Shows / New Books in Sociology
New Books in Sociology
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Sociology
Deborah Mayersen, “On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined” (Berghahn Books, 2014)
I live and work in the state of Kansas in the US. We think of ourselves as living in tornado alley and orient our schedules in the spring around the weather…
- New Books in Sociology
Vernadette V. Gonzalez, “Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines” (Duke UP, 2013)
Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez‘s Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2013), examines the intertwined…
- New Books in Sociology
Hahrie Han, “How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century” (Oxford UP 2014)
Hahrie Han has written How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford UP, 2014). Han is associate…
- New Books in Sociology
Katherine Frank, “Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)
Dr. Katherine Frank‘s book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), is a fascinating look at the taboo…
- New Books in Sociology
Karl Spracklen, “Whiteness and Leisure” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
Our taken for granted assumptions are questioned in a new book by Karl Spracklen, a professor of leisure studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in England…
- New Books in Sociology
Matt Grossmann, “Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945” (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Matt Grossmann is back on the podcast with his newest book, Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (Oxford…
- New Books in Sociology
Marianne Constable, “Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts” (Stanford UP, 2014)
Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts (Stanford UP, 2014), by UC Berkeley Professor of Rhetoric Marianne Constable, impels its readers to reassess the…
- New Books in Sociology
Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014)
Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the…
- New Books in Sociology
Martin Shaw, “Genocide and International Relations” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
Works in the field of genocide studies tend to fall into one of a few camps. Some are emotional and personal. Others are historical and narrative. Still others…
- New Books in Sociology
Kevin Schilbrack, “Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)
Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this…
- New Books in Sociology
Darren Halpin, “The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy” (Routledge, 2014)
Darren Halpin is the author of The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy (Routledge 2014). Halpin is associate professor and reader in…
- New Books in Sociology
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT Press, 2014)
In his new book, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), Amit Prasad, an associate…
- New Books in Sociology
Benjamin Lieberman, “Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)
What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new…
- New Books in Sociology
William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature of Religion” (Oxford UP, 2013)
What brings us together as scholars in Religious Studies? Are the various social phenomena commonly grouped together as religion really that similar? The…
- New Books in Sociology
Patrick Burkart, “Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests” (MIT Press, 2014)
The mid-’00s saw the rise of a political movement in Europe concerned with technocratic impositions on the ideals of free culture, privacy, government…
- New Books in Sociology
David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)
What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). The…
- New Books in Sociology
Leilani Nishime, “Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture” (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
Leilani Nishime‘s Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2014) challenges the dominant U.S. cultural…
- New Books in Sociology
Isaac Weiner, “Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism” (NYU Press, 2014)
In 2004, the traditionally Polish-Catholic community of Hamtramck Michigan became the site of a debate over the Muslim call to prayer. Members of the Hamtramck…
- New Books in Sociology
David Nemer, “Favela Digital: The Other Side of Technology” (GSA Editora e Grafica, 2013)
Inherently problematic in most mainstream discussions of the impact of technology is the dominant western or global northern perspective. In this way, the…
- New Books in Sociology
William Davies “The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition” (Sage,
In his new book, The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Logic of Competition (Sage, 2014), William Davies, from Goldsmiths College…
- New Books in Sociology
Leah Hager Cohen, “No Book But the World” (Riverhead Books, 2014)
Works of fiction sometimes offer unique windows on society, and so it is with Leah Hager Cohen‘s novel No Book but the World (Riverhead, 2014). The story opens…
- New Books in Sociology
danah boyd, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” (Yale UP, 2014)
Social media is ubiquitous, and teens are ubiquitous on social media. And this youth attachment to social media is a cause for concern among parents…
- New Books in Sociology
Michael Salter, “Organised Sexual Abuse” (Routledge, 2012)
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how certain types of violence can occur, and organized multi-perpetrator abuse certainly fits into this category. Ritual abuse…
- New Books in Sociology
Patricia Ventura, “Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism” (Ashgate, 2012)
Culture is inescapably linked to questions of political economy. In Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism (Ashgate, 2012), Patricia Ventura…
- New Books in Sociology
Betsy Leondar-Wright, “Missing Class” (Cornell UP, 2014)
Gender and race are visible markers of identity, regularly talked about both in the news and sociology circles. There is another marker, however, that is just…
- New Books in Sociology
Vershawn Young et al., “Other People’s English” (Teacher’s College Press, 2013)
In linguistics, we all happily and glibly affirm that there is no “better” or “worse” among languages (or dialects, or varieties), although we freely admit…
- New Books in Sociology
Paul-Brian McInerney, “From Social Movement to Moral Market: How the Circuit Riders Sparked an IT Revolution and Created a Technology Market” (Stanford UP, 2014)
Paul-Brian McInerney is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of From Social Movement to Moral Market: How…
- New Books in Sociology
Nick Yee, “The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-and How They Don’t” (Yale UP, 2014)
The image of online gaming in popular culture is that of an addictive pastime, mired in escapism. And the denizens of virtual worlds are thought to be mostly…
- New Books in Sociology
George E. Vaillant, “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study” (Harvard UP, 2012)
There are very few studies like the Harvard Grant Study. Started in 1938, it has been following its approximately 200 participants ever since, analyzing their…
- New Books in Sociology
Joshua Dubler, “Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013)
In almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized…
- New Books in Sociology
Gilbert Mireles, “Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields” (Lynne Rienner, 2013)
Gilbert Mireles is the author of Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013). He is associate…
- New Books in Sociology
Leslie Irvine, “My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and their Animals” (Lynne Rienner, 2013)
Homelessness and stigma go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more apparent than pet ownership among the homeless. From nasty looks to outright insults – ” you…
- New Books in Sociology
Sarah Franklin, “Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship” (Duke University Press, 2013)
Sarah Franklin‘s new book is an exceptionally rich, focused yet wide-ranging, insightful account of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the worlds that it creates…
- New Books in Sociology
Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg, eds., “The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religious Studies” (Routledge, 2011)
In almost every graduate program in Religious Studies and many undergraduate majors you will find a course on theories and methods in the study of religion…
- New Books in Sociology
Aswin Punthamabekar, “From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry” (NYU Press, 2013)
Aswin Punthamabekar‘s From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (New York University Press, 2013) offers a deeply researched and richly…
- New Books in Sociology
John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, “In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism” (Princeton UP, 2013)
John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi are the authors of In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism (Princeton University Press, 2013). Ahlquist is…
- New Books in Sociology
Karen G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community” (Northeastern UP, 2013)
In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about…
- New Books in Sociology
Jarrod Gilbert, “Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand” (Auckland UP, 2013)
Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond…
- New Books in Sociology
Joseph Albini and Jeffrey S. McIllwain, “Deconstructing Organized Crime: An Historical and Theoretical Study” (MacFarlane, 2012)
Joseph Albini and Jeffrey S. McIllwain, Deconstructing Organized Crime: An Historical and Theoretical Study (MacFarlane, 2012) is not, as some academics might…
- New Books in Sociology
Patrick Burkart, “Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts” (MIT Press, 2014)
Patrick Burkart‘s Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts (MIT Press, 2014) considers the democratic potential and theoretical significance of…
- New Books in Sociology
Brent Nongbri, “Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept” (Yale University Press, 2013)
We all know that religion is a universal feature of human history, right? Well, maybe not. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale University…
- New Books in Sociology
Emily Matchar, “Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity” (Simon and Schuster, 2013)
A couple of years ago I was living in a hip district of a university town in the Midwest. It had all the hip stuff you’d expect: a record store (and I mean…
- New Books in Sociology
Melissa Aronczyk, “Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity” (Oxford UP, 2013)
In Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity, Melissa Aronczyk locates the rise of nation branding as a response to the perceived need to…
- New Books in Sociology
Muhammed Ali Khalidi, “Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
The division between natural kinds – the kinds that ‘cut nature at its joints’ – and those that simply reflect human interests and values has a long history…
- New Books in Sociology
Tony Bennett, “Making Culture, Changing Society” (Routledge, 2013)
In his new book Making Culture, Changing Society (Routledge, 2013), Professor Tony Bennett aims to change the way we think about culture. The book uses four…
- New Books in Sociology
Ken MacLeish, “Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton UP, 2013)
Ken MacLeish offers an ethnographic look at daily lives and the true costs borne by soldiers, their families, and communities, in his new book Making War at…
- New Books in Sociology
Joanne Benham Rennick, “Religion in the Ranks: Belief and Religious Experience in the Canadian Forces” (University of Toronto Press, 2011)
What is the role of religion in the military? What are the roles of religious chaplains in the military? How are important issues such as post-traumatic…
- New Books in Sociology
Ian Samson, “Paper: An Elegy” (Harper Collins, 2012)
In our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the…
- New Books in Sociology
Christopher Powell, “Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011)
What exactly is genocide? Is there a fundamental difference between episodes of genocide and how we go about our daily life? Or can it be said that the roots…
- New Books in Sociology
David Beer, “Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation” (Palgrave, 2013)
Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (Palgrave, 2013) is written by David Beer, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at York University in the…
- New Books in Sociology
Gayle Kaufman, “Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century” (NYU Press, 2013)
Pretty much every day you can read an article–usually somewhat intemperate–about how women can or can’t “have it all.” Rarely, however, do you read anything…
- New Books in Sociology
Mary Eberstadt, “How the West Really Lost God” (Templeton Press, 2013)
There are a lot of theories that attempt to explain how Westerns came to leave their churches in great numbers. Some focus on ideas, particularly the idea that…
- New Books in Sociology
Fabian Drixler, “Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950” (University of California Press, 2013)
The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle the…
- New Books in Sociology
Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture” (NYU Press, 2013)
In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other spheres…
- New Books in Sociology
Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality” (Harvard UP, 2013)
One of the basic rules of human behavior is that people generally want to do what their peers do. If your friends like jazz, you’ll probably like jazz. If your…
- New Books in Sociology
Matthew W. Hughey, “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race” (Stanford UP, 2012)
Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention…
- New Books in Sociology
David Garland, “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition” (Harvard UP, 2010)
Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago?…
- New Books in Sociology
Martha C. Howell, “Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600” (Cambridge UP, 2010)
When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that meant. If it…
- New Books in Sociology
Nancy Segal, “Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study” (Harvard UP, 2012)
Identical twins, separated at birth, raised in different families, and reunited in adulthood. In 1979, psychology researchers in Minnesota found some twins who…
- New Books in Sociology
Paula Huston, “A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life” (Loyola Press, 2012)
“Paula Huston wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel…