New Books in Sociology

“Rurality 2.0”: How City Migrants are Reshaping Norway’s Rural Regions with Tom Bratrud

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s episode, we talk to Tom Bratrud about his ongoing, long-term work with city-dwellers who migrate to rural parts of Norway. This researc...

Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024)

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in...

Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildi...

Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the p...

Anna Shadrina, "The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia" (UCL Press, 2025)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia (UCL Press, 2025) by Dr. Anna Shadrina examines the social produ...

Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The City and the Hospital (Chicago 2023) focuses on an urban paradox: American hospitals are imagined as sites of healing and care, and yet the peopl...

The Renaissance of Marxist Studies: A Discussion with Babak Amini

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in academic research in Marxism and related fields, and many researchers have been stepping up t...

Patrick Gamsby, "Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy and Modernity" (Routledge, 2025)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Henri Lefebvre is a writer who has had many competing claims for ownership, from sociology to philosophy to urban geography, different scholars have a...

Amanda Parrish Morgan, "Stroller" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Among the many things expectant parents are told to buy, none is a more visible symbol of status and parenting philosophy than a stroller. Although it...

Isabelle Guérin et. al., "The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and Capitalism" (Stanford UP, 2023)

29 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and Capitalism (Stanford UP, 2023), the authors Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar and G. Venkatasubramani...

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah...

Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media inc...

Joe Greenwood-Hau," Capital, Privilege and Political Participation" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who gets involved in politics? In Capital, Privilege and Political Participation (Liverpool UP, 2025) Joe Greenwood-Hau a Lecturer in the J...

Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. ...

Adam Jones, "Sites of Genocide" (Routledge, 2022)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's bee...

Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to sug...

Janice M. McCabe, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’re all familiar with the sentiment that “college is the best time of your life.” Along with a newfound sense of freedom, students have a uniq...

Thomas Piketty, "A Brief History of Equality" (Harvard UP, 2022)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one h...

Nayma Qayum, "Village Ties: Women, NGOs, and Informal Institutions in Rural Bangladesh" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

16 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Across the global South, poor women’s lives are embedded in their social relationships and governed not just by formal institutions – rules that e...

Jason A. Higgins, "Prisoners After War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration (University of Mass. Press, 2024), Dr. Jason Higgins examines the connections betw...

Michelle Christine Smith, "Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age (Southern Illinois UP, 2021) focuses on three prominent yet understudied ...

Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021)

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rura...

Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025)

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play i...

Russell T. McCutcheon, "Our Primary Expertise: A Future for the Study of Religion" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our Primary Expertise argues counter to the longstanding trend in the field by seeing religion as mundane and not unique, which means that the field'...

Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025)

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are...

Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the ...

Pablo Meninato and Gregory Marinic, "Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America" (Routledge, 2025)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in...

Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reim...

Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action​" (Haymarket, 2019)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ​The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and ...

Nancy Newman, "Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

18 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region ...

Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko "In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos" (MIT Press, 2023)

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (MIT Press, 2023) is an absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstra...

Mukul Sharma, "Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

12 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Prof Mukul Sharma is a professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. His formal training is in Political Science and has worked as a specia...

Naomi R. Williams, "A Blueprint for Worker Solidarity: Class Politics and Community in Wisconsin" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

12 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Naomi R Williams is associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Their primary research interests include lab...

Walter Scott Peterson, "[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson" (William Carlos Williams Review, Vol 41, No. 2, 2024),

11 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In “[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson” (William Carlos Williams Review, Volume 41, Number 2, 2024), Walter Scot...

Chris Dalla Riva, "Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

11 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Popular music history collides with data analytics, charts, and numbers in this insightful and surprising look at the greatest hits and musicians, fad...

Claire Whitlinger, "Between Remembrance and Repair: Commemorating Racial Violence in Philadelphia, Mississippi" (UNC Press, 2020)

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few places are more notorious for civil rights–era violence than Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” murders. ...

Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Ta...

Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this epis...

Meredith L. Roman, "The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The contemporaneous movements for human rights that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers waged during the 1960s are analysed in a comparativ...

John Mathias, "Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? In this episode Joh...

Bernadette C. Barton et al., "Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A cutting-edge volume on current trends in sex work, from sugar relationships and cyber brothels to financial domination, sex worker activism, and fem...

Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg, "Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

04 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why are BDSM practitioners so happy? It turns out, BDSM isn't just about whips and chains.With engaging stories and a warm, conversational tone, Boun...

Michael Rowe, "Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions" (Routledge, 2024)

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researching Street-level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024) is the first among a number of new titles in the R...

Georgios Tsourous, "Orthodox Choreographies: Boundaries, Borders and Materiality in Jerusalem's Old City" (Gorgias Press, 2024)

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Orthodox Choreographies: Boundaries, Borders and Materiality in Jerusalem's Old City (Gorgias Press, 2024) offers a comprehensive anthropological st...

Gina Vale, "The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State" (Oxford UP, 2024)

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Gina Vale explores the governance of the Islamic State (IS) terrori...

Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Ashleigh Greene Wade, Assistant Professor of Digital Studies with a joint appointment in Media Studies a...

Kolby Hanson, "Ordinary Rebels: Rank-And-File Militants Between War and Peace" (Oxford UP, 2025)

28 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Ordinary Rebels: Rank-And-File Militants Between War and Peace (Oxford University Press, 2025), Kolby Hanson argues that these periods of state t...

John L. Campbell, "Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the be...

Jacinto Cuvi, "The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How street vendors tangle with the law in São Paulo, Brazil. With a little initiative and very little startup money, an outgoing individual might se...

Robert F. Carley, "Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice" (SUNY Press, 2019)

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Car...

Xiang Biao and Wu Qi, "Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Xiang Biao on his new book, Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, which was origin...

Tanja Petrovic, "Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army" (Duke UP, 2024)

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The compulsory service for young men in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) created bonds across ethnic, religious, and social lines. These bonds persi...

Susan D. Stewart. "On the Rocks: Straight Talk about Women and Drinking" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Existing portrayals of women who drink typically fall into two categories: disturbing stories of women hitting “rock bottom,” resulting in ruined ...

Joel Best, "Just the Facts: Untangling Contradictory Claims" (U California Press, 2025)

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why can’t we seem to agree on facts? In this succinct volume, sociologist Joel Best turns his inimitable eye toward the social construction of what ...

Shakirah E. Hudani, "Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda (U of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Shakirah Hudani examines a “material poli...

Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind, "Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) by Dr. Dominic Davies & Dr. Candida Rifkind is the ...

Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025)

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The personal nature of domestic labor, and its location in the privacy of the employer's home, means that domestic workers have long struggled for equ...

Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone e...

Simon James Copland, "The Male Complaint: The Manosphere and Misogyny Online" (Polity, 2025)

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Inspired by leaders such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, the online Manosphere has exploded in recent years. Dedicated to anti-feminism, these com...

Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and r...

Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, "Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England" (Princeton UP, 2025)

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do children believe in? In Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton UP, 2025) Anna Strhan, a Reader...

Stephanie K. Kim, "Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul" (MIT Press, 2023)

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul (MIT Press, 2023) challenges the popul...

May Friedman, "Fat Studies: The Basics" (Routledge, 2025)

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fat Studies: The Basics (Routledge, 2025) introduces the reading of fat bodies and the ways that Fat Studies, as a field, has responded to waves of ...

Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)

07 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted w...

Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia Univer...

Helen C. Epstein, "Why Live: An Anatomy of Suicide Epidemics" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What causes suicide epidemics—and how can we prevent them? Many suicides are caused by biological mental illness, but sometimes the suicide rate of...

Maddalena Cerrato, "Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of...

Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

30 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a...

Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different...

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, "Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism" (Princeton UP, 2022)

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (Princeton UP, 2022) explores why dictatorships born of social revolutio...

Barbara Vinick and Shulamit Reinharz, "100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World" (Indiana UP, 2024)

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World (Indiana UP, 2024), is the result of a collaboration between two sociologists, Professor Shulamit Re...

Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020)

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press), Uzma Quraishi...

Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Alexandra Grey speaks with Dr Zozan Balci about Zozan’s new book, Erased Voices and Un...

Todd Mcgowan, "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity" (Columbia UP, 2024)

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise ...

Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s w...

Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown" (Bristol UP, 2024)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and wo...

Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Th...

Peter Hart-Brinson, "The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Culture" (NYU Press, 2018)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How and why did public opinions about gay marriage shift? In his new book, The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Cu...

Christopher R. Matthews, "Doing Good Social Science: Lessons from Immersion, Understanding Social Life and Exploring the In-Between" (Routledge, 2025)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Doing Good Social Science: Lessons from Immersion, Understanding Social Life and Exploring the In-Between (Routledge, 2025) takes readers on a perso...

David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism" (Polity Press, 2023)

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” i...

Matthew Facciani, "Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It" (Columbia UP, 2025)

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why are people inclined to believe misinformation? Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It (Columbia UP, 202...

Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class America...

Bryon L. Garner, "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism" (Routledge, 2025)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Military service in the United States has long been associated with patriotism. But for Black veterans, this association with patriotism, love for cou...

Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025)

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) argues that diversity and racial integration efforts ...

Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example ...

Nezar AlSayyad and Heba Safey Eldeen, "Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that man...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...

Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we are joined by Dr Yasmin Ortiga, Associate Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University, to speak to us about her late...

Zack Cooper, "Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries" (Yale UP, 2025)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An ambitious look at how the twentieth century's great powers devised their military strategies and what their implications mean for military competit...

"Age, Creativity and Culture: Reconsideration of how the Phases of Life Influence Knowledge, Experience, and Creation"

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Age, Creativity and Culture: Reconsidering how the Phases of Life Influence Knowledge, Experience, and Creation” by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera appeared...

Anand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. ...

The Social Impact of Automating Translation

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Inter...

Hannah Charnock, "Teenage intimacies: Young Women, Sex and Social Life in England, 1950-80" (Manchester UP, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Teenage Intimacies offers a new account of the ‘sexual revolution’ in mid-twentieth century England. Rather than focusing on ‘Swinging London’...

Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conf...

Yuki Kato, "Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City" (NYU Press, 2025)

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been ...

Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics ...

Christa Kuljian, "Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race, and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Christa Kuljian arrived on the Harvard College campus as a first-year student in the fall of 1980 with copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. ...

Jess Reia, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect, 2025)

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our ...

Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods ...

Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will ta...