Office Hours

In this episode, Dr. Abigail C. Saguy joins us to talk about her excellent new book What’s Wrong with Fat? Abigail is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Chair of the ASA Section on the Sociology of the Body and Embodiment. We discuss the difficulty of talking about fatness, the […]

In this episode, we talk with Holly Thorpe about her excellent book Snowboarding Bodies in Theory and Practice. We discuss the use of theory to study physical practice, the rapid growth of the sport, gender relations, marketing, the snowboarding body, and writing about sports for different audiences. Download Office Hours #76

This episode we talk with Natan Sznaider about the Holocaust, memory, and human rights. He is the author of Jewish Memory and the Cosmopolitan Order and The Compassionate Temperament. We discuss his work on the relationship between modernity, capitalism, and the development compassion. Download Office Hours #75

Michelle Alexander made a shocking claim in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: In the wake of the civil rights era, she argues, criminal punishment has come to succeed slavery and legal discrimination as a powerful and comprehensive system of racial control in the United States. As a civil rights lawyer and law professor, […]

This episode we talk with Colin Jerolmack about his new book, The Global Pigeon. We discuss the social meaning attached to animals, how nature shapes our lives, efforts to control the wild, and the professionalization of pigeon racing. Download Office Hours #73

This episode we talk with Jessica Holden Sherwood about her book, Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix of Privilege: The View from the Country Club. We learn about how country clubs work, the various mechanisms of exclusion utilized by members, and how this relates to larger discourses of privilege. Download Office Hours #72

This episode we speak with G. William Domhoff. Domhoff is author of sociology bestseller, Who Rules America?, and is co-author, with recent Office Hours guest Richard L. Zweigenhaft, of The New CEOs. Today we’re talking with Domhoff about his most article, Pension Fund Capitalism or Wall Street Bonanza? A Critique of the Claim That Pension […]

This week we are joined by David J. Leonard, professor of Critical Culture, Gender, & Race Studies at Washington State University and author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness. We discuss the significance of Jason Collins’s article in Sports Illustrated announcing that he is gay, the media’s reaction to him coming […]

This week we talk with Catherine Squires about her September 2012 article in American Quarterly, Coloring in the Bubble: Perspectives from Black-Oriented Media on the (Latest) Economic Disaster. Download Office Hours #69

This episode we talk with Shai Dromi about his recent article, Penny for your Thoughts: Beggars and the Exercise of Morality in Daily Life. Dromi argues that past studies of the city have mischaracterized interactions between people passing by and people asking for money due to the focus on risk, fear, and crime. Instead, for many […]

In this episode, we have a conversation with William Alexander. He is slightly different type of social theorist than we normally have on the podcast. Will teaches in the English Department at the Minnesota College of Arts and Design and last November he won the prestigious national book award for his first novel Goblin Secrets […]

This week we continue our investigation into the world of online politics by talking with Mary Joyce about digital activism. We discuss what qualifies as digital activism, the value of research that focuses on the big picture, and the relationship between these new technologies and more traditional forms of social organizing. Download Office Hours #66

This week we talk with Gabriella Coleman about her current research on Anonymous and her recently published book, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, which you can download for free under a Creative Commons license. We discuss the rise of Anonymous, how to research a web-based collective whose members hide their identity, the […]

This week we talk with Joshua I. Newman and Michael Giardina about their recent book [Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism]. Our conversation covers topics including the whiteness of stock car racing, religion and rebellion at the race track, and the production and consumption of Southern identity. We also […]

This week we talk with Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill about their documentary project, The Road From Crime. This documentary was produced as part of the larger Discovering Desistance Project, which aims to share knowledge and improve understanding of why people desist from crime. First, we hear a clip from the opening sequence of the […]

In this episode, we talk with University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor David Harris about his new book Failed Evidence: Why Law Enforcement Resists Science. We discuss the cultural and organizational resistance to adopting scientific techniques into police and prosecutorial practices, and what social scientists can do about it. Download Office Hours #62.

This week we talk with Shehzad Nadeem, author of Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing is Changing the Way Indians Understand Themselves. We discuss what it’s like to work at a call center in India, what Indians think about outsourcing, and the social and cultural challenges faced by both labor and management in outsourcing firms. Download Office […]

In this episode we talk with Michael Schudson, author of The Sociology of News, recently released in its second edition. Schudson is the author of seven books and co-editor of three others concerning the history and sociology of the American news media, advertising, popular culture, Watergate and cultural memory. We discuss the changing nature of […]

This episode we speak with Natalie Boero and C.J. Pascoe about their co-authored article, Pro-Anorexia Communities and Online Interaction: Bringing the Pro-ana Body Online. We discuss what a pro-anorexia community is, how members establish authenticity within online groups, and the importance of moving beyond the individual in understanding anorexia. Download Office Hours #59

This episode we talk with Jay Gabler, sociologist, journalist, and creator of the play, Ivory Tower Burning. The play imagines a meeting between Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills where an intense debate about social theory and human nature ensues. We discuss bringing sociology to the theater and the role of sociology in the broader […]