Author: Social Science Bites

Welcome to the blog for the Social Science Bites podcast: a series of interviews with leading social scientists. Each episode explores an aspect of our social world. You can access all audio and the transcripts from each interview here. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @socialscibites.

Michael Billig on the Royal Family and Nationalism
Social Science Bites
September 1, 2016

Michael Billig on the Royal Family and Nationalism

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Mirca Madianou on Technology and Everyday Life
Social Science Bites
June 15, 2016

Mirca Madianou on Technology and Everyday Life

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Iris Bohnet on Discrimination and Design
Social Science Bites
May 10, 2016

Iris Bohnet on Discrimination and Design

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Michael Burawoy on Sociology and the Workplace
Social Science Bites
April 4, 2016

Michael Burawoy on Sociology and the Workplace

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Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology

Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology

“In a sense, you could summarize the literature: ‘Groups are bad for you, groups take moral individuals and they turn them into immoral idiots.’ I have been trying to contest that notion,” social psychologist Stephen Reicher says in this Social Science Bites podcast, “[and] also to explain how that notion comes about.”

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Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology

Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology

One of the leading exponents of what might be called the second coming of kinship studies, Janet Carsten, a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, has (literally) brought new blood into the field, exploring kinship’s nexus with politics, work and gender.

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Ted Cantle on Segregation

Ted Cantle on Segregation

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Ted Cantle (of the post-2001 riot report that bears his name) explains how the concept of ‘parallel lives’ continues to exert a malign influence wherever communities find themselves segregated — even when they may live cheek-and-jowl.

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William Davies on the Happiness Industry

William Davies on the Happiness Industry

‘I think that happiness is better than a lot of what the ‘happiness industry’ represents it as,’ Goldsmiths sociologist Will Davies tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast.

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Sheldon Solomon on Fear of Death

Sheldon Solomon on Fear of Death

Social psychologist Sheldon Solomon routinely thinks about the unthinkable, studying how humans behave differently when the unthinkable forces its way into their thoughts. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he explains how the fear of death actually propels humankind forward.

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Steven Lukes on Durkheim

Steven Lukes on Durkheim

In this Social Science Bites podcast, social theorist Steven Lukes tells interviewer Nigel Warburton how Émile Durkheim’s exploration of issues like labor, suicide and religion proved intriguing to a young academic and enduring for an established one.

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John Brewer on C. Wright Mills

John Brewer on C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills was one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century. He believed that sociology could change people’s lives, and that sociologists, far from being neutral, should help bring about such change, and his ideas would fuel ‘60s counter-culture. In this Social Science Bites podcast, John Brewer reveals the full man behind the icon.

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Peter Lunt on Erving Goffman

Peter Lunt on Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman has been called the most influential American sociologist of the 20th century thanks to his study of the social interactions of everyday life. In this Social Science Bites podcast, social psychologist Peter Lunt discusses his own inquiries into Goffman and how he approached his subjects with “an ethnographer’s eye.”

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