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
Mar 20
Gabrielle Oliveira, "Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Who gets to live a life with dignity? Each day, families around the world make the difficult decision to leave their homes in search of safety, stability, and opportunity. For many migrant families, this search centers on access to strong, caring, and equitable educational system ... Show More
27m 50s
Mar 20
Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected by historical processes of dispossession, and citizens suffering from environmen ... Show More
1h 13m
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
Jul 2019
Rachel B. Herrmann, "No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2019)
When the British explored the Atlantic coast of America in the 1580s, their relations with indigenous peoples were structured by food. The newcomers, unable to sustain themselves through agriculture, relied on the local Algonquian people for resources. This led to tension, and th ... Show More
43m 28s
Oct 2024
Michael J. Thompson, "Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism" (Routledge, 2024)
In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic critici ... Show More
58m 50s
Mar 2025
Brendan A. Galipeau, "Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Aiming to explore the Sino-Tibetan border region, which is renamed “Shangri-La” by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir (U Washington Press, 2025) examines how the deployment of the French notion of terroir creates new forms of ethno-regional i ... Show More
1h 16m
Jun 2023
Erik Kojola, "Mining the Heartland: Nature, Place, and Populism on the Iron Range" (NYU Press, 2023)
On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and p ... Show More
28m 28s
Aug 2025
Todd Mcgowan, "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise of more—more wealth, more enjoyment, more opportunity, without requiring any sacrifice—is the essence of capitalism. Previous soci ... Show More
1h 5m
Mar 2023
Ronald L. Trosper, "Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands" (U Arizona Press, 2022)
What does “development” mean for Indigenous peoples? Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (U Arizona Press, 2022) lays out an alternative path showing that conscious attention to relationships among humans and the natural world creates flourishing social-ecolo ... Show More
48m 1s
Feb 2025
Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the peo ... Show More
1h 17m
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
May 2022
Sean J. Drake, "Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2022)
In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect mode ... Show More
55m 27s
An ethnographic exploration of anthropological failures through the Mapuche archetypes of witch, clown, and usurper, Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) invites readers to consider concepts of failure, knowing, and being in the world within a rural Mapuche community.
How do we learn what failure looks like? During ... Show More
