Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press, 2022) offers the first ethnographically grounded perspective on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005), which was promulgated as a welfare oriented ‘right to work’ scheme by the Indian Parliament at the recommendat ... Show More
Yesterday
Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law" (NYU Press, 2026)
The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet’s biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting hu ... Show More
42m 33s
Aug 28
Diego Galego, "Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Que ... Show More
1h 10m
Aug 28
Elizabeth J. Letourneau and Luke Malone, "One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It" (Basic Books, 2026)
One in five children will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country, city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk for ph ... Show More
57m 43s
Dec 2024
Mukulika Banerjee, "Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India (Oxford UP, 2021) by Dr. Mukulika Banerjee offers a groundbreaking rethinking of democracy, moving beyond its institutional frameworks to focus on its lived, everyday dimensions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in ... Show More
1h 4m
Jan 2024
Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad, "Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment" (Routledge, 2022)
Drawing on the extensive empirical field research of six scholars of religion and politics, Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad's Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment (Routledge, 2022) directs attention to frictions around reli ... Show More
53m 19s
Aug 2021
Sailen Routray, "Everyday State and Politics in India: Government in the Backyard in Kalahandi" (Routledge, 2017)
Set in the eastern state of Odisha in a district known as the “Somalia of India,” Everyday State and Politics in India: Government in the Backyard in Kalahandi (Routledge 2018) studies a development project in a region iconic for development failure. Drawing on rich fieldwork wit ... Show More
1h 32m
Mar 2025
Hemangini Gupta, "Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India" (U California Press, 2024)
Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India (U California Press, 2024) is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of "backend" IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. The book journeys ... Show More
39m 59s
May 2023
Rupal Oza, "Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Semiotics of Rape: Sexual Subjectivity and Violation in Rural India (Duke UP, 2022), Rupal Oza follows the social life of rape in rural northwest India to reveal how rape is not only a violation of the body but a language through which a range of issues—including caste and gen ... Show More
49m 1s
Dec 2023
Vineeta Sinha. "Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia" (Berghahn Books, 2023)
The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Vineeta Sinha's Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia (Berghahn Books, 2023) critically outlines the interlink o ... Show More
46m 24s
Jul 2023
Roluah Puia, "Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and Politics of Peace in Northeast India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Roluah Puia's book Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and Politics of Peace in Northeast India (Cambridge UP, 2023) illuminates our understanding of the relationship between orality and nationalist politics. In doing so, it provides a new angle to the understanding of ... Show More
46m 7s
Feb 2025
Aidan McGarry, "Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups (Oxford UP, 2024), Aidan McGarry examines the agency of marginalised people, emphasizing the processes through which different communities around the world articulate their political voices. McGarry develops an innov ... Show More
58m 36s