New Books Network Podcast

Psychology March 23, 2023

Capitalism and Desire

The Psychic Cost of Free Markets

Todd McGowan

Hosted by Eugenio Duarte

If you have ever gotten excited over buying a new object only to feel let down once you acquire it, then today’s discussion will be relevant to you. My guest …

The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones March 22, 2023

The Future of Genes and Equality

A Discussion with Kathryn Paige Harden

Kathryn Paige Harden

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones

If your genes make you better suited to succeed, is that fair? And if not, can anything be done about it? Kathryn Paige Harden – professor psychology at University of …

Sociology March 22, 2023

Counseling Women

Kinship Against Violence in India

Julia Kowalski

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri

Women’s rights activists around the world have commonly understood gendered violence as the product of so-called traditional family structures, from which women must be liberated. Counseling Women: Kinship Against Violence …

Disability Studies March 21, 2023

Families We Need

Disability, Abandonment, and Foster Care's Resistance in Contemporary China

Erin Raffety

Hosted by Shu Wan

Set in the remote, mountainous Guangxi Autonomous Region and based on ethnographic fieldwork, Families We Need: Disability, Abandonment, and Foster Care's Resistance in Contemporary China (Rutgers UP, 2022) traces the …

Policing, Incarceration, and Reform March 21, 2023

Injustice, Inc.

How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor

Daniel L. Hatcher

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems exploit America's history of racial and economic inequality to …

Sociology March 21, 2023

Forbidden Intimacies

Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance

Melanie Heath

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri

In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious practices that challenge seemingly central principles of family …

Critical Theory March 21, 2023

The Politics of Precarity

Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering

Gediminas Lesutis

Hosted by Shraddha Chatterjee

Based on critical theory and ethnographic research, Gediminas Lesutis' book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering (Routledge, 2021) explores how intensifying geographies of extractive capitalism shape human …

Peoples & Things March 20, 2023

Left to Our Own Devices

A Conversation with Julia Ticona

Julia Ticona

Hosted by Lee Vinsel

Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the …

Anthropology March 19, 2023

Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science

The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations

Patrick L. Schmidt

Hosted by Alex Golub

Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology …

Urban Studies March 18, 2023

Tensions in Diversity

Spaces for Collective Life in Los Angeles

Felicity Hwee-Hwa Chan

Hosted by Anna Zhelnina

Urban landscapes are complex spaces of sociocultural diversity, characterized by narratives of both conviviality and conflict. As people with multiple ethnicities and nationalities find their common destinies in thriving globalizing …

African American Studies March 17, 2023

It's Always Been Ours

Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Jessica Wilson

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

In It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies (Hachette Go, 2023) eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink what having a "good" …

Anthropology March 15, 2023

Nested Ecologies

A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine

Rosalynn A. Vega

Hosted by Joan Matamoros

Each body is a system within a system—an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of epigenetics, whereby …

Southeast Asian Studies March 15, 2023

Unsettled Frontiers

Market Formation in the Cambodia-Vietnam Borderlands

Sango Mahanty

Hosted by Michele Ford

Like other global frontiers, the Cambodia-Vietnam borderlands are a hotspot for migration, land claims, and markets for newly introduced commodities. These topics and more are the focus of Sango Mahanty’s …

Sociology March 15, 2023

A Good Place to Do Business

The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945

Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose

Hosted by Nicole Trujillo-Pagan

The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class residents and people of color saw their neighborhoods cleared and …

Sociology March 13, 2023

Siblings and Sociology

Katherine Davies

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri

Katherine Davies' book Siblings and Sociology (Manchester UP, 2023) draws upon innovative qualitative data sources to explore the significance of siblings throughout the life course, demonstrating why sociologists ought to pay …

Interpretive Political and Social Science March 13, 2023

Marriage Unbound

State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China

Ke Li

Hosted by Nick Cheesman

In recent years the authors of a slew of books and articles have debated whether China is moving toward or away from the rule of law. Against this end-of-history approach …

Music March 12, 2023

Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness

Kelsey Klotz

Hosted by Nathan Smith

How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that Brubeck leveraged his fame as a jazz musician …

Anthropology March 12, 2023

Unlearning

Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge

Charles L. Briggs

Hosted by Jolon Timms

A provocative theoretical synthesis by renowned folklorist and anthropologist Charles L. Briggs, Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge (Utah State UP, 2021) questions intellectual foundations and charts new …

Japanese Studies March 10, 2023

Science for Governing Japan's Population

Aya Homei

Hosted by Nathan Hopson

Aya Homei’s Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge UP, 2022) examines the science and policy of population in Japan, 1860s-1960s. As in other modern nation-states and empires, population has been …

Nordic Asia Podcast March 10, 2023

Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes

Societal Transformations and Everyday Life

Arve Hansen

Hosted by Kenneth Bo Nielsen

In this episode, we discuss Arve Hansen’s new book Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Societal Transformations and Everyday Life (Springer, 2022). In this book, Hansen studies the dramatic changes in …