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!
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Episodes
34 episodes
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 fe...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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58:01
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 bet...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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1:02:42
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 mo...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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51:09
Toxic, with Alice Mah
What comes to mind when we think about toxicity in everyday life? It could be toxic relationships or masculinity – through to consumption, waste, governance and environmental harm. Alice Mah joins Uncommon Sense to discuss toxic expert...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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1:02:56
Margins, with Rhoda Reddock
What gets centred and what gets framed as marginal? Who decides? And what are the consequences? UN expert, feminist scholar and social historian Rhoda Reddock – Professor Emerita at The University of the West Indies – joins us from Trinidad and...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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46:00
Community, with Kirsteen Paton
What’s meant – and who’s excluded – when community is invoked? Does membership take more than presence alone? How can seeing local crises through a global lens enrich our understanding? Kirsteen Paton joins Uncommon Sense to discuss co...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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45:43
Coffee Culture, with Grazia Ting Deng
Think you know “coffee culture”? Anthropologist Grazia Ting Deng discusses her research into the “paradox of Chinese Espresso” – or why and how coffee bars in Italy, seen as such distinctively “Italian” spaces, became increasingly managed by Ch...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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44:50
Making, with Kat Jungnickel
What does it mean to make things? Why are some people valorised as “makers”, while others are rendered invisible? And what duty do sociologists have as makers of knowledge and narratives? The “sewing cycling sociologist” Kat Jungnickel...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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40:12
Burnout, with Hannah Proctor
Burnout has become a byword for workplace exhaustion, but does it have a deeper history? Hannah Proctor joins us to explain how the notion emerged in the USA’s 1960s countercultural free clinics movement, at first relating to the emotional defe...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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48:57
Privilege, with Shamus Khan
What does privilege look like today? How do the advantaged perform “ease”? And why do some of us feel at home in elite spaces, while others feel awkward? Princeton sociologist Shamus Khan joins Uncommon Sense to reflect on elites, enti...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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48:20
Rules, with Swethaa Ballakrishnen
What are rules for? What's at stake if we assume that they're neutral? And if we want rules to be progressive, does it matter who makes them? Socio-legal scholar Swethaa Ballakrishnen joins Uncommon Sense to reflect on this and more, h...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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45:20
Spirituality, with Andrew Singleton
What exactly is spirituality? How does it relate to religion? Are both misunderstood? And what stands beyond and behind the idea that it has all simply been commodified to be about wellness, big business and celebrity? Andrew Singleton...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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40:13
Anxiety, with Nicky Falkof
Anxiety is part of contemporary life, yet rarely seen as anything other than personal and intimately psychological. Cultural Studies scholar Nicky Falkof joins us to discuss her work on fear and anxiety in South Africa, and how such ne...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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46:05
Success, with Jo Littler
“If you’re talented and work hard, success (whatever that is) will be yours!” – So says the powerful system and ideology known as “meritocracy”. But if only it were so simple! Jo Littler joins Uncommon Sense to reflect on where this id...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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43:51
BONUS EPISODE – Public Sociology, with Gary Younge, Chantelle Lewis, Cecilia Menjívar & Michaela Benson
What is public sociology and why does it matter more than ever? Gary Younge, Chantelle Lewis and Cecilia Menjívar join Michaela Benson to reflect on its meaning, value and stakes. In a time of perpetual crisis and gross inequal...
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Season 2
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59:45
Performance, with Kareem Khubchandani
From Shakespeare to RuPaul, we all love a performance. But what exactly is it? What are its boundaries, its powers, its potential, its stakes? Kareem Khubchandani, who also performs as LaWhore Vagistan – “everyone's favourite desi drag queen au...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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53:35
Nature, with Catherine Oliver
It is increasingly accepted that we cannot take nature for granted. But do we even know what nature is? Catherine Oliver brings her expertise in geography and sociology – plus her love of chickens – to the latest Uncommon Sense to refl...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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43:39
Europeans, with Manuela Boatcă
Does anyone know what European means? Manuela Boatcă thought she did, until a late 1990s move from Romania to Germany unsettled everything she had taken for granted. In this episode, she challenges mainstream ideas of “Europe” to show ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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49:43
Solidarity, with Suresh Grover, Shabna Begum & Karis Campion
AUDIO CONTENT WARNING: description of extreme racist violenceIn 1993, Black British teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack that sparked a long fight for justice and led the UK to ask questions of itself and its ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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59:30
EPISODE SWAP – Who do we think we are? presents Global Britain: Of Kings, Songs and Migrants
What does Eurovision have to do with the Coronation? In this episode swap, the team at Who do we think we are? is talking about what we learn about “Global Britain” and its imagined community by look...
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46:47
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...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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47:16
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 talk...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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48:09
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 neatl...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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45:28
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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47:43
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 violen...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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46:45