Eugene Raikhel, “Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic” (Cornell UP, 2016)
Alcoholism is a strange thing. That it exists, no one seriously doubts. But it’s not entirely clear (diagnostically speaking) what it is, who has it, how they get it, or how to treat it. The answers t...
11 Apr 201759min
Michael Diamond, “Discovering Organizational Identity: Dynamics of Relational Attachment” (U. of Missouri, 2016)
Psychological and psychoanalytic principles are often associated with individuals and therapist-client pairs, though they have plenty to bear on understanding and helping organizations in trouble. In ...
10 Apr 201744min
Michael A. McCarthy, “Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal” (Cornell UP, 2017)
Over half of Americans approaching retirement age report having no money saved for retirement, but how did we get here as a nation? In his book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and America...
7 Apr 201753min
Cristina Bicchieri, “Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Humans engage in a wide variety of collective behaviors, ranging from simple customs like wearing a heavy coat in winter to more complex group actions, as when an audience gives applause at the close ...
1 Apr 201757min
Michaela DeSoucey, “Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food” (Princeton UP, 2016)
A heritage food in France, and a high-priced obscurity in the United States. But in both countries, foie gras, the specially fattened liver of a duck or goose, has the power to stir a remarkable array...
25 Mar 20174min
Pat Farenga on John Holt’s “Freedom and Beyond” (HoltGWS LLC, 2017)
In this episode, I speak with Pat Farenga about the new edition of John Holt’s Freedom and Beyond (HoltGWS LLC, 2017). This book offers a broad critique of traditional schooling and its capacity for s...
21 Mar 201745min
Daniel Immerwahr, “Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development” (Harvard UP, 2015)
Modernization dominates development’s historiography. Historians characterize moments in development’s history–from the Tennessee Valley Authority to US-led “nation-building”in the Third World–as high...
17 Mar 201758min
Joan Maya Mazelis, “Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor” (NYU Press, 2017)
A number of recent events (the Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign) have brought inequality and poverty into national conversation. In an age of economic unce...
16 Mar 201753min
