In South Asian urban landscapes, men are everywhere. And yet we do not seem to know very much about precisely what men do in the city as men. How do men experience gender in city spaces? What are the interactional dynamics between different groups of men on city streets? How do men adjudicate between good and bad conduct in urban spaces?
Through ethnographi ... Show More
Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Jul 8
Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains ... Show More
1h 1m
May 3
Arely M. Zimmerman, "Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement ... Show More
23m 24s
Mar 2023
Uddipana Goswami, "Gendering Peace in Violent Peripheries: Marginality, Masculinity, and Feminist Agency" (Routledge, 2022)
Gendering Peace in Violent Peripheries: Marginality, Masculinity, and Feminist Agency (Routledge, 2022) forward Assam (and Northeast India) as a specific location for studying operations of gendered power in multi-ethnic, conflict-habituated geopolitical peripheries globally.
In ... Show More
56m 43s
Oct 2024
Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)
Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and ... Show More
53m 18s
Dec 2023
Amya Agarwal, "Contesting Masculinities and Women’s Agency in Kashmir" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
What is the significance of gender and masculinities in understanding conflict?
Through an ethnographic study conducted between 2013 and 2016, Amya Agarwal's book Contesting Masculinities and Women’s Agency in Kashmir (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) explores the politics of competin ... Show More
36m 49s
Oct 2019
Remi Joseph-Salisbury, "Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience" (Emerald, 2018)
What are the experiences of mixed-race men? In Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience (Emerald Publishing, 2018), Remi Joseph-Salisbury, a Presidential Fellow in Sociology at the University of Manchester, explores the double consciousness ... Show More
47m 18s
Sep 2025
Masculinity
Performative males, hustle bros, sissies, and manfluencers. In episode 140 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss masculinity. What does it mean to be a man, and how has the concept of masculinity changed over time? They look at the male loneliness epidemic, the current influx of ... Show More
58m 58s
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
Feb 2024
Sabina Andron, "Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City" (Routledge, 2024)
Sabina Andron's book Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City (Routledge, 2024) focuses on urban surfaces, on exploring their authorship and management, and on their role in struggles for the right to the city.
Graffiti, pristine walls, advertising posters, and municip ... Show More
1h 1m