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

Brittany Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

In Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons, Dr. Brittany Friedman delves into how the California Department of Corrections deployed various official, clandestine, and at times extralegal control techniques—including officer alliances with imprisoned white supremacists—to suppress Black political movements, revealing the broader themes of deception, empire, corruption, and white supremacy in American mass incarceration. Drawing from original interviews with founders of...

Jun 05, 2025•51 min

Patrick McCartney, "Authenticity, Legitimacy and the Transglobal Yoga Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Shanti Mandir" (Routledge, 2025)

This book is a sociological study of knowledge and knowers and explores the production and perceived value of 'yogic knowledge', how distinction is curated, and how access to this knowledge is gained. The book focuses on the organization Shanti Mandir (SM) in India, a new religious movement, which was founded in 1987 by Swami Nityananda Saraswati. By identifying the structuring forces of the guru's discourse, and focusing on the marketing strategies and subsequent exchanges of capital and affect...

Jun 05, 2025•35 min

Sarah Nagaty, "The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolution of 25th January 2011 and the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser – through various cultural manifestations. It conceives the concept of “collective dreaming” to map out the subliminal feeling that runs deep through experiences of socially transformative moments. Sarah Nagaty has extensively studied the structure of feelings that encompasses the experienc...

Jun 04, 2025•37 min

Beth Linker on Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, about her recent book, Slouch: Postural Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024). Slouch examines the history of conceptions of “bad posture” as they arose over the course of the 20th century. The book is a beautiful example of taking a perhaps seemingly small topic and show...

Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 24 min

Jeremy Morris, "Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

What do Russians really want? Do they want authoritarianism and are they prepared to go along with a war of conquest and destruction? Or do they want something else? A landmark contribution to the field, Morris is the only social researcher to have carried out fieldwork in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, engaging with communities in Moscow, regional cities, as well as rural areas to bring perspectives on Russian everyday lives that are now entirely inaccessible to the West. Everyday Politi...

Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 8 min

Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025)

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Dr. Garland invites...

Jun 02, 2025•54 min

Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, "Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation" (NYU Press, 2025)

Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation By Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon W.E.B. Du Bois famously pondered a question he felt society was asking of him as a Black man in America: “How does it feel to be a problem?” Jessica Vasquez-Tokos uses this question to examine how communities of color are constructed as “problems,” and the numerous ramifications this has for their life trajectories. Uncovering how various members of racial groups understan...

Jun 02, 2025•33 min

Jaime Lee Kucinskas, "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores how civil servants navigated competing pressures and duties amid the chaos of the first Trump administration, drawing on in-depth interviews with senior officials in the most contested agencies over the course of a tumultuous term. A revealing investigation that is now more relevant than ever. Jaime Kucinskas is Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at Hami...

Jun 01, 2025•27 min

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

Contemporary veterans belong to an exclusive American group. Celebrated by most of the country, they are nevertheless often poorly understood by the same people who applaud their service. Following the introduction of an all-volunteer force after the war in Vietnam, only a tiny fraction of Americans now join the armed services, making the contemporary soldier, and the veteran by extension, increasingly less representative of mainstream society. Veterans have come to comprise their own distinct t...

May 31, 2025•52 min

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