Amin Ghaziani, "Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2024)

During the “global land grab” of the early twenty-first century, legions of investors rushed to Africa to acquire land to produce and speculate on agricultural commodities. In Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures (Cornell UP, 2024), Youjin Chung examines the messy, indeterminate trajectory of a high-profile land deal signed by the Tanzanian government and a foreign investor: a 99-year lease to over 20,000 hectares of land in coastal Tanzania—land on which thousands of people live—to establish a sugarcane plantation. Despite receiving significant political support from government officials, international development agencies, and financial institutions, the land deal remained stalled for over a decade.  Drawing on long-term research combining ethnographic, archival, participatory, and visual methods, Chung argues that the dynamics of new and incomplete enclosures must be understood in relation to the legacies of colonial/postcolonial land enclosures, cultural and ecological histories of a place, and gendered structures of power. Foregrounding the lived experiences of diverse rural people, the book shows how the land deal’s uncertain future gave rise to new forms of social control and resistance, but in ways that reinforced intersecting inequalities of gender, race, class, age, and social status. By tracing the complicated ways the land deal was made, remade, and unmade, and by illuminating people’s struggles for survival in the face of seemingly endless liminality, the book raises critical questions about the directions and stakes of postcolonial development and nation-building in Tanzania, and the shifting meanings of identity, citizenship, and belonging for those living on the margins of capitalist agrarian transformation. Dhouha Djerbi is a PhD researcher at the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

6 Feb 202452min

Many books on happiness suggest that we have considerable control over our level of happiness by doing or not doing specific things, like mediation, exercise, and maintaining social ties.  Approaching happiness through the lens of economics, Vani Kant Borooah takes a different approach in his book Economics, Religion and Happiness: God, Mammon and the Search for Spiritual and Financial Wealth (Routledge, 2024). He argues that while it is true that we can take such actions to improve our relative level of day-to-day happiness, there are also significant influences which fall outside of our control and depend heavily upon the attitudes and actions of other people. The book identifies the internal factors of personal happiness and measures the relative strength of their contribution, then contrasts that with an analysis of the externalities that people impose upon the happiness of others.  These externalities are the direct result of intolerance and feelings of envy and superiority. Taking a cue from Jean-Paul Sartre's aphorism, "hell is other people", this book examines those often negative and even violent externalities, a theme explored in the areas of religion, money, and prejudice where our happiness is contingent upon the perspectives and actions of those around us.  Recommended read:  Slaughter Among Neighbors: The Political Origins of Communal Violence (Human Rights Watch, 1995) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

5 Feb 202443min

Any tattoo is the outcome of an intimate, often hidden process. The people, bodies, and money that make tattooing what it is blend together and form a heady cocktail, something described by Matt, the owner of Oakland's Premium Tattoo, as "blood and lightning." Faced with the client's anticipation of pain and excitement, the tattooer must carefully perform calm authority to obscure a world of preparation and vigilance. "Blood and lightning, my dude"—the mysterious and intoxicating effect of tattooing done right. In Blood and Lightening: On Becoming a Tattooer (Stanford UP, 2023), Dustin Kiskaddon draws on his own apprenticeship with Matt and takes us behind the scenes into the complex world of professional tattooers. We join people who must routinely manage a messy and carnal type of work. Blood and Lightning brings us through the tattoo shop, where the smell of sterilizing agents, the hum of machines, and the sound of music spill out onto the back patio. It is here that Matt, along with his comrades, reviews the day's wins, bemoans its losses, and prepares for the future. Having tattooed more than five hundred people, Kiskaddon is able to freshly articulate the physical, mental, emotional, and moral life of tattooers. His captivating account explores the challenges they face on the job, including the crushing fear of making mistakes on someone else's body, the role of masculinity in evolving tattoo worlds, appropriate and inappropriate intimacy, and the task of navigating conversations about color and race. Ultimately, the stories in this book teach us about the roles our bodies play in the social world. Both mediums and objects of art, our bodies are purveyors of sociocultural significance, sites of capitalist negotiation, and vivid encapsulations of the human condition. Kiskaddon guides us through a strangely familiar world, inviting each of us to become a tattooer along the way. Dustin Kiskaddon is a cultural sociologist whose work can be seen on Instagram, @Dustin.Kiskaddon. After nearly a decade of teaching and a few years of professional tattooing, he now uses his expertise in culture, the economy, and technology to conduct applied research. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by bouncers at bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

4 Feb 202453min

Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic problems of employment disparities and exploitative labor practices. Compounded by the devastating #MeToo revelations, these problems led to a wide-scale call for change.  Courtney Brannon Donoghue's book The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere (U Texas Press, 2023) traces female-driven filmmaking across development, financing, production, film festivals, marketing, and distribution, examining the realities facing women working in the industry during this transformative moment. Drawing from five years of extensive interviews with female producers, writers, and directors at different stages of their careers, Courtney Brannon Donoghue examines how Hollywood business cultures “value" female-driven projects as risky or not bankable. Industry claims that “movies targeting female audiences don’t make money" or “women can't direct big-budget blockbusters" have long circulated to rationalize systemic gender inequities and have served to normalize studios prioritizing the white male–driven status quo. Through a critical media industry studies lens, The Value Gap challenges this pervasive logic with firsthand accounts of women actively navigating the male-dominated and conglomerate-owned industrial landscape. Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

4 Feb 202456min

What is the nature of grassroots activism? How and why do individuals get involved or attempt to make change for themselves, others, or their own communities? What motivates activists to maintain momentum when their efforts to redress injustices or paths toward change seem difficult or personally risky to navigate?  These questions and more are addressed in Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts (Ohio State UP, 2024). Featuring a diverse array of both local activist profiles and original scholarly essays, the collection amplifies and analyzes the tactics of grassroots activists working locally to intervene in a variety of social injustices--from copwatching and policy reform to Indigenous resistance against land colonization to #RageAgainstRape. Attuned to the demanding--and often underappreciated--work of grassroots activism, this book interrogates how such efforts unfold within and against existing historical, cultural, social, and political realities of local communities; are informed by the potentials and constraints of coalition-building; and ultimately shape different facets of society at the local level. This collection acknowledges and celebrates the complexity of grassroots activist work, showing how these less-recognized efforts often effect change where institutions have failed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

4 Feb 202430min

Wisdom From the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times (Cornell University Press, 2023) describes what anthropologists can do to contribute to the social and cultural changes that shape a social future of wellbeing and viability. Paul Stoller shows how anthropologists can develop sensuously described ethnographic narratives to communicate powerfully their insights to a wide range of audiences. These insights are filled with wisdom about how respect for nature is central to the future of humankind. Stoller demonstrates how the ethnographic evocation of space and place, the honing of dialogue, and the crafting of character depict the drama of social life, and borrows techniques from film, poetry, and fiction to expand the appeal of anthropological knowledge and heighten its ability to connect the public to the idiosyncrasies of people and locale. Ultimately, Wisdom from the Edge underscores the importance of recognizing and applying indigenous wisdom to the social problems that threaten the future. Paul Stoller is Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University and Permanent Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Friedrich Alexander University/Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is the author of fifteen books and, in 2013, was awarded the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in Anthropology by the King of Sweden. Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

3 Feb 20241h 6min

Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards (Utah State University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sheila Bock examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centred approach to these material sites of display. Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future. The forms and meanings of these material displays take shape in relation to broader, ongoing conversations about higher education in the United States, conversations grounded in discourses of belonging, citizenship, and the promises of the American Dream. Integrating observational fieldwork with extensive interviews and surveys, Dr. Bock highlights the interpretations of individuals participating in this tradition. She also attends to the public framings of this tradition, including how images of mortarboards have grounded online enactments of community through hashtags such as #LatinxGradCaps and #LetTheFeathersFly, as well as what rhetorical framings are employed in news coverage and legal documents in cases where the value of the practice is both called into question and justified. 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

2 Feb 202447min

The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) is a popular spiritual icon. His legacy is sustained within the mystical and religious practice of Sufism, particularly through renditions of his poetry, music, and the meditation practice of whirling. In Canada, practices associated with Rumi have become ubiquitous in public spaces, such as museums, art galleries, and theatre halls, just as they continue to inform sacred ritual among Sufi communities.  The Dervishes of the North: Rumi, Whirling, and the Making of Sufism in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2023) explores what practices associated with Rumi in public and private spaces tell us about Sufism and spirituality, including sacred, cultural, and artistic expressions in the Canadian context. Using Rumi and contemporary expressions of poetry and whirling associated with him, the book captures the lived reality of Sufism through an ethnographic study of communities in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Drawing from conversations with Sufi leaders, whirling dervishes, and poets, Merin Shobhana Xavier, Associate Professor of Religion at Queen’s University, explores how Sufism is constructed in Canada, particularly at the nexus of Islamic mysticism, Muslim diaspora, spiritual commodity, popular culture, and universal spirituality.  In our conversation we discussed the history of the Sufi communities in Canada, Rumi’s rise in popularity in North America, the public performance versus the ritual practice of whirling, poetic remembrance ceremonies, the commemoration of the death anniversary of Rumi, gender dynamics in Sufi rituals, women’s positions of authority, the appropriation and commodification of Rumi, and future directions in the study of “Sufism in Canada.” The book is available an as open access title HERE. Kristian Petersen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

2 Feb 20241h 3min