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Interpretive Political and Social Science
Interpretive Political and Social Science May 18, 2023

Freedom Inside?

Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

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 the political and social structures that incarcerate …

Interpretive Political and Social Science

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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.

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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 …
Interpretive Political and Social Science October 18, 2022

Bread and Freedom

Egypt's Revolutionary Situation

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 new political order …
Interpretive Political and Social Science August 9, 2022

Mobilizing in Uncertainty

Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia

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 Georgian troops crossing into eastern Abkhazia, in the Southern Caucasus …
Interpretive Political and Social Science April 22, 2022

Rethinking Comparison

Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry

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 Smith issue a call for qualitative political scientists to go beyond …
Interpretive Political and Social Science December 30, 2021

Empires of Vice

The Rise of Opium Prohibition Across Southeast Asia

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 at the heart of colonial state building …
Interpretive Political and Social Science 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 interpretivist discipline, and why it matters that it was …
Interpretive Political and Social Science July 23, 2021

Gendered Citizenship

Understanding Gendered Violence in Democratic India

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 committed to gender equality? This is the puzzle that animates …
Interpretive Political and Social Science April 7, 2021

Interviewing in Social Science Research

A Relational Approach

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 Research: A Relational Approach (Routledge, 2018), which …
Interpretive Political and Social Science January 11, 2021

Authoritarian Apprehensions

Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria

Lisa Wedeen

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
How has the Syrian regime been able to bear the brunt of the challenges raised against it? And, what can we learn about the seductions of authoritarian politics more generally …
Interpretive Political and Social Science October 15, 2020

Interpretive Social Science

An Anti-Naturalist Approach

Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2018), Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely make a case for why interpretivism is the most philosophically cogent approach currently on …
Interpretive Political and Social Science June 3, 2020

Against the Grain

A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press …
Interpretive Political and Social Science March 30, 2020

Elucidating Social Science Concepts

Frederic C. Schaffer

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
For the third installment in our special series on interpretive political and social scientific research, Frederic C. Schaffer joins us to discuss his Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide …
Interpretive Political and Social Science November 29, 2019

Everyday Exposure

Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley

Sarah Marie Wiebe

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In a foreword to Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), the public philosopher James Tully writes that, “Every once …
Interpretive Political and Social Science August 19, 2019

Interpretive Research Design

Concepts and Processes

Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
This episode is the first in a new series, New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, which will feature works on interpretive research design and practice alongside recently published …