Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchMelanie Heath, "Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Episode 281
In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious prac…
3 years, 2 months ago
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Episode 218
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. De…
3 years, 2 months ago
Felicity Hwee-Hwa Chan, "Tensions in Diversity: Spaces for Collective Life in Los Angeles" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
Episode 9
Urban landscapes are complex spaces of sociocultural diversity, characterized by narratives of both conviviality and conflict. As people with multipl…
3 years, 2 months ago
Kate Sylvester, "Women and Martial Art in Japan" (Routledge, 2022)
Episode 116
Kate Sylvester’s Women and Martial Art in Japan (Routledge 2023) examines sport, gender, and society in Japan through the author’s extensive experien…
3 years, 2 months ago
Rethinking Community in Myanmar: Practices of We-Formation Among Muslims and Hindus in Urban Yangon
Episode 172
Where does the concept of “community” come from? How does it shape the lives of Hindus and Muslims in metropolitan Yangon? And how do these people na…
3 years, 2 months ago
Ian Rowen, "One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Episode 487
One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism (Cornell UP, 2023) shows how tourism performs and transforms territory. In 2008, as …
3 years, 2 months ago
John Miller, "The Philosophy of Tattoos" (British Library, 2021)
Episode 217
The Philosophy of Tattoos (British Library, 2021) by Dr. John Miller presents an impressively broad yet personal account, exploring tattooing as a un…
3 years, 2 months ago
Academic Chat: Reflecting on Hu Tai-li’s Indigenous Ethnographic Work in Taiwan
Episode 12
In this episode, our host, Niki Alsford, invites Prof Scott Simon, the Chair of Taiwan Studies at the University of Ottawa, to share his thoughts and…
3 years, 2 months ago
Ezra Rashkow, "The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination and Conservation, 1818-2020" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Episode 250
Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, nor subjected to more preservation efforts, than indigenous peoples. An…
3 years, 2 months ago
Rosalynn A. Vega, "Nested Ecologies: A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine" (U Texas Press, 2023)
Episode 216
Each body is a system within a system—an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This …
3 years, 2 months ago