It is well-known that the institution of marriage has changed dramatically in the past few decades. However, very little research has focused on the role of religious institutions…
After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity term that refers to nonheterosexual and gender nonconforming identities in…
Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professors of Sociology at the London School of Economics, tell the…
In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global infrastructure production today is focused squarely…
Why do armed groups employ terrorism in markedly different ways during civil wars? Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Dr. Andreas E. Feldmann examines the disparate…
Dr. Aideen O’Shaughnessy is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, an MA in…
Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra (Cornell UP, 2024) by Dr. Felia Allum dives into the Neapolitan criminal underworld of the Camorra as seen and…
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with…
The open-access edited volume Philosophies of Appropriated Religions: Perspectives from Southeast Asia (Springer, 2023) collects philosophical approaches to Southeast Asian traditions of philosophy and religion. The editors, Soraj Hongladarom, Jeremiah…
In this episode, we are joined by the anthropologist Tone Bleie for a discussion of her book A New Testament: Scandinavian Missionaries and Santal Chiefs from Company and British…
Spain’s former African colonies-Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara-share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being…
On the podcast today, I am joined by anthropologist Andrea Pia (London School of Economics and Political Science) to talk about his new book, Cutting the Mass Line: Water,…
Addressing questions about what it means to be ‘British’ or ‘Irish’ in the twenty-first century, Migrants, Immigration and Diversity in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland: British, Irish or “Other”? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)…
Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks…
A perpetual tension exists between history and change, which is an issue long explored by historians and social scientists. Reckoning with Change in Yucatán: Histories of Care and Threat…
Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer (U California Press, 2024) unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft…
It is an intuitive truth that religious beliefs are different from ordinary factual beliefs. We understand that a belief in God or the sacredness of scripture is not…
On this podcast today, I am joined by three scholars: postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt, Gil Hizi; assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University, Xinyan Peng;…
Dr. Aviad Moreno is himself an incarnation of entwined homelands. He is an Israeli whose grandfather moved from Morocco to Venezuela, sent his son back to Morocco to study.…
China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification.…
Ehaab D. Abdou’s book Education, Civics, and Citizenship in Egypt: Towards More Inclusive Curricular Representations and Teaching (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores how to render curricular representations more inclusive and how…
Why do people go to college? In Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility (U Chicago Press, 2024), Melissa Osborne, an associate professor at Western Washington University, explores the experiences of students…
When people migrate and settle in other countries, do they automatically form a diaspora? In Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora (U Chicago Press, 2024), Sharon M. Quinsaat explains the…
From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers an examination of how novice psychiatrists come to understand the workings of the mind –…