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PODCAST

New Books in Sociology

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

01:04:30

How Girls Achieve

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/10/01

How Girls Achieve points out a simple and overlooked truth: most schools never had girls in mind to begin with. That is why the world needs what Dr. Sally Nuamah calls “feminist schools,” deliberately designed to provide girls with achievement-oriented identities. And she shows how these schools would help all students, regardless of their gender.Educated women raise healthier families, build stronger communities, and generate economic opportunities for themselves and their children. Yet millions of

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00:42:05

Transient Becoming: Self-Improvement and Capitalist...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/30

How do individuals seek to become better persons in contemporary China? How do they navigate the complex demands of personal growth given the fragmentation of China’s moral landscape?Gil Hizi’s careful ethnography on “soft skills” workshops in China examines the pursuit and enactment of virtue, termed “capitalist virtuousness,” through the expanding genre of self-improvement.Transient Becoming: Self-Improvement and Capitalist Virtuousness in Contemporary China (NUS Press, 2026)reveals how these

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00:42:27

Apocalyptic Abolitionism: How Millennialists Helped...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/27

Shows how apocalypticism helped drive anti-slavery abolitionism and inspire progressive social reform in nineteenth-century America In March 1844, Melissa Botsford of Meriden, Connecticut, defiantly left her local Methodist church because it supported slavery and other “sins” that permeated America. Botsford was among one hundred thousand other abolitionists who abandoned their evangelical churches throughout the decade. These protesters came out with a stern apocalyptic warning: God would soon

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01:08:46

Pushpesh Kumar et al. eds., "Sociology of Gender in...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/19

Sociology of Gender in India brings together feminist and queer scholarship to chart the changing landscape of gender debates in Indian sociology. Spanning over five decades of disciplinary evolution, this volume interrogates how gender, caste, sexuality, class, and digitalisation intersect in shaping contemporary social life. With chapters by a new generation of scholars, it critically engages with foundational debates in kinship, marriage, labour, media, nationalism, and pedagogy, while

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00:55:28

Class Struggle and the New York Mets: A Conversation...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/18

With his riveting chronicle of the New York Mets baseball team, AM Gittlitz is emerging as a rising star in the field of popular social history. Writing with what the Wall Street Journal calls “the lunatic panache of a utopian manifesto,” Gittlitz weaves together the genealogies of American’s Pastime and the complex histories of race, class, ethnicity, and politics in the nation’s largest city. In this conversation, he recounts the many occasions when the tortuous trajectory of the Mets (and its

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00:50:50

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/17

An invitation to K-12 educators to reimagine their roles through the transformative lens of design In Educators as Designers, Jim Gaona Ellis draws on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the latest UDL guidelines to position teachers as creators, innovators, and problem-solvers, empowering them to craft classroom experiences that are not only accessible, but also inspiring, inclusive, and responsive to every student's unique needs. This timely and original book challenges readers to see

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48:12

Ming-sho Ho, "Be Water: Collective Improvisation in...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/13

During the eventful summer of 2019 in Hong Kong, the Be Water Revolution formed to resist the proposed extradition of fugitives to mainland China’s courts. With its name derived from martial arts master Bruce Lee’s adage “formless and shapeless like water,” the incident turned out to be the city’s largest episode of contentious politics and was unique for using impromptu communication among participants and the absence of central leadership.InBe Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's

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84:45

Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land,...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/12

What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in that world?InBuilding Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions(Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026), Billy Fleming and a wide set of contributors critically engage with the above questions and more.Around the globe, people are transforming their social, ecological, and economic systems in response to the climate crisis

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69:06

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/07

In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. InData-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming(Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the Hollywood dream factory. Roussel shows how the rise of data and algorithm specialists has transformed organizations

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26:28

Sarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/09/02

Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice (Temple University Press, 2026) investigateshow communities in Central Valley, California deal with Valley Fever, a painful illness caused by a soil fungus. The airborne disease’s symptoms can last from two months to a patient’s lifetime and may be fatal. Nearly a third of the national cases are reported in California, where those infected are disproportionately farmworkers and people incarcerated in the region. Poverty,

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41:46

María Angélica Thumala Olave, "The Love of Books:...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/30

Why do people read? InThe Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object(Manchester UniversityPress, 2026)María Angélica Thumala Olave,a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science, explores people’s relationship to books and to reading, demonstrating the pleasure and importance books provide in contemporary life. Moving beyond a narrow focus on the social status offered by books and reading, the analysis shows the role of material

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44:01

Bernadette Ludwig, "Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/29

Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America (Rutgers University Press, 2025) isan ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, New York, home to the largest per capita concentration of Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette Ludwig explores how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting

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55:19

Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden eds.,...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/27

In our recent conversation aboutProtecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia, the editors Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden reflect on the need to move beyond treating the pandemic as a singular, isolated shock. Our discussion reflected on the deeper mechanics of knowledge production, how we reflect on crisis beyond its immediate occurrence, how we conceptualize South Asia today, and the process of bringing such a dynamic volume together.A central theme was the necessity of

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57:28

Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday:...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/25

Our recent conversation aboutOccupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir(Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government’s August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize Jammu and Kashmir’s nominal autonomy. The core of our reflection centered on how one theorizes through

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49:54

Samuel Holleran and Max Holleran, "Scattered Steel:...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/21

Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center(Cornell UP, 2026) traces the extraordinary journey of the twisted remnants of the World Trade Center. When the Towers fell on September 11, 2001, nearly all that remained was pulverized concrete and contorted steel. Dr. Samuel and Dr. Max Holleran investigate how fragments of these skyscrapers became modern relics, scattered across all fifty states and beyond, built into hundreds of local memorials in firehouses, parks, and plazas, providing

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43:55

Claudia Kreklau, "The Making of Modern Eating: How...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/20

Nineteenth-centuryGermany invented the way we eat. Women experimenting in households, French chefs fleeing guillotines, and one of the most rapidly evolving food industries in the world forged recognizably modern eating practices between 1780 and 1910. While central Europeans merely aimed to survive long winters, experiment with translated recipes and curious ingredients from abroad, and embrace the conveniences of industrial life, their consumption habits and cooking practices created a new

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59:50

Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/19

Ganjais the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent. Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India (University of

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56:31

A Cure for Loneliness: On Homecoming with Ian Marcus...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/19

Americans are more isolated, polarized, and depressed than ever in recent memory, and yet many citizens share a deep desire for community and friendship across political lines and in new creative ways. How may we bridge that gap? To help answer that most pressing question, in Episode 2 of Season 6, I have as our guest the philosopher, essayist, and author,Ian Marcus Corbin. A graduate of Yale Divinity School and Boston College, Mr. Corbin is a senior fellow at Capita, the program director of

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42:17

Kiara Wyndham, "Diversityland: Hiding Racial...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/17

FortBend County, Texas, looks like the America we claim to want: a suburb where Black, White, Asian, and Latinx families share cul-de-sacs, schools, and celebrations. Residents trade dishes, honor one another's traditions, and take pride in their community's diversity. Yet beneath this harmony lies what sociologist Dr. Kiara Wyndham calls "the diversity contract"—an unspoken agreement that racial diversity may be celebrated, but racial inequality must not be named. Drawing on two years of

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32:13

Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the...

New Books in Sociology ·

2026/08/14

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards.The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution

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