Uncommon Sense

By The Sociological Review FoundationSociety & Culture

Uncommon Sense episodes

May 20, 2022School, with Remi Joseph-Salisbury
School should be about play, fulfilment and learning. But it is also a place of surveillance, discipline and discrimination. Activist scholar Remi Joseph-Salisbury has researched policing, racism and education in the UK. He tells Rosie and Alexis what happens when policing enters the classroom, its impact on students and teachers of colour, and the need for wholesale reform – including a truly anti-racist curriculum.
Plus: how can we break the “school-to-prison” pipeline? What is Critical Race Theory and why has it prompted a backlash? What does it mean to really receive “an education”? And what’s the harm in the trope of the “inspirational super teacher”, as found in films from Sister Act to Dead Poets Society?

This episode was recorded prior to news being made public of the experience of the pupil known as “Child Q”, reported in mid-March 2022. Remi has since written about this.

Guest: Remi Joseph-Salisbury
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
Remi, Rosie and Alexis recommended
John Agard's poem “Checking Out Me History”
Steve McQueen's TV drama “Small Axe: Education”
Laurie Nunn's TV series “Sex Education”
Jesse Thistle's memoir “From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way”

From The Sociological Review
On “Prevent”, a counter-extremism policy at UK universities Niyousha Bastani
“Social Mixing in Urban Schools” Sumi Hollingworth
“School-to-Prison Pipeline” Karen Graham

By Remi Joseph-Salisbury
“Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools”
“Afro Hair: How Pupils Are Tackling Discriminatory Uniform Policies”
On the demonisation of Critical Race Theory

Further reading
“Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy?” David Gillborn
“Race, Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail” Heidi Mirza
“Lammy Review” MP David Lammy
“How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System” Bernard Coard
The Halo Collective for a future without hair discrimination
No More Exclusions for racial justice in education

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44 min
April 22, 2022Home, with Michaela Benson
Home means something to everyone. More than just bricks and mortar, it’s about security and belonging, citizenship and exclusion. Michaela Benson has researched it all: from the UK’s self-build communities, to people seeking a new lifestyle abroad. She tells Alexis and Rosie about this and her own experience of home, including her mother’s relationship to her place of birth: Hong Kong.

Plus, Kwame Lowe and Alice Grahame introduce us to the Rural Urban Synthesis Society in London. What does it take to build your own “Grand Design” and why would anyone want to do that? What happens when areas become known as “problem places” and what’s gentrification got to do with it? And who is to blame for the housing crisis?

Guests: Michaela Benson, Kwame Lowe, Alice Grahame
Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong

Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker
Special thanks to: Kirsteen Paton, Lisa Dikomitis, RUSS

Episode Resources

Michaela, Rosie and Alexis recommend:
“Fragile Monsters” (2021) by Catherine Menon
“Unsheltered” (2018) by Barbara Kingsolver
“Foundation” (1942) by Isaac Asimov

From The Sociological Review:
“Unhomely Homes: A visual study of Airbnb” (2020) by Kenneth Kajoranta and Anna Pechurina
On older New Zealanders and the role of home for feeling secure in an uncertain world (1998) by Ann Dupuis and David Thorns
A critical review of the existing literature on “home” (2004) by Shelley Mallett

Further readings:
On being middle-class in contemporary London (2017) by Michaela Benson and Emma Jackson
On Brexit’s hidden costs for Britons living in the EU (2021) by Michaela Benson
The Rural Urban Synthesis Society (RUSS) Lewisham, London
“Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective” (2014) by Kirsteen Paton
“Your Life Chances Affect Where You Live: A Critique of the ‘Cottage Industry’ of Neighbourhood Effects Research” (2013) by Tom Slater
“Cyprus and Its Places of Desire: Cultures of Displacement Among Greek and Turkish Cypriot Refugees” (2012) edited by Lisa Dikomitis
“Walters Way and Segal Close: The Architect Walter Segal and London's Self-Build Community” (2017) by Alice Grahame
The film “Minari” (2020) directed by Lee Isaac Chung
Chris Leslie’s work on demolition and regeneration in Glasgow

Read our acknowledgement of the indigenous lands that both Rosie and Alexis work upon.

Find more at The Sociological Review.
** 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
April 22, 2022Care, with Bev Skeggs
What does care really mean? For feminist sociologist Bev Skeggs, it should be at the heart of how we organise our society – from tax to health, to climate action. She talks to Alexis and Rosie about the costs of complacency, her own shocking experience of care (or lack of it) as her own parents faced the end of life, and why we have every right to expect the state to look after us. Care, she shows, is political: there’s no care without society; no society without care.

Plus, Bev casts a sideways glance at “self-care” and explains why browsing a sociology textbook might just be better for you than a trip to a pricey spa. The team also discusses their recommendations for pop culture lessons in care – from Adrienne Rich to Robin Williams.

Guest: Bev Skeggs
Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong

Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker
Special thanks to: Kirsteen Paton

Episode Resources

Bev, Rosie and Alexis recommend:
TV adaptations (various; 1993-2001; 2019) of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” novels (1974-2014)
“Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution” (1976) by Adrienne Rich
The movie “What Dreams May Come” (1998), dir. Vincent Ward, starring Robin Williams

From The Sociological Review:
“A Crisis in Humanity: What Everyone With Parents Is Likely to Face in the Future” (2017) by Bev Skeggs
On radical care (2020) by Dan Silver and Sarah Marie Hall
On caring for plants during Covid-19 (2020) by Gavin Maclean
On care, activism and environmental justice in Chile (2017) by Manuel Tironi and Israel Rodríguez-Giralt
On love labour as a particular kind of care (2007) by Kathleen Lynch

Further readings:
“Formations of Class and Gender” (1997) by Bev Skeggs
“Learning to Labour” (1977) by Paul Willis
“The Care Manifesto” (2020) by The Care Collective
The Women’s Budget Group
Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic (2020), a public platform by The Sociological Review
“Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help” (2008) by Eva Illouz
“Who Will Care for the Caretaker’s Daughter? Towards a Sociology of Happiness in the Era of Reflexive Modernity” (1997) by Eva Illouz
“Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class” (2001) by Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey and June Melody
“A Burst of Light” (1988) by Audre Lorde
“Self-Help, Media Cultures and the Production of Female Psychopathology” (2004) by Lisa Blackman
“It's Different for Girls: Gendering the Audience for Popular Music” (2000) by Diane Railton

Find more at The Sociological Review.
** 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
44 min
March 24, 2022 Introducing Uncommon Sense
This is Uncommon Sense, the podcast that sees our world afresh, through the eyes of sociologists. Brought to you by The Sociological Review, it’s a space for questioning taken-for-granted ideas about society – for imagining better ways of living together and confronting our shared crises. Hosted by Rosie Hancock in Sydney and Alexis Hieu Truong in Ottawa, featuring a different guest each month, Uncommon Sense insists that sociology is for everyone.

Hosts: Alexis Hieu Truong, Rosie Hancock
Featured Guests: Bev Skeggs, Michaela Benson

Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker
** 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

2 min