Uncommon Sense

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. Each month, we sit down with an expert guest and grab hold of a commonplace notion – Anxiety! Privilege! Burnout! Fat! – and flip it around to see it differently, more critically, more sociologically. A jargon-free space, led by hosts Rosie Hancock and Alexis Hieu Truong, to question tropes and assumptions – and to imagine better ways of living together. Because sociology is for everybody – and you certainly 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

Uncommon Sense is a society podcast hosted by The Sociological Review Foundation, with 54 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 81.

The Sociological Review Foundation hosts Uncommon Sense, a society show with 54 episodes published.

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  Episode #6

  Confidence & Vulnerability, with Shani Orgad

  Sep 25, 202648 minS5

  Ever attempted a "power pose" or been advised to "make yourself vulnerable"? Feminist scholar Shani Orgad joins us to talk about confidence, vulnerability and the gendered nature - and consequences - of the imperatives to perform and embody both. Discussing her landmark book 'Confidence Culture', co-authored with Rosalind Gill, Shani also reflects on her more recent work on 'Posting Vulnerability on Linkedin' - a platform broadly known as a place for self-branding, work-seeking and the upbeat presentation of the self. But, as Shani explains, it has also become a place where people willingly reveal their vulnerability - from crying selfies to stories of illness and rejection. We ask why - and what the rules and costs are for those who don’t perform vulnerability optimally, in a harsh and unequal world? Plus: does focussing on individual vulnerability distract from thinking about broader social structures and barriers - including precarity? And, how does the recent rise in public discourse around menopause and perimenopause speak to our conversation? A lively conversation citing everyone from Foucault to Sara Ahmed, The Sopranos to The Bear. Guest : Shani Orgad; Host : Rosie Hancock; Executive Producer : Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer : David Crackles; Music : Joe Gardiner; Artwork : Erin Aniker Find out more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources By Shani Orgad : Confidence Culture Posting Vulnerability on Linkedin The Survivor in Contemporary Culture and Public Discourse: A Genealogy From the Sociological Review Foundation Listen to Kareem Khubchandani on Performance and Nicky Falkof on Anxiety Reimagining Menopause Carin Runciman on what thinking sociologically really means Further resources: About Prof. Rosalind Gill , Shani's co-author and collaborator Your body language may shape who you are Foucault's "Technologies of the Self" Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny About Kimberlé Crenshaw and intersectionality Sara Ahmed on The Snap as breaking point The TV shows The Sopranos , The Bear , The Maid ** 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 podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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  Episode #5

  Therapy Speak, with Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas

  Jul 24, 202646 minS5

  In Buenos Aires, psychoanalysis has “left the clinic”. Far from being for the elite alone, its core concepts and ideas abound in TV shows, the analyses offered by taxi drivers schooled in Lacan, and in intimate conversations among peers. Here Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas tells us about her brilliant study of what she calls “psychoanalytic listening” in the Argentine capital, where friends confidently say things to each other that often imply “when you say X, I hear Y”. Reflecting how such words act as an affront to elsewhere-dominant notions of selfhood and self-knowledge, Xochitl shows the importance of attending to listening - and describes how, rather like that of the analyst, the social scientist’s role is to “go beyond what’s evident”. Plus: what IS linguistic anthropology? What does it mean to be “Lacanian”? And what’s the relationship between psychoanalysis and social science? Guest: Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardiner; Artwork: Erin Aniker Find out more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources By Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas Genres of Listening: An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires From the Sociological Review Foundation Listen to Nicky Falkof on Anxiety , Les Back on Listening , Hannah Proctor on Burnout and Billy Holzberg on Emotion Further resources: Argentina: the therapy capital of the world Roman Jacobson , who wrote on Functions of Language Mikhail Bakhtin Ferdinand de Saussure Franz Boas The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics Jacques Lacan Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard The Frankfurt School and Critical Theo ry Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School ** 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 podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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  Episode #4

  Fanon, with Julian Go

  Jun 26, 202645 minS5

  Frantz Fanon, the radical psychiatrist and anti-colonial philosopher, was not a sociologist but has shaped so much critical sociological thought. Julian Go, Professor of Sociology, joins us to reflect on the life, work and significance of one the twentieth century’s most important - and at times misunderstood - thinkers, who was born a French citizen in Martinique, went on to fight for France in WWII, and then against it in Algeria’s struggle for independence. Julian tells us about encountering Fanon in gradschool, and the reward of sitting with his work. He talks us through the core ideas of Fanon’s landmark books ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ and ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ and explains how, through Fanon, we can see concepts such as postcolonial and cosmopolitan differently. Reflecting on Fanon’s time as a soldier fighting for France and his work as a psychiatrist in Algeria, Julian tells explains Fanon showed us about the ‘social logics’ of colonialism, and explains why his life and thought deserve to be situated in a wider picture of twentieth century anticolonial struggle - and why we must place his work at the very centre of sociological thought and intellectual history. For, as Julian reminds us, to study colonialism and imperialism is far from “niche”; rather “it is to study one of the dominant socio-political formations of modernity”. Guest: Julian Go; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truon; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch ; Sound Engineer: David Crackles ; Music: Joe Gardiner ; Artwork: Erin Aniker Find out more about Uncommon Sense Episode Resources By Julian Go Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US Fanon's Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory Thinking against empire: Anticolonial thought as social theory From the Sociological Review Foundation Listen to Hannah Proctor on Burnout , Angelique Nixon on Desire , Les Back on Listening and Brenda Herbert on Childhood - all engaging with Fanon's ideas. Listen to Manuela Boatca on Europeans , for a discussion of Martinique as an ‘ outermost region ' of the European Union Further resources Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon WEB Du Bois Aimé Césaire Martinique ** We want to hear from you! Please take two minutes to 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 podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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  Episode #3

  China, with Jieyu Liu

  May 22, 202639 minS5

  <p>What does family life really look like in Contemporary China? What has changed through the generations since the Communist Revolution of 1949? And what persists? Jieyu Liu, Professor of Sociology at SOAS, University of London, joins us to discuss her years of detailed research with people across three generations in rural and urban China. Putting forward her concept of ‘embedded generations’, she argues that family transformation has been less linear than assumed - and calls out dominant Eurocentric accounts of modernization and social change.</p><p>Plus: Jieyu celebrates the work of prominent sociologist and anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, and recommends Shen...

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  Episode #2

  Endings, with Patricia Kingori

  Apr 24, 202642 minS5

  <p>Who gets to decide when something is over? How is declaring so an act of power? Professor of Global Health Ethics, Patricia Kingori, joins to discuss these questions and many more raised by the interdisciplinary ‘After the End’ project on which she’s the lead researcher. </p><p>From ‘post-natal’ to ‘post-war’, we humans seem enamoured with the idea that complex things can be declared “over”. But - from long Covid to the persistence of supposedly long-eradicated diseases - what happens when we’re faced with lived experience that challenges such a simplification? Patricia reflects on this and more, including: what do we...

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