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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
Elizabeth H. Pleck, “Not Just Roommates: Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution” (Chicago UP, 2012)
Most countries, believing that married people form a kind of demographic and political bedrock, promote marriage (and, of course, child-having within wedlock)…
- New Books in Sociology
James Dawes, “Evil Men” (Harvard UP, 2013)
This week a Syrian rebel ripped the heart out of a loyalist fighter and ate part of it. You can see it on YouTube. Many people asked “How can people do things…
- New Books in Sociology
Azar Gat, “Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
When I went to college long ago, everyone had to read Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848). I think I read it in half-a-dozen classes. Today Marx is…
- New Books in Sociology
Neil Gross, “Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care?” (Harvard UP, 2013)
Most people think that professors are more liberal, and some much more liberal, than ordinary folk. As Neil Gross shows in his eye-opening Why are Professors…
- New Books in Sociology
David M. Halperin, “How to be Gay” (Harvard UP, 2012)
What does it mean to be gay? According to many people, gayness is simply homosexuality – a sexual orientation. However, as David M. Halperin argues in his new…
- New Books in Sociology
Nick Couldry, “Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice” (Polity Press, 2012)
In Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity Press, 2012), Nick Couldry provides a sweeping synthesis of his important media…
- New Books in Sociology
Christian J. Churchill and Gerald E. Levy, “The Enigmatic Academy Class, Bureaucracy, and Religion in American Education” (Temple UP, 2011)
According to the Marriam-Webster dictionary, an “enigma” can be defined as “something hard to understand or explain.” What is it that is so enigmatic about…
- New Books in Sociology
Scott Melzer, “Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War” (NYU Press, 2012)
Scott Melzer is the author of Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York University Press, 2012). Scott earned his Ph.D. from the University of California…
- New Books in Sociology
Signe Rousseau, “Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet” (AltaMira Press, 2012)
The other day I found myself in a cooking situation that’s fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered red pepper, a…
- New Books in Sociology
Keri E. Iyall Smith, “Sociology of Globalization: Cultures, Economies, and Politics” (Westview Press, 2012)
Globalization is one of those words we hear on an almost daily basis. The world today is interconnected in ways that would have been unimaginable even twenty…
- New Books in Sociology
Brett Bebber, “Violence and Racism in Football: Politics and Cultural Conflict in British Society, 1968-1998” (Pickering & Chatto, 2011)
This past September an independent panel commissioned in 2009 by the British government released its 395-page report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of…
- New Books in Sociology
Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life” (Verso Books, 2012)
Racism is a process by which people are segregated and discriminated against based on their race, and race is defined as a set of physical characteristics…
- New Books in Sociology
Jini Kim Watson, “The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban…
- New Books in Sociology
David Chura, “I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup” (Beacon Press, 2010)
It is easy to dismiss juveniles in prison as “bad seeds”, as people with which we have nothing in common, and of which we want only distance. David Chura…
- New Books in Sociology
Giusi Tamburello, “Concepts and Categories of Emotion in East Asia” (Carocci editore, 2012)
What is the relationship between language and the emotions? Where ought we look for evidence of emotion in historical and literary texts? Is it possible to…
- New Books in Sociology
Sandra Chait, “Seeking Salaam: Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis in the Pacific Northwest” (University of Washington Press, 2011)
In the Pacific Northwest, immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia coexist, making a life for themselves and their family in a new country. In the book…
- New Books in Sociology
Barry Schwartz, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction” (Harper Perennial, 2003)
Is there such a thing as too much choice? In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction (Harper Perennial…
- New Books in Sociology
Kevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Routledge, 2012)
The one play of my football career that my father remembers most fondly came in my very first game, when I was eleven years old. Younger and smaller than the…
- New Books in Sociology
Phil Zuckerman, “Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment” (New York University Press, 2010)
It is not uncommon for many Americans to believe that morality and order comes from God and religion. A society without these elements would consequently be…
- New Books in Sociology
Stephanie Coontz, “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap” (Basic Books, 2000)
“My mother was a saint.” ” In my time, we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps.” “A man’s home is his castle.” “The home is the foundation of society.”…
- New Books in Sociology
Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011)
Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California…
- New Books in Sociology
Matt Grossmann, “The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance” (Stanford UP, 2012)
Matt Grossmann, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, has authored the recently released book, The Not-So-Special Interests…
- New Books in Sociology
Marshall Poe, “A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
It is not every historian who would offer readers an attempt to explain human nature. In A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of…
- New Books in Sociology
Vorris Nunley, “Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric” (Wayne State UP, 2011)
Vorris Nunley‘s Keepin it Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Wayne State University Press, 2011), uses the black barbershop as a…
- New Books in Sociology
Erica Prussing, “White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community” (University of Arizona Press, 2011)
For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United States…
- New Books in Sociology
Jennifer Frost, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism” (NYU Press, 2011)
Any pop culture scholar worth her salt will tell you that discussion of Beyonce’s baby bump or Charlie Sheen’s unique sex life is far from apolitical, but, at…
- New Books in Sociology
James Unnever and Shaun L. Gabbidon, “A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime” (Routledge, 2011)
Is comedian and cultural critic Bill Cosby right–that black youth suffer from a cultural pathology that leads them to commit more crimes than their white…
- New Books in Sociology
Robert Thurston, “Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective” (Ashgate, 2011)
It takes a brave historian to take on the orthodoxy regarding the rise and fall of lynching in the United States. That orthodoxy holds that lynching in the…
- New Books in Sociology
Robert J. Corber, “Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema” (Duke University Press, 2011)
The study of non-heteronormative sexualities in the academy continues to be remarkably dynamic. Despite the usual attempts to harden the frame around this…
- New Books in Sociology
Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliasotti, “Boy’s Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre” (McFarland, 2010)
Growing up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indy-car racing offered my friends and me some very exciting heroes. As children, we played “Indy 500” on our bikes…
- New Books in Sociology
Robert Lane Greene, “You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Politics of Identity” (Delacorte Press, 2011)
Isn’t it odd how the golden age of correct language always seems to be around the time that its speaker was in high school, and that language has been going to…
- New Books in Sociology
Carrie Pitzulo, “Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
Playboy is having (another) moment. Since its fiftieth birthday in 2003, the brand’s relevance has risen after a period of decline. The Girls Next Door, a…
- New Books in Sociology
Peter Baehr, “Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences” (Stanford UP, 2010)
Contemporary research into illiberal governments draws much inspiration from the writings of Hannah Arendt. In her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism…
- New Books in Sociology
Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease” (Beacon Press, 2010)
Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are two to…
- New Books in Sociology
Francesco Duina, “Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession” (Princeton University Press, 2010)
“Winning is everything” is such a common phrase that we rarely question where it comes from and why we apply it to everyday experiences. One can win a little…
- New Books in Sociology
Teresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-Homeless in San Francisco” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010)
Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness the result…
- New Books in Sociology
Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by that time a rock-star intellectual and darling of the American student movement…