New Books in Sociology

Interviews with Sociologists about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

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Episodes

Deana Jovanović, "Staging the Promises: Everyday Future-Making in a Serbian Industrial Town" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Built on the shifting grounds of post-Yugoslav transformation, Staging the Promises examines how the residents of Bor — a Serbian copper-mining town marked by both socialist prosperity and post-socialist decline — became spectators to the staged enactments of promised futures. Deana Jovanović traces how local authorities and the copper-processing company theatrically projected visions of economic, infrastructural, environmental, urban, and post-industrial renewal. The book asks: What impact did ...

May 12, 2025•1 hr 23 min

Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling ...

May 11, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 266

Maron E. Greenleaf, "Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon" (Duke UP, 2024)

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection a...

May 10, 2025•50 min•Ep. 362

Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press, 2025) addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion ...

May 10, 2025•39 min•Ep. 291

Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” an...

May 09, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 412

Maliha Safri et al., "Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation" (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)

In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). This volume is part of the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds series. Solidarity economies, characterized by diverse practices of cooperation and mutual support, have long played pivotal but largely invisible roles in fostering shared survival and envisioning a...

May 08, 2025•1 hr 6 min

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