Balihar Sanghera and Elmira Satybaldieva’s Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents: Power, Morality and Resistance in Central Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) evaluates today’s economic political, social and ecological crises through the lens of rentier capitalism and countermovements in Central Asia. Over the last three decades, the rich and powerful have inc ... 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
Yesterday
Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)
As part and parcel of China’s compressed modernization, processes of state-led rural urbanization through land expropriation and rural-to-urban relocation have been transforming rural Chinese people’s lives in unprecedented ways. This has led to different, often adverse outcomes ... Show More
1h 16m
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
Aug 2024
Yerkebulan Sairambay, "New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)
Dr. Yerkebulan Sairambay’s New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) confronts the sociological problem of the usage of new media (social media, the Internet, digital technologies, messaging applications) by young people in poli ... Show More
57m 24s
Jan 2022
What's at stake in Kazakhstan?
How might the protests shake up the economy, trade and business in the Central Asian nation?Ed Butler speaks to Diana Kudaibergenova, a sociology professor at Cambridge University and herself Kazakh, about what motivated the protests, and whether the apparent ouster of former Pre ... Show More
18m 17s
Aug 2022
Mathew Lawrence and Adrienne Buller, "Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis" (Verso, 2022)
Adrienne Buller (The Value of a Whale) and Mathew Lawrence (Planet on Fire) have penned a radical manifesto for the transformation of post-pandemic politics: Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis (Verso, 2022).
The question of ownership is the critical fault l ... Show More
40m 58s
Feb 2025
Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Dr. ... Show More
1h 8m
Mar 2024
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study appro ... Show More
50 m
Dec 2019
An honest look at price, innovation and who powers the economy | Mariana Mazzucato
Where does wealth come from, who creates it and what destroys it? In this deep dive into global economics, Mariana Mazzucato explains how we lost sight of what value means and why we need to rethink our current financial systems -- so capitalism can be steered toward a bold, inno ... Show More
18m 41s
Jul 2023
Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell, "Uncomfortably Off: Why Higher-Income Earners Should Care about Inequality" (Policy Press, 2023)
How can we build a better social and political settlement? In Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality (Policy Press, 2023), Marcos González Hernando an Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL Social Research Institute and Postdoctoral Researcher at ... Show More
43m 17s