Interpretive Political and Social Science

Interpretive Political and Social Science

episodes

A special series featuring interviews with authors and editors of books on the epistemologies and methodologies of interpretive political and social science, alternately with authors of exemplary interpretivist monographs; streaming through the New Books in Political Science channel.

Colette Einfeld and Helen Sullivan, "How to Conduct Interpretive Research: Insights for Students and Researchers" (Edward Elgar, 2025)

January 27, 2026

How to Conduct Interpretive Research

Colette Einfeld and Helen Sullivan
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

What happens when an academic supervisor and their former student get together to write and edit a book on researching our social world? In How to Con…

Michael Rowe, "Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions" (Routledge, 2024)

October 1, 2025

Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy

Michael Rowe
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Researching Street-level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024) is the first among a number of new titles in the Rout…

Siri Schwabe, "Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile" (Cornell UP, 2023)

July 9, 2025

Moving Memory

Siri Schwabe
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Two juxtaposed years frame the subject matter of Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile. In one, 1973, General Augusto Pinoche…

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

April 22, 2025

The Grammar of Time

Marcus Kreuzer
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

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

John Boswell et al., "The Art and Craft of Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

March 3, 2025

The Art and Craft of Comparison

Jack Corbett, John Boswell , and R. A. W. Rhodes
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

There are many books giving advice about research methods on the market, but The Art and Craft of Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2019) is the first monogra…

Sarah Ball, "Behavioural Public Policy in Australia: How an Idea Became Practice" (Routledge, 2022)

October 22, 2024

Behavioural Public Policy in Australia

Sarah Ball
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Max Weber once remarked that bureaucracy’s power comes from its massing of expert and factual knowledges. It amasses this power, in part, by keeping m…

Jason Blakely, "Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life" (Agenda Publishing, 2023)

August 6, 2024

Lost in Ideology

Jason Blakely
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his n…

José Ciro Martínez, "States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan" (Stanford UP, 2022)

May 15, 2024

States of Subsistence

José Ciro Martínez
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

In 1974 the government of Jordan established a new ministry to oversee a nationwide scheme to buy and distribute subsidized flour and regulate bakerie…

Samantha Majic, "Lights, Camera, Feminism?: Celebrities and Anti-Trafficking Politics" (U California Press, 2023)

March 10, 2024

Lights, Camera, Feminism?

Samantha Majic
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Recent years have brought an upsurge in celebrity activism. Not a day goes by without an actor or musician taking to a stage, a podium or the internet…

Kevin Funk, "Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries" (Indiana UP, 2022)

September 20, 2023

Rooted Globalism

Kevin Funk
Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Listen:

Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics …

Shaul Shenhav, "Analyzing Social Narratives" (Routledge, 2015)

July 31, 2023

Analyzing Social Narratives

Shaul Shenhav
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose tit…

Farah Godrej, "Freedom Inside?: Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State" (Oxford UP, 2022)

May 18, 2023

Freedom Inside?

Farah Godrej
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Are meditation and yoga offered to prisoners merely to have them acquiesce to being incarcerated and degraded? Or can they help prisoners interrogate …

Ke Li, "Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China" (Stanford UP, 2022)

March 13, 2023

Marriage Unbound

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…

Mona El-Ghobashy, "Bread and Freedom: Egypt's Revolutionary Situation" (Stanford UP, 2021)

October 18, 2022

Bread and Freedom

Mona El-Ghobashy
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

A decade has passed since the Arab Spring of 2011, during which an uprising in Egypt ended three decades of rule by Hosni Mubarak without realizing a …

Anastasia Shesterinina, "Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia" (Cornell UP, 2021)

August 9, 2022

Mobilizing in Uncertainty

Anastasia Shesterinina
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Anastasia Shesterinina begins Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia (Cornell University Press, 2021) with an account of…

Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith, "Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

April 22, 2022

Rethinking Comparison

Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

With Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush…

Diana S. Kim, "Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition Across Southeast Asia" (Princeton UP, 2020)

December 30, 2021

Empires of Vice

Diana S. Kim
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

In Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 2020) Diana Kim situates the regulation of vice a…

Cecelia Lynch, "Interpreting International Politics" (Routledge, 2014)

October 14, 2021

Interpreting International Politics

Cecelia Lynch
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Interpreting International Politics (Routledge, 2014) is a short and lively account of how international relations was founded and developed as an int…

Natasha Behl, "Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Gendered Violence in Democratic India" (Oxford UP, 2019)

July 23, 2021

Gendered Citizenship

Natasha Behl
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

Why do we find pervasive gender-based discrimination, exclusion and violence in India when the Indian constitution builds an inclusive democracy commi…

Lee Ann Fujii, "Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach" (Routledge, 2018)

April 7, 2021

Interviewing in Social Science Research

Lee Ann Fujii
Hosted by Nick Cheesman

In this very special episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science we feature Lee Ann Fujii’s Interviewing in Social Science Resea…