New Books in Sociology

Mark R. Rank, "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2021)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood ...

Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Hea...

Teo Ballvé, "The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia" (Cornell UP, 2020)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell UP, 2020), Teo Ballvé challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the...

Joseph O. Jewell, "White Man’s Work: Race and Middle-Class Mobility into the Progressive Era" (UNC Press, 2023)

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the financial chaos of the last few decades, increasing wealth inequality has shaken people's expectations about middle-class stability. At the sam...

Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T. Nguyen eds., "Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics" (NYU Press, 2025)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics, Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen come together across disciplines to offer a...

Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of ...

Sabrina L. Hom, "Critical Mixed Race Philosophy: Rethinking Kinship and Identity" (Lexington Books, 2025)

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What are dominant narratives of mixed race identity? What are those narratives doing, in everyday life and within philosophical discourse? How can att...

Unveiling Entrepreneurial Identities: Perspectives from Women Entrepreneurs in the Global South, (JESB, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Unveiling Entrepreneurial Identities: Perspectives from Women Entrepreneurs in the Global South" by Manesha Peiris explores the lived experiences of ...

Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, "Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, o...

Tom Waidzunas et al., "Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM Professionals and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times" (UMass Press, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer professionals have organized to achieve greater inclusion into the fields of sc...

Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city...

Edward Tenner, "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences" (APS Press, 2025)

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did the addition of lifeboats after the Titanic shipwreck contribute to another tragedy in Chicago harbor three years later? How efficient are wil...

Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Bo...

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot...

Joseph Darda, "Gift and Grit: Race, Sports, and the Construction of Social Debt" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, Bill Clinton hosted a town hall on race and sports. 'If you've got a special gift,' the president said of athletes, 'you owe more back.' Gif...

Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bruce Springsteen was keenly aware and excited by the sounds of the CBGBs scene during the Seventies. With his own bands, the Boss performed in the sa...

Kelsea Best, Kayly Ober, Robert A. McLeman, "Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key conce...

Ezra Glinter, "Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah" (Yale UP, 2024)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. ...

Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through characte...

Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth eds., "The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers" (Anthem Press, 2025)

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers (Anthem Press, 2025) edited by Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth is a collection of articles by an international ...

Véronique Altglas, "Judaizing Christianity and Christian Zionism in Northern Ireland" (Routledge, 2025)

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Véronique Altglas holds a PhD from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and has served as a as a lecturer in sociology at Queen’s Universi...

Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowled...

Matthew Allen, "Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public din...

Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary ...

Amin Ghaziani, "Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2024)

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexp...

Claire Pierson, "Women's Troubles: Gender and Feminist Politics in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland" (Manchester University Press, 2025)

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do feminist movements develop and organise in ethno-nationally divided societies? How does this challenge our understandings of contemporary fourt...

Anna Gjika, "When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age" (Univ of California Press, 2023)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stories of teen sexting scandals, cyberbullying, and image-based sexual abuse have become commonplace fixtures of the digital age, with many adults st...

Howard A. Husock, "The Projects: A New History of Public Housing" (NYU Press, 2025)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help -- and how to fix it As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Amer...

Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College...

Carolyn Wolf-Gould et al., "A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States" (SUNY Press, 2025)

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States (SUNY Press, 2025) takes an empathic approach to an embattled subject. Sweeping in scope and ...

Stacy Lynn, "Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of the Women Who Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025)

15 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Abraham Lincoln belongs to everybody. The women he interacted with helped forge the outstanding moral character of America's greatest president. Lovi...

Joan C. Williams, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An eye-opening, urgent call to mend the broken relationship between college and non-college grads of all races that is driving politics to the far rig...

Susan Shapiro Barash, "Estranged: How Strained Female Friendships Are Mended Or Ended" (Meridian Editions, 2025)

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When life gets hard, we turn to our female friends. Husbands, partners, and jobs come and go, but close friendships are our bedrock. Until they're not...

Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)

08 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the ...

Brittany Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons, Dr. Brittany Friedman delves into how the California Department of Correctio...

Patrick McCartney, "Authenticity, Legitimacy and the Transglobal Yoga Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Shanti Mandir" (Routledge, 2025)

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book is a sociological study of knowledge and knowers and explores the production and perceived value of 'yogic knowledge', how distinction is cu...

Sarah Nagaty, "The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolutio...

Beth Linker on Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the...

Jeremy Morris, "Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do Russians really want? Do they want authoritarianism and are they prepared to go along with a war of conquest and destruction? Or do they want ...

Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025)

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Rober...

Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, "Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation" (NYU Press, 2025)

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation By Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon W.E.B. Du Bois famously...

Jaime Lee Kucinskas, "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores how civil servants n...

Michael D. Gambone, "The New Praetorians: American Veterans, Society, and Service from Vietnam to the Forever War" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)

31 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary veterans belong to an exclusive American group. Celebrated by most of the country, they are nevertheless often poorly understood by the s...

Krista N. Dalton, "How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2025)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the turn of the common era, the Jewish communities of Roman Palestine saw the organization of a small group of literate Jewish men who devoted thei...

Samuel Western, "The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies" (UP of Kansas)

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When did the West lose its way? In 1889, when the US government carved five states out of the spawling Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and ...

Dmitri N. Shalin, "Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination" (Routledge, 2024)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman’s direction for his papers not to be opened to researcher...

Erin Pritchard, "Midgetism: The Exploitation and Discrimination of People with Dwarfism" (Routledge, 2023)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There exist problematic attitudes and beliefs about dwarfism that have rarely been challenged, but continue to construct people with dwarfism as an in...

Michelle H. S. Ho, "Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies" (Duke UP, 2025)

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese...

Toine van Teeffelen, "The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir" (Wipf and Stock, 2024)

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on...

Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam an...

Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by wh...

Ken Conca, "After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One small town, two "thousand-year floods" in the span of two years: how does a community become resilient in the face of the ever-increasing risks of...

Elyssa Ford and Rebecca Scofield, "Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo" (U Washington Press, 2023)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What would a rodeo open to anyone and everyone look like? In their new book, Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (U Washington, 2023),...

Darryl Campbell, "Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software" (W. W. Norton, 2025)

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix. Software was supposed to radically improve society. Ou...

Tupur Chatterjee, "Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India" (NYU Press, 2025)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the late 1990s, the multiplex in India has emerged as a dominant site of media exhibition, almost always embedded within the shopping mall. This...

Cora Lingling Xu, "The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China" (SUNY Press, 2025)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can a student inherit time? What difference does time make to their educational journeys and outcomes? The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Sha...

Deana Jovanović, "Staging the Promises: Everyday Future-Making in a Serbian Industrial Town" (Cornell UP, 2025)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Built on the shifting grounds of post-Yugoslav transformation, Staging the Promises examines how the residents of Bor — a Serbian copper-mining to...

Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe

11 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living...

Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite al...

Maron E. Greenleaf, "Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon" (Duke UP, 2024)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the li...

Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in w...

Maliha Safri et al., "Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation" (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Conf...

Benjamin Schrader, "Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War" (SUNY Press, 2019)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While veterans are often talked about, in Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War (SUNY Press, 2019), Dr...

You Have More Influence Than You Think

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In You Have More Influence Than You Think (Norton, 2023) social psychologist Vanessa Bohns draws from her original research to illustrate why we fa...

Lian Sinclair, "Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations" (Manchester UP, 2024)

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter o...

Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. ...

Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system...

Diana Graizbord, "Indicators of Democracy: The Politics and Promise of Evaluation Expertise in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2024)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of election...

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?...

Terry Baxter and Libby Coyner-Tsosie, "Stories on Skin: A Librarian's Guide to Tattoos as Personal Archives" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tattoos are not merely decorative; they contain deep meaning for individuals and communities. They document their wearers' personal histories and posi...

The Good Father Syndrome: Why Strongmen Still Seduce

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein, co-authors of The Assault on the...

Television, Translation, and Algorithms on Netflix

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do media producers appeal to international audiences in the streaming era? In this episode of the Global Media & Communication podcast, our host ...

The Vote Gap: What’s Pulling Young Men and Women Apart?

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why are young men leaning right while young women shift left? Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones speak with NYU’s Scott Galloway, politica...

Randy Laist and Brian Dixon, "Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis" (Fourth Horseman, 2024)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis takes on the idea and terminology of freedom, examining our understanding of this c...

Marcus Kreuzer, "The Grammar of Time: A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Grammar of Time: A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2023), political scientist Marcus Kreuzer synthesises the dif...

Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the peo...

Alfred L. Martin, Jr., "Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences" (NYU Press, 2025)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) brea...

Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of ...

Christof Lammer, "Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China" (Berghahn, 2024)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On the podcast today I am joined by Christof Lammer, a social anthropologist based at the University of Klagenfurt and inherit fellow at Humboldt Un...

Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and...

Agnieszka Pasieka, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (Princeton UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton Uni...

Sarah Saddler, "Performing Corporate Bodies: Multinational Theatre in Global India" (Routledge, 2025)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do corporations use theater to reconcile the crises of late capitalism? In our latest interview on Ethnographic Marginalia, we speak with Dr. Sara...

Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024)

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial...

Aaron Kupchik, "Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice" (NYU Press, 2025)

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve th...

Laura Miller, "Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan (Hawaii 2024), Laura Miller examines the intersections of ludic capitalism with formal and informal...

Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, ...

Dána-Ain Davis and Christa Craven, "Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we acquire knowledge about societies? Does how we acquire social knowledge shape what we know? How conscious must we be of our own experience...

Engage and Evade in 2025: Asad L. Asad on Latino Immigrants in America

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Im...

Keith J. Hayward, "Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood" (Constable & Robinson, 2025)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever noticed that in areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you're increasingly treated like an irresponsib...

James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality tha...

Sam Wetherell, "Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall,...

Ståle Holgersen, "Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World" (Verso, 2024)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World (Verso, 2024), Ståle Holgersen develops a conceptualization of 'crisis' that moves b...

Chiara Calzana and Valentina Gamberi, "Haunting Ruins: Ethnographies of Ruination and Decay" (Berghahn Books, 2025)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the contemporary world, ruins, rubble, and decaying material have become increasingly iconic landscapes. They can foster a more layered theory of t...

Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been writ...

Adam J. Berinsky, "Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It" (Princeton UP, 2023)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumor...

Tuomas Tammisto, "Hard Work: Producing Places, Relations and Value on a Papua New Guinea Resource Frontier" (Helsinki UP, 2024)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On the podcast today I am joined by socio-cultural anthropologist, Tuomas Tammisto, who is an academy research fellow in Social Anthropology at Tampe...

Becky Yang Hsu, "The Extraordinary in the Mundane: Family and Forms of Community in China" (Columbia UP, 2024)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do individuals address serious challenges in a context where organized gatherings are subject to strict government control? This new edited volume...

Colonial Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship: A Discussion with Alexander Lee and Jack Paine

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The debate about the impact of colonialism on the prospects for democracy and development continues to rage. Was the legacy of colonialism equally des...

We Have Never Been Woke: A Conversation with Musa al-Gharbi

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why does occupation reliably predict political leanings? What is social capitalism, and how does it span income classes? If social capitalists are sin...

Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In ...