Episodes

  • Ofer Sharone, "The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Ofer Sharone, "The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Jan 12 2026
    An eye-opening look at how all American workers, even the highly educated and experienced, are vulnerable to the stigma of unemployment. After receiving a PhD in mathematics from MIT, Larry spent three decades working at prestigious companies in the tech industry. Initially he was not worried when he lost his job as part of a large layoff, but the prolonged unemployment that followed decimated his finances and nearly ended his marriage. Larry's story is not an anomaly. The majority of American workers experience unemployment, and millions get trapped in devastating long-term unemployment, including experienced workers with advanced degrees from top universities. How is it possible for even highly successful careers to suddenly go off the rails? In The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed (Oxford UP, 2024), Ofer Sharone explains how the stigma of unemployment can render past educational and professional achievements irrelevant, and how it leaves all American workers vulnerable to becoming trapped in unemployment. Drawing on interviews with unemployed workers, job recruiters, and career coaches, Sharone brings to light the subtle ways that stigmatization prevents even the most educated and experienced workers from gaining middle-class jobs. Stigma also means that an American worker risks more than financial calamity from a protracted period of unemployment. One's closest relationships and sense of self are also on the line. Eye-opening and clearly written, The Stigma Trap is essential reading for anyone who has experienced unemployment, has a family member or friend who is unemployed, or who wants to understand the forces that underlie the anxiety-filled lives of contemporary American workers. The book offers a unique approach to supporting unemployed jobseekers. At a broader level it exposes the precarious condition of American workers and sparks a conversation about much-needed policies to assure that we are not all one layoff away from being trapped by stigma. Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    34 mins
  • Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

    Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
    Jan 12 2026
    Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women's Labor (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Dr. Julia Meszaros offers a provocative exploration of the international dating industry, challenging simplistic narratives of human trafficking and scams while shedding light on the economic dynamics of gender. Through twelve years of fieldwork, the book delves into the motivations and experiences of men who seek relationships abroad, driven by dissatisfaction with Western women who, they believe, no longer embody traditional femininity. By examining romantic tourism hotspots such as Ukraine, Colombia, and the Philippines, Economies of Gender reveals how these international settings serve as "intimate frontiers," where men seek to extract femininity capital and bolster their status. It illuminates the often-unseen economic underpinnings of relationships and questions how global gender dynamics shape desires, fantasies, and intimate markets. Through its compelling analysis, the book broadens the conversation on gender, power, and the commodification of intimacy in a globalized world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    40 mins
  • Anita Gonzalez, "Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

    Anita Gonzalez, "Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
    Jan 10 2026
    Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Anita Gonzalez provides a rare perspective on performance by staff above and below deck on Caribbean cruise ships, as viewed through the lenses of race, class, and gender. Drawing on her experiences as a destination lecturer on Caribbean cruise lines for twenty years, Dr. Gonzalez offers a unique viewpoint as she examines contemporary Caribbean cruise culture as an ethnographically complex site where North American and European travelers are exposed to other cultures through the orchestrated experiences on ship, and via excursions to ports. Dr. Gonzales argues that the cruise ship experience is deliberately crafted to deliver the best immersive performance by its workers. However, the workers never leave the theater, they merely move below deck—and like ships' stewards and cooks from previous centuries, they work within an imaginary where Global Majority people are envisioned as servants. By utilizing ethnography and archival materials to illustrate ship workers' experiences on contemporary cruise ships, and then contrasting those circumstances with the personal accounts of workers on historical merchant ships, Shipping Out illuminates how workers' presence on ships complicates notions of freedom and enslavement, home and journey, place and space. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    25 mins
  • Sarah Kunz, "Expatriate: Following a Migration Category" (Manchester UP, 2023)

    Sarah Kunz, "Expatriate: Following a Migration Category" (Manchester UP, 2023)
    Jan 9 2026
    Who are expatriates? How do they differ from other migrants? And why should we care about such distinctions? Expatriate: Following a Migration Category (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sarah Kunz interrogates the contested category of 'the expatriate' to explore its history and politics, its making and lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, the book offers a critical reading of International Human Resource Management literature, explores the work and history of the Expatriate Archive Centre in The Hague, and studies the usage and significance of the category in Kenyan history and present-day 'expat Nairobi'. Doing so, the book traces the figure of the expatriate from the mid-twentieth-century era of decolonisation to today's heated debates about migration. The expatriate emerges as a malleable and contested category, of shifting meaning and changing membership, and as passionately embraced by some as it is rejected by others. Dr. Kunz situates the changing usage of the term in the context of social, political and economic struggle and explores the material and discursive work the expatriate performs in negotiating social inequalities and power relations. Migration, the book argues, is a key terrain on which colonial power relations have been reproduced and translated, and migration categories are at the heart of the insidious ways that intersecting material and symbolic inequalities are enacted today. Any project for social justice needs to dissect and interrogate categories like the expatriate, and this book offers analytical and methodical strategies to advance this project. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Lesley Nicole Braun, "Congo's Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

    Lesley Nicole Braun, "Congo's Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
    Jan 5 2026
    Today I spoke with Lesley Nicole Braun to talk about her new book on Congo's dancers. Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, religious, and family lives of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among the various genres popular in the capital city of Kinshasa, Congolese rumba occupies a special place and can be counted as one of the DRC’s most well-known cultural exports. The public image of rumba was historically dominated by male bandleaders, singers, and musicians. However, with the introduction of the danseuse (professional concert dancer) in the late 1970s, the role of women as cultural, moral, and economic actors came into public prominence and helped further raise Congolese rumba’s international profile. In Congo's Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa (U Wisconsin Press, 2023), Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality. As an ethnographer, Braun had unusual access to the world she documents, having been invited to participate as a concert dancer herself. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    47 mins
  • Arseli Dokumaci, "Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds" (Duke UP, 2023)

    Arseli Dokumaci, "Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds" (Duke UP, 2023)
    Jan 4 2026
    For people who are living with disability, including various forms of chronic diseases and chronic pain, daily tasks like lifting a glass of water or taking off clothes can be difficult if not impossible. In Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds (Duke UP, 2023), Arseli Dokumacı draws on ethnographic work with differently disabled people whose ingenuity, labor, and artfulness allow them to achieve these seemingly simple tasks. Dokumacı shows how they use improvisation to imagine and bring into being more habitable worlds through the smallest of actions and the most fleeting of movements---what she calls “activist affordances.” Even as an environment shrinks to a set of constraints rather than opportunities, the improvisatory space of performance opens up to allow disabled people to imagine that same environment otherwise. Dokumacı shows how disabled people’s activist affordances present the potential for a more liveable and accessible world for all of us. Dr. Arseli Dokumaci, PhD is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies, and Director of the Access in the Making (AIM) Lab A [full transcript of the interview](link) is available for accessibility purposes. Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Julia Elyachar, "On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo" (Duke UP, 2025)

    Julia Elyachar, "On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo" (Duke UP, 2025)
    Jan 4 2026
    On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo (Duke University Press, 2025) by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped—and blocked—sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the “semicivilized” marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized. Originally used to describe the Ottoman Empire, whose perceived “civilizational differences” rendered it incompatible with a Western-dominated global order, semicivilized came to denote lands where unitary territorial sovereignty was stymied at the end of WWI. Elyachar’s theorizing offers a new analytic vocabulary for thinking beyond territoriality, postcolonialism, and the “civilized"/"primitive” divide. Looking at the world from the perspective of the semicivilized, Elyachar argues, allows us to shift attention to embodied infrastructures, collective lives, and practices of moving and acting in common that bypass lingering assumptions of territorialism and unitary sovereign rule.Julia Elyachar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    36 mins
  • Judd B. Kessler, "Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics of Getting More of What You Want" (Little, Brown Spark, 2025)

    Judd B. Kessler, "Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics of Getting More of What You Want" (Little, Brown Spark, 2025)
    Jan 3 2026
    What's the secret to scoring a reservation at a hot new restaurant? When should you enter a lottery to increase your odds of winning? Why did your neighbor's kid get into a nearby preschool while yours didn't? Who gets priority for a life-saving organ donation? These outcomes are not a matter of luck. Instead, they depend on how we navigate hidden markets that arise to decide who gets what when many of us want something and there isn't enough to go around. Every day we play in these markets, yet few of us fully understand how they work. In familiar markets, what we get depends on how much we're willing to pay. Hidden markets do not rely on prices: you can't buy your way in to a better position. Instead, what you receive hinges on the rules by which the market operates, and the choices you make in them. Judd Kessler has spent a career studying and designing these very markets. Now, he reveals the secrets of how they work, and how to maneuver in them. Whether you want to snag a coveted ticket, secure a spot in an oversubscribed college course, get better matches in the dating and job markets, do your fair share of the household chores (but no more), or more efficiently allocate your time and attention, this must-read guide will show you how to get Lucky by Design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
    Show More Show Less
    52 mins