Today
Ning Leng, "Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China" (Cambridge, 2025)
In her new book, Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge, 2025), Ning Leng shows how Chinese officials systematically treat formally private firms as political instruments, extracting services that advance careers and maintain social ... Show More
55m 45s
Today
Dafeng Xu, "Chinatown: San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake and the Paradox of American Immigration Policy" (JHU Press, 2026)
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. Spanning 30 city blocks and home to tens of thousands of monolingual Chinese residents, its endurance is remarkable—especially given how close it came to erasu ... Show More
53m 53s
Feb 2
Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while o ... Show More
1h 3m
Apr 2023
Joel E. Correia, "Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay's Chaco" (U California Press, 2023)
The Paraguayan Chaco is a settler frontier where cattle ranching and agrarian extractivism drive some of the world's fastest deforestation and most extreme land tenure inequality. Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay's ... Show More
55m 11s
Feb 2024
Youjin B. Chung, "Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures" (Cornell UP, 2024)
During the “global land grab” of the early twenty-first century, legions of investors rushed to Africa to acquire land to produce and speculate on agricultural commodities. In Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures (Cornell UP, 2 ... Show More
52m 4s
Jan 12
Ryan Emanuel, "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2024)
Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and t ... Show More
43m 35s
Oct 2024
Ryan Emanuel, "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2024)
Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and t ... Show More
43m 35s
Oct 2024
Adam Greenfield, "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire" (Verso, 2024)
In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in an age of perpetual crisis. As we grapple with what Greenfield terms the "Long Emergency"—an era marked by cascading disasters from p ... Show More
46m 56s
Jun 2024
Thomas Hendriks, "Rainforest Capitalism: Power and Masculinity in a Congolese Timber Concession" (Duke UP, 2021)
In this episode we are joined by Thomas Hendriks, an anthropologist studying capitalism and resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hendriks' work is amongst the most innovative in the anthropological study of capitalism, drawing upon queer theory, feminist ethno ... Show More
1h 6m
Oct 2023
Özge Yaka, "Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles" (U California Press, 2023)
Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles (U California Press, 2023) portrays women's intimate, embodied relationships with river waters and explores how those relationships embolden local communities' resistance to private run-of-the-river hydro ... Show More
54m 32s
Jun 2024
Mónica M. Salas Landa, "Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico's Revolution" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) introduced a series of state-led initiatives promising modernity, progress, national grandeur, and stability; state surveyors assessed land for agrarian reform, engineers used nationalized oil for industrialization, archaeologists reconstructed ... Show More
52m 7s
Nov 2020
Michael Mascarenhas, "Lessons in Environmental Justice: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter and Idle No More" (Sage, 2020)
Michael Mascarenhas's book Lessons in Environmental Justice: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter and Idle No More (Sage, 2020) provides an entry point to the field by bringing together the works of individuals who are creating a new and vibrant wave of environmental justice s ... Show More
41m 55s
Sep 2025
Darcie Deangelo et al., "Demilitarizing the Future" (Anthem Press, 2025)
Demilitarizing the Future (Anthem Press, 2025) draws from art, anthropology, and activism to investigate the entrenchment of militarism in everyday lives and consider novel imaginaries of its dissolution--of peacemaking, community, and shared equitable futures. This book will be ... Show More
50m 25s
Two decades ago, a group of Indonesian agricultural workers began occupying the agribusiness plantation near their homes. In the years since, members of this remarkable movement have reclaimed collective control of their land and cultivated diverse agricultural forests on it, repairing the damage done over nearly a century of abuse. Countering Dispossession, ... Show More
