Michael D. Gambone, "The New Praetorians: American Veterans, Society, and Service from Vietnam to the Forever War" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)

Chhaya Kolavalli's book Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City (U Georgia Press, 2023) documents how whiteness can take up space in U.S. cities and policies through well-intentioned progressive policy agendas that support green urbanism. Through in-depth ethnographic research in Kansas City, Kolavalli explores how urban food projects--central to the city's approach to green urbanism--are conceived and implemented and how they are perceived by residents of "food deserts," those intended to benefit from these projects. Through her analysis, Kolavalli examines the narratives and histories that mostly white local food advocates are guided by and offers an alternative urban history of Kansas City--one that centers the contributions of Black and brown residents to urban prosperity. She also highlights how displacement of communities of color, through green development, has historically been a key urban development strategy in the city. Well-Intentioned Whiteness shows how a myopic focus on green urbanism, as a solution to myriad urban "problems," ends up reinforcing racial inequity and uplifting structural whiteness. In this context, fine-grained analysis of how whiteness takes up space in our cities--even through progressive policy agendas--is more important. Kolavalli examines this process intimately and, in so doing, fleshes out our understanding of how racial inequities can be (re)created by everyday urban actors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

2 Dec 202332min

Listen to Episode No.2 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. We talk about TMC — Too Much Communication. In the 2000s, people complained about the demand to know more stuff. Not today. It's amazing if you stop to think — if you can find the peace to stop for anything — but such a short time ago, media were about information. Now it's just communicate — post, tweet, share, text, send, upload, access, retweet, like, promote, influence, watch, listen, follow... we do a lot of activity on that surface of our devices. Well, surface is what communication is. That's it. It’s, make available — that’s communicating. And whether there's too much of it or the wrong kind, one thing is for certain: There’s tons of it. Communication is spread everywhere. And what it's all about is not really the question. The pressing question right now is, What is it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

2 Dec 202352min

From entry-level to the boardroom, what works to create large-scale change in organizations looking to accelerate their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and reap financial benefits. Every leader endeavors to invest in and manage their key asset--talent--to be as high-performing as possible. Like a winning stock, successful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) actions pay back over time. That dividend is paid both to the company--through not only higher performance but also talent acquisition, training, and other savings--and to society in general. In Diversity Dividend, Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio offers a fresh, detailed look at how to realize gender and racial equity along the company-employee pathway--from attracting and interviewing applicants to onboarding, promoting, and sustaining hires--and how to remove systemic barriers at the organizational level that prevent women and underrepresented groups from advancing. While other books have delved into DEI and the challenges inherent in sustaining successful efforts, no book has done so in concert with the depth and scope of data, basis in science, and application in the real world. In Diversity Dividend, Cecchi-Dimeglio artfully combines accessible anecdotal cases--where success was achieved or where, despite best intentions and efforts, things did not go as expected--with scientifically rigorous solutions as well as applications of data and big data. As empowering as it is comprehensive, Diversity Dividend (MIT Press, 2023) helps remove the guesswork and near-superstition that naturally arise when some methods work and others fail, thereby giving leaders the tools and insight to make informed choices at the right moments to create lasting change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

1 Dec 202341min

These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on? In The Age of Insecurity (House of Anansi Press, 2023), author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises—rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism—originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership and education to the wellness industry and policing, many of the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us. Mixing social critique, memoir, history, political analysis, and philosophy, this genre-bending book rethinks both insecurity and security from the ground up. By facing our existential insecurity and embracing our vulnerability, Taylor argues, we can begin to develop more caring, inclusive, and sustainable forms of security to help us better weather the challenges ahead. The Age of Insecurity will transform how you understand yourself and society—while illuminating a path toward meaningful change. Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. She has published work on the memorialisation of HIV/AIDS on the contemporary stage and the use of documentary theatre as a neoliberal harm reduction tool. She is currently working on a monograph based on her doctoral thesis. You can get in touch with her at louisahann92@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

28 Nov 20231h 1min

Waiting for the Revolution to End: Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity (UCL Press, 2023) by Dr. Charlotte Al-Khalili explores the Syrian revolution through the experiences of citizens in exile. Based on more than three years of embedded fieldwork with Syrians displaced in the border city of Gaziantep (southern Turkey), the book places the Syrian revolution and its tragic aftermath under ethnographic scrutiny. It charts the evolution from peaceful uprising (2011) to armed confrontation (2012), descent into fully fledged conflict (2013) and finally to proxy war (2015), to propose an understanding of revolution beyond success and failure. While the Assad regime remains in place, the Syrian revolution (al-thawra) still holds a transformational power that can be located on intimate and world-making scales. Dr. Al-Khalili traces the unintended consequences of revolution and its unexpected consequences to reveal the reshaping of Syrian life-worlds and exiles’ evolving theorizations, experiences and imaginations of al-thawra. She describes the in-between spatio-temporal realm inhabited by Syrians displaced to Turkey as they await the revolution’s outcomes, and maps the revolution’s multidimensional and multi-scalar effects on their everyday life. By following the chronology of events inside Syria and Syrians’ geography of displacement, the book makes the relation between revolution and displacement its centerpiece, both as an ethnographic object and an analytical device. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

28 Nov 202350min

Think about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or did you avert your gaze? Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes's book When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America (North Atlantic Books, 2023) takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose--in ourselves and as a society--when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based people-first, community-driven solutions, offering social analysis, economic and political histories, and the real stories of unhoused people. Authors Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, with Amanda Banh and Andrijana Bilbija, recast chronic homelessness in the U.S. as a byproduct of twin crises: our social services systems are failing, and so is our humanity. Readers will learn: Why our brains have been trained to overlook our unhoused neighbors The social, economic, and political forces that shape myths like "all homeless people are addicts" and "they'd have a house if they got a job" What conservative economics gets wrong about housing insecurity What relational poverty is, and how to shift away from "us versus them" thinking That for many Americans, housing insecurity is just one missed paycheck away Who "the homeless" really are--and why that might surprise you What you can do to help, starting today A necessary, deeply humanizing read that goes beyond theory and policy analysis to offer engaged solutions with compassion and heart, When We Walk By is a must-read for anyone who cares about homelessness, housing solutions, and their own humanity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

28 Nov 20231h 27min

Ritual deposition is not an activity that many people in the Western world would consider themselves participants of. The enigmatic beliefs and magical thinking that led to the deposition of swords in watery places and votive statuettes in temples, for example, may feel irrelevant to the modern day. However, Dr. Ceri Houlbrook shows in ‘Ritual Litter' Redressed (Cambridge University Press, 2023) that ritual deposition is a more widespread feature now than in the past, with folk assemblages – from roadside memorials and love-lock bridges, to wishing fountains and coin-trees – emerging prolifically worldwide. Despite these assemblages being as much the result of ritual activity as historically deposited objects, they are rarely given the same academic attention or heritage status. As well as exploring the nature of ritual deposition in the contemporary West, and the beliefs and symbolisms behind various assemblages, this Element explores the heritage of the modern-day deposit, promoting a renegotiation of the pejorative term 'ritual litter'. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

27 Nov 202343min

Usually, discourses on the planetary evolution and the movements of slaves remain restricted within the narratives and scholarships of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and hardly engage with the evolution, movements, and shifts about the Indian Ocean World (IOW) slave trade. But multiple published, unpublished, authored, and non-authored historical documents like the historical records of Greco-Egyptian monk Cosmos Indicopleustes (sixth century BC), the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (firstcentury CE), the travelogues of Ibn Battuta (fourteenth century), historical records of Tome Pires (sixteenth century), accounts of British historians William Hawkins and Sir Thomas Roe (seventeenth century), accounts of French historian Abbe Carre (seventeenth century), accounts of French Lieutenant de Grandpre (nineteenth century), and many more mention about the trade relations between India and different parts for Africa. The items of trade involved exotic stones, exotic spices, domestic objects, and local people. Despite the existence of these diverse archival documents on the IOW trade activities, any discourses on the IOW continue to remain an understatement. The narratives on the IOW, to a vast extent, have been shaped by Western/colonial historians, who have imaginatively constructed the IOW within separate geographical, cultural, epistemological, and ontological enclaves.  Based on these socio-historical arguments, Sayan Dey’s book Performing Memories and Weaving Archives: Creolized Cultures across the Indian Ocean (Anthem Press, 2023) unearths how Siddis in Gujarat and the South African Indians in South Africa preserve their ancestral memories through spiritual, culinary, and musical practices on the one side, and generate creolized socio-cultural spaces of collective decolonial resistance and well-being on the other. Rituparna Patgiri has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

27 Nov 202345min