Sideways Migration: Being French in London (Routledge, 2025) examines the relationship between migration and socioeconomic status. In particular, it charts a set of middle-class aspirations that lead people to…
Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted ChatGPT, they propitiated oracles. Before they fell…
When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners (Pluto Press, 2024), uncovers the unique experiences of Muslim political prisoners held in Egypt and under US custody at…
How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of…
Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. No matter the strides scientists have made in neurological research nor doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia…
How do young people participate in democratic societies? Youth Participation and Democracy: Cultures of Doing Society (Bristol UP, 2024) introduces the concept of ‘doing society’ as a new theory of…
Audun Kjus joins Jana Byars to talk about Adventures in the Play-Ritual Continuum (Utah State Press, 2025), eds. Audun Kjus, Jakob Löfgren, Cliona O’Carroll, Simon Poole & Ida Tolgensbakk. Utah…
Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian continue their second series on Violent Majorities. Their previous episode featured Peter Beinart on Zionism as long-distance ethnonationalism; here they speak with Subir Sinha, who teaches at…
The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In nations where the rule…
What is the connection between fan culture and feminism? In Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr (Bloomsbury, 2023), Briony Hannell, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester, explores the intersection of fandom, in…
An ethnographic exploration of anthropological failures through the Mapuche archetypes of witch, clown, and usurper, Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) invites readers to consider…
On the podcast today I am joined by Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita of Anthropology at John Jay College, City University of New York, Alisse Waterston to talk…
Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, history and ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Magdalena Buchczyk delves into the history and the changing…
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, interview Gabriella…
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean…
What makes sounds “religious”? How are communities shaped by the things they hear, play, or listen to? This book foregrounds connections between sounds, bodies, and media in the…
As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature…
Political anthropologists Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen are back to continue RTB’s Violent Majorities series with a set of three episodes on long-distance ethno-nationalism. Today, they speak with Peter Beinart (an editor at Jewish Currents and Professor…
**Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing content!** On this episode of the Black Beryl, I sit down with Justin McDaniel, a scholar of Theravada Buddhist literature and art.…
In this NBN episode, I am joined by anthropologists Eva van Roekel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Fiona Murphy (Dublin City University) to talk about theit edited book, A Collection of…
In An Archive of Possibilities: Healing and Repair in Democratic Republic of Congo (Duke UP, 2024), anthropologist and surgeon Rachel Marie Niehuus explores possibilities of healing and repair in the eastern…
Environments associated with migration are often seen as provisional, lacking both history and architecture. As Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi demonstrates in Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian…
Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement (Routledge, 2025) by Professor Erica Borgstrom & Dr. Renske Visser is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death,…
Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts…