchi, "Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan" (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jae DiBello Takeuchi's Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023) examines dilemmas fa...
Shaul Shenhav, "Analyzing Social Narratives" (Routledge, 2015)
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose t...
Ben Highmore, "In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style" (Manchester UP, 2023)
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did the rise of consumerism impact Britain? In In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style (Manchester UP, 2023), Ben Highmor...
Irina Carlota Silber, "After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador" (Stanford UP, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador (Stanford UP, 2022) builds upon Irina Carlota [Lotti] Silber's nearly 25 years of eth...
Rob Eschmann,, "When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2023)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, on...
Sarah E. Vaughn, "Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation" (Duke UP, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah E. Vaughn’s Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation (Duke UP, 2022) examines climate adaptation strategies that upend th...
Melissa Gatter, "Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp: A Nine-to-Five Emergency" (American University in Cairo Press, 2023)
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Azraq refugee camp, built in 2014 and host to forty thousand refugees, is one of two official humanitarian refugee camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan...
Petra Bueskens, "Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract" (Routledge, 2018)
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this con...
When Did We See You a Stranger and Welcome You? (with Ben Metcalf)
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The poor have always been with us, even in a rich country and a prosperous time. I ask Ben Metcalf, former Secretary of Housing and Community Developm...