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
Today
Elena Foulis, "Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences" (Ohio State UP, 2026)
In Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences (Ohio State UP, 2026), Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. ... Show More
58m 9s
Apr 24
Mujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political futures? The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals ... Show More
57m 51s
Jun 2024
Stephen Marr and Patience Mususa, "DIY Urbanism in Africa: Politics and Practice" (Zed Books, 2023)
Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often requi ... Show More
49m 13s
Nov 2023
Dirk Van Laak, "Lifelines of Our Society: A Global History of Infrastructure" (MIT Press, 2023)
Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today's strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? ... Show More
38m 47s
Oct 2024
Lisa-Jo K. Van den Scott, "Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls" (Lexington Book, 2024)
Walls profoundly shape the spaces we live in and the places we move through, impinge on our everyday lives, and entangle power relations, identity, and hierarchies. Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls (Lexington Books, 2024) explores these effects in the context of ... Show More
53m 30s
Oct 2022
Larisa Kingston Mann, "Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (UNC Press, 2022)
In this episode, our host Mariela Morales Suárez discusses the book Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (UNC Press, 2022) by Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann.
You’ll hear about:
Dr. Mann’s intellectual trajectory and how she beca ... Show More
58m 35s
Oct 2025
Elizabeth Sawin, "Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World" (Island Press, 2024)
Now, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin has dedicated her career to the theory and practice of creating change in complex systems. In 2021, she founded and is currently the Director of the Multi-solving Institute. This interview discusses her book Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fr ... Show More
55m 31s
Nov 2022
Psyche A. Williams-Forson, "Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America" (UNC Press, 2022)
In Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America (UNC Press, 2022), Psyche A. Williams-Forson offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and ... Show More
31m 45s
Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks to Jennifer Hart, Professor and Chair of the History Department at Virginia Tech, about her work on the history and ethnography of mobility and infrastructure in Ghana. Hart’s newest book, Making an African City: Technopolitics and the Infrastructure of Everyday Life in Colonial Accra (Indiana University Press, 2024), e ... Show More
