The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Dr. James Cummings explores the everyday lives of gay men in Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China. Taking an ethnographic and phenomenological approach, it asks how these men construct and experience ways of ‘sexual being’ – as gay, homose ... 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 27
David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)
In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key th ... Show More
1h 4m
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
Oct 2024
Jamie Hakim, "Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Queer men's cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, safer sex, sexual racism and gay marriage. The introduction of the smartphone in 2008 only intensified these debates whilst also rais ... Show More
53m 38s
Jun 2023
What’s It Like To Be Gay In China? with Dr. Travis S. K. Kong
What do 90 young, gay men in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have in common? They’ve all spent years sharing their stories with this week’s guest: Dr. Travis S. K. Kong. He joins Jonathan as part of our Pride Beyond Borders series to discuss what it’s like to be queer in ea ... Show More
1h 11m
Sep 2024
Uroš Kovač, "The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
A compelling work that explores the lives and aspirations of young footballers with deep nuance and insight, The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon (Berghahn Books, 2022) shows how precarious masculinity, Pentecostal spir ... Show More
1h 13m
Jan 2019
Derek Hird and Geng Song, "The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age" (Hong Kong UP, 2018)
China’s global rise has been analysed from many perspectives in recent years. But pressing questions over how understandings of gender – and particularly masculinity – have been changing amidst increasing mutual contact between China and the wider world have been asked less often ... Show More
1h 8m
May 2023
The Gentrification of Queer Desire
Writer Huw Lemmey (Chubz, Red Tory, Unknown Language) speaks with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about her most recent book The Freezer Door and searching for connection in a world that enforces bland norms of gender, sexuality, and friendship.
Produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samant ... Show More
58m 9s
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
Jul 2023
Rahil Roodsaz, "Sexual Self-Fashioning: Iranian Dutch Narratives of Sexuality and Belonging" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
Sexuality and gender have come to serve as measures for cultural belonging in discussions of the position of Muslim immigrants in multicultural Western societies. While the acceptance of assumed local norms such as sexual liberty and gender equality is seen as successful integrat ... Show More
36m 8s
Oct 2024
Tamara Jacka, "Ginkgo Village: Trauma and Transformation in Rural China" (Anu Press, 2023)
Ginkgo Village: Trauma and Transformation in Rural China (Anu Press, 2023) provides an original and powerfully intimate bottom-up perspective on China’s recent tumultuous history. Drawing on ethnographic and life-history research, the book takes readers deep into a village in a m ... Show More
54m 15s