Uncommon Sense

The Sociological Review
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Uncommon Sense

Our world afresh, through the eyes of sociologists.Brought to you by The Sociological Review, Uncommon Sense is 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 – and that you definitely don’t have to be a sociologist to think like one!Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

  1. Free Speech, with Aaron Winter

    JUN 27

    Free Speech, with Aaron Winter

    How is the notion of “free speech” abused and misunderstood? What’s wrong with “debate me” culture – and with the value placed on appearing to be “controversial”? And what happens when people who are actually pretty powerful claim they “can’t say anything anymore”? Sociologist Aaron Winter, an expert on racism and the far right, joins Uncommon Sense to discuss all this and more. Showing what sociology has to offer to discussions of “freedom” often found in politics, Aaron describes how “free speech” has been invoked through the decades in North America and Europe, including in the victimisation narratives found in far-right discourse today. Plus, we reflect on the importance of no-platforming, and the need for critical thought when we hear that certain ideas are simply the “voice of the people”. Featuring discussion of Aaron’s work with Aurelien Mondon on “Reactionary Democracy”. Also: celebration of influential American sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of “Racism without Racists”, and the UK band The Specials. Guest: Aaron Winter; 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 Episode Resources By Aaron Winter Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream – co-authored with Aurelien Mondon, 2020Reading Mein Kampf, Misreading Education: The reactionary backlash goes back to school – co-authored with Aurelien Mondon, 2017Online Hate: From the Far-Right to the ‘Alt-Right’ and from the Margins to the Mainstream – 2019Conflating antisemitism and anti-zionism emboldens the far right – 2023From the Sociological Review Foundation The Cacophony of Critique – Tom BolandVoice, with Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch and Belinda ScarlettPalestine: A Sociological IssueFurther resources "On Liberty" – John Stuart Mill"White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-civil Rights Era" – Eduardo Bonilla-Silva"Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America" – Eduardo Bonilla-SilvaThe Specials Read more about Jose Medina, Miranda Fricker and the concept of epistemic injustice, as well as Michèle Diotte at The University of Ottawa. Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    44 min
  2. Revolution, with Volodymyr Ishchenko

    JUN 6

    Revolution, with Volodymyr Ishchenko

    The word “revolution” conjures powerful imagery. But what does it mean today? Do revolutions neatly promote the will of the people, forging radical transformation? Or is it more complicated? Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko joins us from Freie Universität Berlin to explain his take on “deficient revolutions” as he reflects on the 2014 Euromaidan uprising and recent events in Ukraine – where, he argues, conflict with roots in class has become polarised along “ethnic” lines, with devastating consequences. Ukraine, he shows, is not an anomalous case on the periphery of Europe and the former USSR. Rather, its story is instructive for the study of global processes, including the “crisis of hegemony” – one he describes in terms of the “shellness” of politics, and which is in fact often compounded by contemporary revolutions. “People want their say”, Volodymyr explains. “They can overthrow the governments. But they cannot bring about the change that would represent their interests”. An urgent discussion about decolonisation and discourse, progress, popular mobilisation and imagining alternative futures. With reflection on Soviet-era sci-fi authors, the Strugatsky brothers – and on sociologists’ duty to highlight complex, messy realities. Guest: Volodymyr Ishchenko; 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 Episode Resources By Volodymyr Ishchenko Towards The Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to WarUkrainian Voices?Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s ‘East/West’ divideInsufficiently diverse: The problem of nonviolent leverage and radicalization of Ukraine’s Maidan uprising, 2013–2014Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilise its citizens to fight?From the Sociological Review Foundation Community, with Kirsteen PatonSecurity, with Daria KrivonosGood warning, Vietnam? Comparing the Russian opposition to Putin with the greatest anti-war movement in the US – Arseniy KumankovFurther resources The Snail On The Slope – novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, also reviewed in the TLS by Muireann MaguireUnderstanding Ukraine’s Euromaidan Protests – Open Society Foundations“Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective” – Stefan Wolff Read more about Antonio Gramsci, William H. Sewell and Dylan John Riley. Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    46 min
  3. Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism – Trailer

    TRAILER

    Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism – Trailer

    Hi everyone! The next episode of Uncommon Sense is landing here soon, but for now, we want to tell you about our brand new podcast, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, a mini-series of audio essays on the work and lasting sociological significance of three important and inspirational figures in the story of UK anti-racism: Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Gerlin Bean and Len Garrison.  Listen to our trailer to learn more! Be sure to FOLLOW the podcast on your preferred platform to catch all episodes: https://sideways-sociology.buzzsprout.com/2498143/follow Episodes will also be made available directly on our website: https://thesociologicalreview.org/podcasts/sideways-sociology-uk-anti-racism/ Out on May 30th! Thanks for listening. Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    2 min
  4. Fat, with Fady Shanouda

    APR 18

    Fat, with Fady Shanouda

    How do we typically see fat, and how can thinking differently about it have emancipatory outcomes? Fady Shanouda of Carleton University’s Feminist Institute of Social Transformation introduces Fat Studies and their inextricable link to activism. Alert to the connection between living and other things, Fady unpacks his feminist new materialist approach, and explains what it means to say “I’m not fat in my house”, describing how our surroundings can liberate us or show bias. He also considers the harm caused by misconceptions of fat as simply “surplus”, “inanimate” or even “dead” material. How does such valuing get mapped onto whole bodies and lives? And what happens if, instead, we recognise fat as essential, pushing back against the idea that having a lower amount of body fat means somehow a more valuable life? Plus: how has fat come to be seen as a matter for psychiatry? And what are the manifestations of the “fat tax” in a world where things are made with certain bodies in mind and costs imposed on others? Featuring discussion on autoethnography in North America. Plus: celebration of TV drama “Shrill” and the gripping reality TV survival series “Alone”. Guest: Fady Shanouda; 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 Episode Resources By Fady Shanouda Fat Animacy (forthcoming book chapter)Fat and Mad Bodies: Under, Out of, and Beyond Control (chapter in Fat Studies in Canada)Disability Saves the World (podcast) From the Sociological Review Foundation Sugar Rush by Karen Throsby – Lucy AphramorFat Activist PodcastsJust my size? Our bodies, our waistbands, our triggered selves – Nina Sökefeld Further resources “Fat Studies” – an Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society“Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect” – Mel Y. Chen“The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain” – Margaret Price“Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction” – Tony E. AdamsThe “Pool” episode of the TV series “Shrill”The reality TV survival show “Alone” More on the “Obesity Paradox” “The impact of obesity on the short-term and long-term outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention: the obesity paradox?” – Luis Gruberg, et al.“‘Obesity paradox’ misunderstands the biology of optimal weight throughout the life cycle” – J. B. Dixon, et al. Read more about the work of Eli Clare on bodyminds and Hunter Ashleigh Shackleford. Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    43 min
  5. Scars, with Ellen T. Meiser

    MAR 21

    Scars, with Ellen T. Meiser

    From TV’s “The Bear” to the simmering restaurant thriller “Boiling Point” we seem drawn to angry-but-vulnerable chefs in pop culture. But how do such stereotypes shape who works in kitchens and how they treat their colleagues? Is “kitchen culture”, with its macho rough and tumble norms, always so different from the work culture so many of us face – including in academia? Sociologist Ellen T. Meiser joins us from Hawaii to discuss this and more, reflecting on her new book Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen. She tells us about her lifelong fascination with kitchens – from teenage shift work in Anchorage, Alaska, to studying baking and pastry at the Culinary Institute of America and entering the field of Food Studies. We ask: how do scars serve as a kind of currency in commercial kitchens amid values of stoicism, perseverance and pain? How does the transience of worker populations make kitchens sites of risk and low accountability? And how does “scarring” take place beyond the kitchen, in a traumatogenic society where individuals, but also our planet, face significant harm? With celebration of the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain. Guest: Ellen T. Meiser; 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 Episode Resources By Ellen T. Meiser Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen“It Was, Ugh, It Was So Gnarly. And I Kept Going”: The Cultural Significance of Scars in the WorkplaceThe Social Breakdown (podcast co-hosted with Penn Pantumsinchai and Omar Bird) – including the episode Culture and Systems: An Intro to Food Studies From the Sociological Review Foundation Food and Work – The Sociological Review Magazine issuesTaste, Performance, Success, Burnout, Toxic – Uncommon Sense episodes Further resources “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi“Food and Culture: A Reader” – ed. Carole Counihan, Penny Van Esterik, Alice Julier“Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter” – Angela Hui“Scar Cultures: Media, Spectacle, Suffering” – Pramod Nayar“‘Yes Chef’: life at the vanguard of culinary excellence” – Robin Burrow, Chef John Smith, Christalla Yakinthou“The Forms of Capital” – Pierre Bourdieu“Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body” – Phillip Vannini“‘I see my section scar like a battle scar’: The ongoing embodied subjectivity of maternity” – Sally JohnsonMore links to resources available at thesociologicalreview.org Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    47 min
  6. Joy, with Akwugo Emejulu

    JAN 24

    Joy, with Akwugo Emejulu

    What comes to mind when you think about joy? And can there be joy in protest and refusal? Someone who’s been asking and trying to answer questions about this is Akwugo Emejulu. She’s been investigating the relationship between Black feminist joy, ambivalence and futures, asking how Black feminists are remixing political media, meanings and messages to co-create manifestos for change. Akwugo has also been mapping the grassroots organising and activism of women of colour for more than 15 years, and in this episode shares her insights about the role of joy and other emotions in understanding society and social change. Plus: Akwugo introduces us to the work of bell hooks, including her take on Beyoncé’s album “Lemonade”, and gives her pop culture recommendation for some Japanese anime, much to Alexis’ delight! Guest: Akwugo Emejulu Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong Executive Producer: Alice Bloch Guest Producer: Chris Garrington Sound Engineer: David Crackles Music: Joe Gardner Artwork: Erin Aniker Find more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources Rosie, Alexis and Akwugo recommended The works of psychologist Rollo May and poet Toi DerricotteThe anime TV series Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood By Akwugo Emejulu Fugitive FeminismTo Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (co-edited with Francesca Sobande)Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain (co-authored with Leah Bassel)The Black Feminism Remix Lab: on Black feminist joy, ambivalence and futures (co-authored with Francesca Sobande) Refusing politics as usual: mapping women of colour’s radical praxis in London and Amsterdam (co-authored with Inez van der Scheer)The politics of exhaustion (co-authored with Leah Bassel) From The Sociological Review The lonely activist: On being haunted – Akwugo Emejulu, Leah BasselDissonant intimacies: Coloniality and the failures of South–South collaboration – Srila Roy Further resources “Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center” – bell hooks“Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions” – Eduardo Bonilla-Silva“The (Un)Managed Heart: Racial Contours of Emotion Work in Gendered Occupations” – Adia Harvey Wingfield“Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure” – Arlie Russell Hochschild Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    58 min
  7. Voice, with Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch and Belinda Scarlett

    12/20/2024 · BONUS

    Voice, with Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch and Belinda Scarlett

    With so many platforms available to share information, there are more means than ever to make a noise. But in the spirit of free speech and academic freedom, those speaking and actually being heard remain grossly unequal. What are the links between voice and power and how can we amplify those voices that we can’t hear? In this special episode recorded at The Sociological Review Undisciplining II conference, Michaela Benson is joined by Claire Alexander (Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester), Dan McCulloch (Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy at The Open University) and Belinda Scarlett (Library Manager at the Working Class Movement Library) to talk about empowerment, representation and impact, under a common theme: VOICE Guests: Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch, Belinda Scarlett Host: Michaela Benson Executive Producer: Alice Bloch Guest Producer: Emma Houlton Sound Engineer: David Crackles Music: Joe Gardner Artwork: Erin Aniker Find more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources By Claire Alexander  Our Migration StoryThe Art of Being Black: The Creation of Black British Youth IdentitiesStuart Hall and ‘Race’ By Dan McCulloch Critical Reflections on Participatory Visual Methods and VoiceWhy Deaf Prisoners Have Been in a State of Lockdown Since Well Before COVID-19Homelessness and Mortality: an Extraordinary or Unextraordinary Phenomenon? (co-authored with Vickie Cooper) By Belinda Scarlett Working Class Movement LibraryBig Flame Project From The Sociological Review Accent and the Manifestation of Spatialised Class Structure – Michael Donnelly, Sol Gamsu, Alex BarattaYouth Voices in Post-English Riots Tottenham: The Role of Reflexivity in Negotiating Negative Representations – Julius Elster Further resources “Sidewalk” – Mitchell DuneierBlack British Voices – report of project led by Kenny MonroseValuing Voices in the Digital Age – Sharath Srinivasan“Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism” – Nick CouldryAt Home and Not at Home: Stuart Hall in conversation with Les Back; also available for listening Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    1h 3m
  8. Life Admin, with Oriana Bernasconi

    11/29/2024

    Life Admin, with Oriana Bernasconi

    Life admin often refers to the overwhelming and mundane paperwork that surrounds contemporary living. However, Oriana Bernasconi, a sociology professor at the Alberto Hurtado University in Chile, joins Uncommon Sense to talk about a more serious side of the term – that of paperwork documenting human rights abuse – as well as a living, breathing archive and the analogue spreadsheet. Author of “Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting Atrocity”, Oriana talks about her substantial research in human rights archives documenting the atrocities that took place during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. She also talks us through “technologies of memory” and how archives have allowed the living to connect with the dead. Plus: Oriana introduces us to the works of Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida around performativity and gives her pop culture recommendation for the 16-part TV series “Una historia necesaria”. Guest: Oriana Bernasconi Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong Executive Producer: Alice Bloch Guest Producer: Emma Houlton Sound Engineer: David Crackles Music: Joe Gardner Artwork: Erin Aniker Find more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources Rosie, Alexis and Oriana recommended WINHANGANHA – film by Jazz MoneyInside/Out: A Prison Memoir – theatre production by Patrick KeatingUna Historia Necesaria – TV series by Hernán Caffiero By Oriana Bernasconi Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting AtrocityPolitical Technologies of Memory: Uses and Appropriations of Artefacts that Register and Denounce State Violence (co-authored with Elizabeth Lira and Marcela Ruiz)Archives of Violence: Case studies from South America (co-authored with Vikki Bell, Jaime Hernández-García and Cecilia Sosa) From The Sociological Review The aesthetics of memory: Ruins, visibility and witnessing – Margarita PalaciosThe digital writing of human rights narratives: Failure, recognition, and the unruly inscriptions of database infrastructures – Josh Bowsher Further resources the publications of the Tecnologías Políticas de la Memoria project“Documenting Dictatorship: Writing and Resistance in Chile's Vicaría de la Solidaridad” – Vikki Bell“Documentality: Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces” – Maurizio Ferraris“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” – Judith Butler Read more about the concept of Speeach Acts, as well as the work of Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida. Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

    51 min
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About

Our world afresh, through the eyes of sociologists.Brought to you by The Sociological Review, Uncommon Sense is 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 – and that you definitely don’t have to be a sociologist to think like one!Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

Information

  • Creator
    The Sociological Review
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 The Sociological Review | Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0
  • Show Website
    Uncommon Sense

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