J. Andrew Bush, “Between Muslims: Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan” (Stanford UP, 2020)
Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not …
Michael L. Siciliano, “Creative Control: The Ambivalence of Work in the Culture Industries” (Columbia UP, 2021)
How should we understand creative work? In Creative Control: The Ambivalence of Work in the Culture Industries (Columbia UP, 2021), Michael Siciliano, an assistant professor of …
M. Vollman Makris and M. Gatta, “Gentrification Down the Shore” (Rutgers UP, 2020)
In Gentrification Down the Shore (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Molly Vollman Makris and Mary Gatta engage in a rich ethnographic investigation of Asbury Park …
Dilara Yarbrough, “Nothing About Us Without Us: Reading Protests against Oppressive Knowledge Production as Guidelines for Solidarity Research” (2019)
Today I talked to Dilara Yarbrough about her article “Nothing About Us Without Us: Reading Protests against Oppressive Knowledge Production as Guidelines for Solidarity …
Patrick Vitale, “Nuclear Suburbs: Cold War Technoscience and the Pittsburgh Renaissance” (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
From submarines to the suburbs–the remaking of Pittsburgh during the Cold War During the early Cold War, research facilities became ubiquitous features …
Anthropologist Wade Davis Discusses His Life and Work
“… I am an axe; And my son a handle, soon; To be shaping again, model; And tool, craft of culture; How we go on.” …
E. Aspinall and W. Berenschot, “Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia” (Cornell UP, 2019)
In post-Suharto Indonesian politics the exchange of patronage for political support is commonplace. Clientelism saturates the political system through everyday practices of …
Jessi Streib, “Privilege Lost: Who Leaves the Upper Middle Class and How They Fall” (Oxford UP, 2020)
Talking about social class and the American class structure is a challenge. It can be easy to talk about the class system …
Melvin Konner, “Believers: Faith in Human Nature” (Norton, 2019)
Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist’s answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is …
Megan Ryburn, “Uncertain Citizenship: Everyday Practices of Bolivian Migrants in Chile” (U California Press, 2018)
Megan Ryburn’s Uncertain Citizenship: Everyday Practices of Bolivian Migrants in Chile (University of California Press, 2018) is a multi-sited ethnography of citizenship practices of …
The Ethnography of Immigration: In Conversation with Dr. Tahseen Shams
How are immigrants’ lives shaped by cultural and political dynamics in their homeland, hostland, and “elsewhere” countries whose geopolitical dynamics affect their …
Robert T. Tierney, “Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame” (U California Press, 2010)
Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the …
Daniel Heifetz, “The Science of Satyug: Class, Charisma, and Vedic Revivalism in the All World Gayatri Pariwar” (SUNY Press, 2021)
The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement. The All World Gayatri Pariwar is a …
Candace Fujikane, “Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartography in Hawai’i” (Duke UP, 2021)
In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i (Duke University Press, 2021), Candace Fujikane draws upon Hawaiian stories about …
Kas Saghafi, “The World after the End of the World: A Spectro-Poetics” (SUNY Press, 2020)
In this episode, I interview Kas Saghafi, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis, about his book The World After the …
Matthew O. Jackson, “The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors” (Vintage, 2019)
Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, …
Rachel B. Gross, “Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice” (NYU Press, 2021)
In 2007, the Museum at Eldridge Street opened at the site of a restored nineteenth-century synagogue originally built by some of the …
John Geoffrey Scott et al, “The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society” (Routledge, 2021)
Panoramic and provocative in its scope, John Geoffrey Scott and Christian Grov’s The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society (Routledge, 2021) is …
Eva Illouz, “The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations” (Oxford UP, 2019)
Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows …
Can We Fix Social Media?: A Discussion with Christopher A. Bail
In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand …
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” (HarperCollins, 2017)
Economist, data journalist, and best-selling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses data from the internet to gain new insights into the human psyche. In his new book Everybody …
Anita Hardon, “Chemical Youth: Navigating Uncertainty in Search of the Good Life” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
Anita Hardon’s Chemical Youth: Navigating Uncertainty in Search of the Good Life (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) explores how young people engage with chemical substances in their …
Lisa Björkman, “Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai’s Other World-Class Histories” (Association for Asian Studies, 2020)
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in the Indian city of Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai’s Other World-Class Histories (Association …
New Ethnographies of the Global South: In Conversation with Victoria Reyes and Marco Garrido
How can Sociology be nudged away from its traditional parochialism to embrace empirical work that focuses on the global south? Marco Garrido …