Yesterday
Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
How can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research in northeastern Estonia, this book offers vivid answers. The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Es ... Show More
54m 53s
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
Apr 27
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, "War and Community in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026) Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and politic ... Show More
1h 51m
Oct 2024
Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021)
Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and wide range of emotions and strategies people develop to respond to toxicity in everyday life.
An examination of the daily grind of ... Show More
48m 37s
Sep 2024
Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024)
China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosu ... Show More
1h 6m
Sep 2024
Andrea E. Pia, "Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
On the podcast today, I am joined by anthropologist Andrea Pia (London School of Economics and Political Science) to talk about his new book, Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024).
In recent years, the People’s Republic of ... Show More
1h 15m
Sep 2024
Andrea E. Pia, "Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
On the podcast today, I am joined by anthropologist Andrea Pia (London School of Economics and Political Science) to talk about his new book, Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024).
In recent years, the People’s Republic of ... Show More
1h 15m
Dec 2024
Josh Spodek, "Sustainability Simplified: The Definitive Guide to Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems" (Amplify, 2025)
Josh Spodek disconnected his Manhattan apartment from the electric grid in May 2022. Over time, he has reduced his consumption and contribution to landfill. His new book argues that sustainability is not a sacrifice but an upgrade that can bring joy and increased quality of life. ... Show More
1h 3m
Nov 2024
Samantha A. Vortherms, "Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship: Security, Development, and Local Membership in China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
The redistribution of political and economic rights is inherently unequal in autocratic societies. Autocrats routinely divide their populations into included and excluded groups, creating particularistic citizenship through granting some groups access to rights and redistribution ... Show More
58m 46s
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 the early 2000s, Chinese policymakers came to see waste management as an object ... Show More
