Uncommon Sense

Uncommon Sense

By The Sociological Review FoundationSociety & Culture
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Uncommon Sense episodes

  • Breakups, with Ilana Gershon

    “Follow”? “Block”? “Accept”? Anthropologist Ilana Gershon joins us to reflect on breakups in both our intimate and working lives. She tells Alexis and Rosie how hearing her students’ surprising stories of using new media – supposedly a tool for connection – to end romantic entanglements led to her 2010 book “The Breakup 2.0”. She also shares insights from studying hiring in corporate America and describes how, in the febrile “new economy”, the very nature of networking and how we understand our careers have been transformed.

    Ilana also celebrates Marilyn Strathern’s influential article “Cutting the Network” for challenging our assumptions about endless and easy connection. She responds to the work of sociologists Richard Sennett and Mark Granovetter, and highlights Teri Silvio’s theory of “animation” as a fruitful way of thinking about our online selves.

    Plus: Rosie, Alexis and Ilana share their pop culture picks on this month’s theme, from the hit TV show “Severance” to the phenomenon of “shitposting” on Linkedin.

    Guest: Ilana Gershon
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Ilana, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Dan Erickson’s TV series “Severance”
    • “shitposting” on Linkedin, as discussed by Bethan Kapur for VICE
    • The Quebec reality TV show “Occupation Double”
    • Halle Butler’s novel “The New Me”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “A Sociological Playlist” – Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock
    • “The Sociology of Love” – Julia Carter
    • “Becoming Ourselves Online: Disabled Transgender Existence In/Through Digital Social Life” – Christian J. Harrison
    • “The Politics of Digital Peace, Play, and Privacy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Between Digital Engagement, Enclaves, and Entitlement” – Francesca Sobande
    • From Uncommon Sense: “Intimacy, with Katherine Twamley”


    By Ilana Gershon

    • “The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media”
    • “The Breakup 2.1: The ten-year update”
    • “Un-Friend My Heart: Facebook, Promiscuity, and Heartbreak in a Neoliberal Age”
    • “Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today”
    • “Neoliberal Agency”


    Further reading

    • “Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan” – Teri Silvio
    • “Forms of Talk” – Erving Goffman
    • “The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism” – Richard Sennett
    • “The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain” – Francesca Sobande
    • “The Strength of Weak Ties” – Mark S. Granovetter


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

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    48 min
  • Taste, with Irmak Karademir Hazir

    What makes “good” taste? Who decides? And what’s it got to do with inequality? Sociologist Irmak Karademir Hazir grew up watching women in her parents’ clothing boutique. She explains how her fascination for taste emerged from that and why talking about things like fashion, film and music is far from trivial – it’s how we distinguish ourselves from others; how we’re recognised, or dismissed.

    Irmak tells Rosie and Alexis how sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu have theorised “distinction”, showing how “highbrow” taste is decided by those with money and other kinds of capital. They also discuss the idea of the “cultural omnivore” and ask: Is what looks like broad consumption – of everything from opera to grime – just elitism in disguise?

    Plus: Why are Marvel blockbusters Irmak’s “guilty pleasure”? Why is “symbolic violence” as scary as it sounds? And do we have a moral duty to be honest about our tastes?

    Guest: Irmak Karademir Hazir
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Production Note: This episode was recorded shortly before the devastating earthquake in southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria.

    Episode Resources

    Irmak, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • The movies of the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”
    • John Waters’ film “Hairspray”
    • Agnès Jaoui’s film “Le Goût des autres” (The Taste of Others)
    • The BBC documentary series “Signs of the Times”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Feminism After Bourdieu” – Lisa Adkins and Bev Skeggs [special issue editors]
    • “Aesthetic labour, class and taste: Mobility aspirations of middle-class women working in luxury-retail” – Bryan Boyle and Kobe De Keere
    • “Taste the Joy: Food, Family, Women and Social Media” – Smriti Singh


    By Irmak Karademir Hazir

    • “Cultural Omnivorousness”
    • “How (not) to feed young children: A class-cultural analysis of food parenting practices”
    • “Do Omnivores Perform Class Distinction? A Qualitative Inspection of Culinary Tastes, Boundaries and Cultural Tolerance” (co-author: Nihal Simay Yalvaç)
    • “Exploring patterns of children’s cultural participation: parental cultural capitals and their transmission” (co-authors: Adrian Leguina and Francisco Azpitarte)


    Further reading

    • “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste” – Pierre Bourdieu 
    • “Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable” – Bev Skeggs
    • “Reading ‘Race’ in Bourdieu? Examining Black Cultural Capital Among Black Caribbean Youth in South London” – Derron Wallace
    • “Stuart Hall: Selected Writings” – Catherine Hall and Bill Schwarz [book series editors]
    • “Cultural omnivores or culturally homeless? Exploring the shifting cultural identities of the upwardly mobile” – Sam Friedman
    • “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes” – Bethany Bryson
    • “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” – Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
    • “Follow the algorithm: An exploratory investigation of music on YouTube” – Massimo Airoldi, Davide Beraldo and Alessandro Gandini


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

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    49 min
  • Listening, with Les Back

    What does it mean to really listen in a society obsessed with spectacle? What’s hidden when powerful people claim to “hear” or “give voice” to others? And what’s at stake if we think that using fancy recording devices helps us to neatly capture “truth”?

    Les Back – author of “The Art of Listening” – tells Alexis and Rosie why listening to society is crucial, but cautions that there’s nothing inherently superior about the hearing sense. Rather, we must “re-tune our ears to society” and listen responsibly, with care, and in doubt.

    Plus: why should we think critically before accepting invitations to “trust our senses”? And why do so many sociologists also happen to be musicians?

    Guest: Les Back
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Les, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Hak Baker’s song “Wobbles on Cobbles”
    • John Cage’s composition “4′33″”
    • The “Walls to Bridges” initiative
    • Hari Kunzru’s novel “White Tears”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “A Sociological Playlist” – Jack Halberstam
    • “Listening to community: The aural dimensions of neighbouring” – Camilla Lewis
    • “Loudly sing cuckoo: More-than-human seasonalities in Britain” – Andrew Whitehouse


    By Les Back

    • “The Art of Listening”
    • “Tape Recorder 1”
    • “Urban multiculture and xenophonophobia in London and Berlin” (co-authors: Agata Lisiak and Emma Jackson)
    • “Trust Your Senses? War, Memory, and the Racist Nervous System”


    Further reading and viewing

    • “Hustlers, Beats, and Others” – Ned Polsky
    • “The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life” – Leah Basel
    • “The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches” – W. E. B. Du Bois
    • “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black” – bell hooks
    • “White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood” – Hazel Carby
    • “Presentation fever and podium affects” – Yasmin Gunaratnam
    • “Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course” – Murray Schafer


    Also, have a look at the scholarly work of Paul Gilroy and Frantz Fanon, and the music of Evelyn Glennie.

    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

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    46 min
  • Natives, with Nandita Sharma

    In this supposedly “post-colonial” age, the idea of the native continues to be distorted and deployed, whether in Narendra Modi’s India or calls for “British jobs for British workers”. How and why has this word – so powerful in the age of empire – lived on into the 21st century? Who gains? And how has it gone from being a term applied to those ruled over by colonisers, to a label chosen by people promoting their own interests against others?

    Nandita Sharma joins Alexis and Rosie to discuss all this and more, including the exclusionary logic at the heart of the post-colonial nation state. We further ask: how can true decolonisation occur if the very idea of the nation state still features colonial logic? Does it make the idea of decolonising the “national” curriculum an oxymoron?

    Also, Nandita exposes the assumptions revealed by researchers’ fears of “going native”, and reflects on the idea of a borderless world. Plus: a celebration of Manuela Zechner’s “Remembering Europe”.

    Guest: Nandita Sharma
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Nandita, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Manuela Zechner’s film-essay “Remembering Europe”
    • Nakkiah Lui’s playwriting work
    • Snotty Nose Rez Kids’ songs’ lyrics
    • Cathy Park Hong’s book “Minor Feelings”
    • Daša Drndić’s book “Canzone Di Guerra”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Migrant NHS nurses as ‘tolerated’ citizens in post-Brexit Britain” – Georgia Spiliopoulos and Stephen Timmons
    • “Securitized Citizens: Islamophobia, Racism and the 7/7 London Bombings” – Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley
    • “State containment and closure of gendered possibilities among a millennial generation: On not knowing Muslim young men” – Mairtin Mac an Ghaill and Chris Haywood
    • Decolonising Methodologies, 20 Years On: The Sociological Review Annual Lecture – Linda Tuhiwai Smith


    By Nandita Sharma

    • “Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants”
    • “Against National Sovereignty: The Postcolonial New World Order and the Containment of Decolonization”
    • “No Borders As a Practical Political Project” (co-editors: Bridget Anderson and Cynthia Wright)


    Further readings

    • “Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider” – Satnam Virdee
    • “Return of a Native: Learning from the Land” – Vron Ware
    • “Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire” – Akala
    • “Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control” – Bridget Anderson
    • “Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” – Kwame Nkrumah 
    • “Decolonization is not a metaphor” – Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
    • “Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples” – Linda Tuhiwai Smith
    • Frederick Cooper’s work on how people fought against subordination in the French empire
    • Gurminder Bhambra’s work on Decolonizing Whiteness


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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    48 min
  • Emotion, with Billy Holzberg

    Emojis! Feminism! Rage! Sociologist Billy Holzberg joins us to talk about emotion. Why is it dismissed as an obstacle to progress and clear thinking – and to whose benefit? How can we let anger into politics without sanctioning far-right violence? And why are some of us freer than others to play with emotional abjection? Billy reflects on all this and more with Alexis and Rosie, celebrating thinkers from Sara Ahmed to Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois to Yasmin Gunaratnam.

    Billy also reflects on queerness, childhood and shame; the emotional precarity of TV’s Fleabag; the playfulness of emojis; and the desperate but subversive power of the hunger striker. Plus: a welcome clarification of the slippery line between affect and emotion.

    Guest: Billy Holzberg
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Billy, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Jim Hubbard’s documentary “United in Anger: A history of ACT UP”
    • The idea of thinking sociologically with Emojis
    • Robert Munsch and Sheila McGraw’s children’s book “Love You Forever”
    • Lesley Jamison’s essay collection “The Empathy Exams”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Everyone shows emotions everywhere but class photos” – Laura Harris
    • “‘Serenity Now!’ Emotion management and solidarity in the workplace” – Jordan McKenzie, et al.
    • “Diane Abbott, misogynoir and the politics of Black British feminism’s anticolonial imperatives: ‘In Britain too, it’s as if we don’t exist’” – Lisa Amanda Palmer


    By Billy Holzberg

    • “The Multiple Lives of Affect: A Case Study of Commercial Surrogacy”
    • “‘Wir schaffen das’: Hope and hospitality beyond the humanitarian border”
    • “The affective life of heterosexuality: heteropessimism and postfeminism in Fleabag” (co-author: Aura Lehtonen)


    Further readings

    • “The Cultural Politics of Emotion” – Sara Ahmed
    • “Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care” – Yasmin Gunaratnam
    • “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” – Karl Marx 
    • “Postcolonial Melancholia” – Paul Gilroy
    • “The Souls of Black Folk” – W.E.B. Du Bois
    • The work of psychologist Paul Ekman
    • “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” – Audre Lorde
    • “The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy” – Ala Sirriyeh
    • “Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy” – Carolyn Pedwell
    • “The Spiritualization of Politics and the Technologies of Resistant Body: Conceptualizing Hunger Striking Subjectivity” – Ashjan Ajour
    • “On Heteropessimism” – Asa Seresin


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] 

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    47 min
  • Cities, with Romit Chowdhury

    Lonely? Mean? Hostile? Cities get a bad rap. But why? Romit Chowdhury has lived in cities worldwide; from Kolkata to Rotterdam. He tells Alexis and Rosie about the wonder of urban “enchantment” found in a stranger’s smile, our changing ideas of the “urban”, and why anonymity is not always in fact the enemy of civility and friendship in the city.

    Plus: how did “walking the city” emerge as a revolutionary research method? And why is Romit so fascinated with public transport – from exploring auto-rickshaw drivers’ masculinity in Kolkata, to studying sexual violence on the busy trains of Tokyo.

    Romit, Alexis and Rosie also share their tips for thinking differently about urban life – from Japanese film to novels that explode norms about bodies in the city.

    Guest: Romit Chowdhury
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Romit, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Claudia Piñeiro’s novel “Elena Knows”
    • N. K. Jemisin’s book “The City We Became”
    • Shinya Tsukamoto’s filmography
    • Teju Cole’s novel “Every Day is For the Thief”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Karachi” – Shama Dossa
    • “Whose City Now?” – Ray Forrest
    • “Trash Talk: Unpicking the deadlock around urban waste and regeneration” – Francisco Calafate-Faria
    • “Rising with the Rooster: How urban chickens are relaxing the pace of life” – Catherine Oliver


    By Romit Chowdhury

    • “Sexual assault on public transport: Crowds, nation, and violence in the urban commons”
    • “The social life of transport infrastructures: Masculinities and everyday mobilities in Kolkata”
    • “Density as urban affect: The enchantment of Tokyo’s crowds”


    Further readings

    • “Dangerous Liaisons – Women and Men: Risk and Reputation in Mumbai” – Shilpa Phadke
    • “For Space” – Doreen Massey
    • “The Metropolis and Mental Life” – Georg Simmel
    • “The Arcades Project” – Walter Benjamin 
    • “Delhi Crime” (TV series) – Richie Mehta
    • “The Country and the City” – Raymond Williams
    • “Why Women of Colour in Geography?” – Audrey Kobayashi
    • “‘Delhi is a hopeful place for me!’: young middle-class women reclaiming the Indian city” – Syeda Jenifa Zahan
    • “The Way They Blow the Horn: Caribbean Dollar Cabs and Subaltern Mobilities” – Asha Best
    • “Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City” – Brandi Thompson Summers


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] 

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    46 min
  • Bodies, with Charlotte Bates

    We each have a body, but every body’s story is unique. In this intimate conversation, sociologist Charlotte Bates tells Alexis and Rosie why studying bodies – and how we talk about them – matters in a society where some are privileged over others, and why ableism harms us all.

    Charlotte talks about her co-authored work on wild swimming, arguing that despite its commodification, it holds subversive power. She also considers how the unwell body collides with the demands of capitalist life – revealing just how absurd it can be. Plus: what “wellness” fails to capture – and why health is not a lifestyle choice.

    Guest: Charlotte Bates
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Charlotte, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Nina Mingya Powles’ book “Small Bodies of Water”
    • Andy Jackson’s poem “The Change Room”
    • Viktoria Modesta’s song “Prototype”
    • Mark O’Connell’s book “To Be A Machine”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Making Visible: Chronic Illness and the Academy” – Anna Ruddock
    • “Race and Disability in the Academy” – Moya Bailey
    • “Embodying Sociology” [Supplement Issue]


    By Charlotte Bates

    • “Vital Bodies: Living with Illness”
    • “Conviviality, disability and design in the city”
    • Research on wild swimming with Kate Moles – including this article and this forthcoming publication.


    Further readings

    • “Beyond the Periphery of the Skin” – Silvia Federici
    • “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” – Donna Haraway
    • “Moving Beyond Pain” – bell hooks
    • “On Being Ill” – Virginia Woolf
    • “Believing Your Pain as Radical Self-Care” – Jameisha Prescod (in this publication)
    • “Wellness Culture is Ableism in Sheep’s Clothing” – Lucy Pasha-Robinson
    • The Polluted Leisure Project – Clifton Evers and James Davoll
    • The Moving Oceans project
    • “Illness: The Cry of the Flesh” – Havi Carel 
    • Alexandre Baril’s scholarly work
    • “Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure” – Samantha Walton
    • “Why climate justice is impossible without racial justice” – Georgia Whitaker
    • On maternal mortality – Divya Talwar


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] 

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    41 min
  • How can we help you?

    EDUCATORS! STUDENTS! LISTENERS! We want to hear from you ...

    We’re taking a short summer break, and will be back in September ready and refreshed for the new term, and with a new episode for you!

    So, while Rosie and Alexis have some well-earned time-outs – and catch up on reading for forthcoming shows on things like cities, emotion and noise – we have a request: Could you use just a few of those spare 45 minutes this month to share some of your thoughts with us? To be precise, we'd like to know how we can help you ...

    • If you're an educator – at whatever level – we'd like to know, do you use podcasts in your teaching? If so, how? And which ones? Maybe you've even asked your students to make their own? And if you don't use them, then why not? What gets in the way of that? And how could Uncommon Sense do more to help you to promote and explain the sociological imagination?
    • And if you're a student or a researcher, we want to know what Uncommon Sense has done for you so far? Has it made you think about how you explain your work to non-academic friends? Maybe even that most challenging of audiences, your parents!?
    • And if you're neither of the above, you're still very much part of the Uncommon Sense community! We want to know what keeps you listening? And whether we've prompted you to "see the world afresh through the eyes of sociologists"? That's what we promise at the top of pretty much every episode ...


    Share your thoughts with us by email, by Instagram, and on Twitter. You can also read all about using podcasts in the classroom from The Sociological Review's podcast lead Professor Michaela Benson.

    And recommend us to friends, family and more. It's easy to subscribe – look us up in whatever app you use and tap "follow"!

    We'll be back in September – See you soon!

    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] 

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    3 min
  • Security, with Daria Krivonos

    Too often, talk about security seems to belong to politicians and psychologists; to discussions about terrorism and defence, individual anxiety and insecurity. But how do sociologists think about it? And why care?

    Daria Krivonos – who works on migration, race and class in Central and Eastern Europe – tells Alexis and Rosie why security matters. What’s the impact of calling migration a “security threat”? How does the security of the privileged rely on the insecurity of the precarious? And, as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, what would it mean to truly #StandwithUkraine – from ensuring better job security for its workers abroad, to cancelling its debt?

    Plus: pop culture pointers; from Kae Tempest’s “People’s Faces” to the movie “The Mauritanian” – and Alexis’ teenage passion for Rage Against the Machine.

    Guest: Daria Krivonos
    Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer: David Crackles
    Music: Joe Gardner
    Artwork: Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Daria, Rosie and Alexis recommended

    • Kae Tempest’s song “People’s Faces”
    • Rage Against the Machine’s song “Without a Face”
    • Kevin Macdonald’s movie “The Mauritanian”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “Brexit On ‘Plague Island’: Fortifying The UK’s Borders In Times Of Crisis” – Michaela Benson and Nando Sigona
    • “Organised State Abandonment: The meaning of Grenfell” – Brenna Bhandar
    • “Food Insecurity: Upsetting ‘Apple Carts’ in Abstract and Tangible Markets” – Susan Marie Martin


    By Daria Krivonos

    • “The making of gendered ‘migrant workers’ in youth activation: The case of young Russian-speakers in Finland”
    • “Ukrainian farm workers and Finland’s regular army of labour”
    • “Who stands with Ukraine in the long term?”
    • “Racial capitalism and the production of difference in Helsinki and Warsaw” (forthcoming)


    Further readings

    • “The Death of Asylum” – Alison Mountz
    • “What was the so-called ‘European Refugee Crisis’?” – Danish Refugee Council
    • World Food Programme Yemen and Ethiopia statistics
    • “In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All” – UN Secretary-General
    • “Ukrainian Workers Flee ‘Modern Slavery’ Conditions on UK Farms” – Diane Taylor
    • “Bordering” – Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and Kathryn Cassidy
    • Anthony Giddens’ sociological work; including “Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age”


    ** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who’s listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **

    Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] 

    Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter



    43 min
  • Intimacy, with Katherine Twamley

    Think of intimacy and, pretty soon, you’ll probably think about sex. But, as sociologist Katherine Twamley explains, intimacy means much more than that: it’s woven through so many of our relationships – including with people whose names we might not even know. She tells Rosie and Alexis how an accidental trip to India got her thinking about the varied meanings of “love” across cultures and contexts, and reflects on whether, to quote the famous song, love and marriage really do “go together like a horse and carriage”.

    Plus: what could it mean to decolonise love? Why should we be wary of acts performed in the name of love? Will we ever live in a truly “contactless” world, and who wants that? And we get intimate with the artist Sophie Calle.

    Guest: Katherine Twamley
    Hosts:
    Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong
    Executive Producer:
    Alice Bloch
    Sound Engineer:
    David Crackles
    Music:
    Joe Gardner
    Artwork:
    Erin Aniker

    Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

    Episode Resources

    Katherine, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommended

    • Ian McEwan’s novel “Machines Like Me”
    • Haruhiko Kawaguchi’s photography
    • Sophie Calle’s conceptual art
    • Alex Thompson’s film “Saint Frances”


    From The Sociological Review

    • “The Sociology of Love” – Julia Carter
    • On asexual people and intimacy – Matt Dawson, Liz McDonnell and Susie Scott 
    • On the phenomenon of self-marriage – Kinneret Lahad and Michal Karvel-Tovi


    Further readings

    • “Love, Marriage and Intimacy Among Gujarati Indians” – Katherine Twamley
    • “Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship” – Kath Weston
    • “Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care” – Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (editors)
    • On Emotional Labour – Arlie Hochschild
    • “Decolonising Families and Relationships” – British Sociological Association webinars
    • “Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds” – Zygmunt Bauman
    • “Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences” – Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Ulrich Beck
    • Nandita Dutta’s research on South Asian beauty salons in London as diasporic sites of intimacy
    • Nick Crossley’s sociological work
    • Jessica Ringrose’s sociological work
    • Greta Thunberg’s Twitter page (mentioned by Katherine as an intimacy example)
    • James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room”
    • Sally Rooney’s novel “Normal People”


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Our world, through the eyes of sociologists. Brought to you by The Sociological Review Foundation.


The podcast that casts a sociological lens on our lives, our world, our crises.…

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