In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around their side effects -- have gone mainstream, blending with geopolitical conflicts, political campaigns, celebrity causes, and "natural" lifestyles to win a growing number of hearts and minds. Today's anti-vaccine positions find audiences where they've never existed previously.Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away (Oxford UP, 2020) examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate them. To do this, Stuck provides a clear-eyed examination of the social vectors that transmit vaccine rumors, their manifestations around the globe, and how these individual threads are all connected.Heidi J. Larson, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most commonly diagnosed birth abnormality in the US. With great advances in surgery and medicine, however, survival rates have improved by 75% since the 1940s. Welcome news, of course, as only a few decades ago these birth defects were considered a death sentence, but as with any chronic condition, survival does not mean the issue is cured. With better medical care, babies born today with CHD have a good chance of surviving, but throughout their entire lives they can face surgeries, invasive treatments, lifelong monitoring, frequent medical check-ups, and significant limitations on physical activity, in addition to poor public awareness which can have an impact on social inclusion and understanding. Much attention has rightly been focused on the medical needs of these children and on providing their parents and caretakers with resources and information to navigate the complexities of this chronic condition.Little attention, however, has been paid to the psychosocial impacts on these individuals, especially as they grow, mature, and become adults living with a serious, chronic medical condition. Prevalence rates for anxiety, depression, and PTSD are significantly higher (2-3x in some cases) for people living with CHD than the general adult population. From feeling self-conscious about scars and limitations on physical activity and sense of loss around so many of life's little normalcies, to frequent hospital visits and living in constant fear of an emergency, this condition is ever-present. Liza Morton and Tracy Livecchi are both mental health professionals who have developed a specialty in working with clients who have chronic medical conditions, and they are both themselves living with CHD. In Healing Hearts and Minds: A Holistic Approach to Coping Well with Congenital Heart Disease (Oxford UP, 2023) they set out to provide the resources and support they have been looking for their entire adult lives. While their powerful personal stories are woven into the narrative, the book is focused on providing evidence-based coping and self-care skills for adults living with CHD.

Appropriating insights from empirical findings and theoretical constructs of 'embodied cognition', Corporeal Theology: The Nature of Theological Understanding in Light of Embodied Cognition (Oxford UP, 2023) explores how theological understanding is accommodated to the bodily nature of human cognition. The principle of divine accommodation provides a theological framework for considering the human cognitive capacities that are accommodated by theological concepts and ecclesial practices. A rich portrait of the nature of human cognitive capacities is drawn from an emerging paradigm in cognitive science, embodied cognition, which proposes that cognition depends upon bodily sensorimotor systems to ground concepts and to draw upon environmental resources.Embodied cognition's hypothesis that human concepts are grounded in sensorimotor states poses a theological quandary for God-concepts, since identifying God with sensorimotor content risks idolatry. The incarnation resolves this problem in theological epistemology by grounding God-concepts in bodily understanding, while avoiding idolatry. Thus, the incarnation represents an accommodation to human conceptual capacities.Embodied cognition further hypothesises that cognition relies on sensorimotor engagement with the world rather than internal mental representations. Subsequently, in addition to the brain, bodily states and environmental artefacts 'scaffold' cognitive processes. A scaffolded view of cognition highlights the cognitive import of embodied religious practices, which choregraph the body and curate material culture. Tanton applies dozens of studies identifying mechanisms by which bodily or environmental factors influence cognition to the embodied and material dimensions Christian practices. On account of their inherent cognitive effects, practices are theorised to have intrinsic 'embodied' meanings alongside 'symbolic' ones established by conventions. Consequently, liturgy is seen as a bearer of theological content rather than merely an expression of it; a locus of religious experience; and a crucial determinate of religious and ethical formation. Again, the embodied nature of Christian liturgy is understood in terms of accommodation. Embodied cognition research helpfully illuminates the details of human embodiment to which theological understanding must be accommodated.Frazer MacDiarmid holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford, and currently works on Māori-Crown relations in New Zealand. He talks about books on Instagram @turnsof_fraze.

Every two seconds a person is displaced, caught in one of the more than 40 active conflicts around the world that show no sign of ending. Since 1994, there has been ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has uprooted millions of people and resulted in the deaths of millions more. In the West, we have entered a political era where our border policies are underpinned by unending wars. At this critical juncture, how can journalists, especially those engaged in foreign correspondence, tell these stories? How can they make connections across time and space, and across politics, economics, environments, and crucially, people? Given its colonial history, are these connections possible for the profession of foreign correspondence?In Borderland: Decolonising the Words of War (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Chrisanthi Giotis argues that decolonization is possible and necessary for the development of a truly global, public sphere. New global narratives need to meaningfully include the voices, and knowledge, of those with the least power who are caught in resource-fuelled wars. Drawing on insights from postcolonial studies, international relations, development studies, and philosophy, which are brought to life through auto-ethnographic descriptions and analysis of "behind-the-scenes" events, Giotis introduces new reporting techniques for foreign correspondents. Borderland argues that decolonized reporting techniques will help journalists—and their audiences—move beyond the sociohistorical and political myopia that prevents us from communicating and understanding the reality of a complex world.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age (Oxford UP, 2022), Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets. A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.

Mercy: Humanity in War (Oxford University Press, 2022) gathers and explores acts of singular mercy, giving them form and substance across wars, causes, and opposing uniforms. These acts demand our attention not only for the moral uplift they supply but because they challenge assumptions about humanity itself. Rising above ordinary courage, they may ultimately transcend our understanding, entering the realm of the ineffable. Nevertheless, as Nolan shows, acts of mercy in war are not the provenance of saints but of ordinary people who perform them at great personal risk. As much or more than the normal war hero stories, we must recognize the extraordinary courage of the merciful in war.Cathal J. Nolan is Professor of History at Boston University, a Progress Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Space technology was developed to enhance the killing power of the state. The Moon landings and the launch of the Space Shuttle were mere sideshows, drawing public attention away from the real goal: military and economic control of space as a source of power on Earth.Today, as Bleddyn E. Bowen vividly recounts in Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space (Oxford UP, 2022), thousands of satellites work silently in the background to provide essential military, intelligence and economic capabilities. No major power can do without them. Beyond Washington, Moscow and Beijing, truly global technologies have evolved, from the ground floor of the nuclear missile revolution to today's orbital battlefield, shaping the wars to come. World powers including India, Japan and Europe are fully realizing the strategic benefits of commanding Earth's 'cosmic coastline', as a stage for war, development and prestige.Yet, as new contenders spend more and more on outer space, there is scope for cautious optimism about the future of the Space Age-if we can recognize, rather than hide, its original sin.Bleddyn E. Bowen is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Leicester, specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space. The internationally recognized author of War in Space, he consults on space policy for institutions including the UK Parliament, the European Space Agency, and the Pentagon.Sam Canter is a policy and strategy analyst, PhD candidate, and Army Reserve intelligence officer. His views are his own and do not reflect any institution, organization, or entity with which he is affiliated.

Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, nor subjected to more preservation efforts, than indigenous peoples. And in India, calls for the conservation of Adivasi culture have often reached a fever pitch, especially amongst urban middle-class activists and global civil society groups. But are India’s ‘tribes’ really endangered? Do they face extinction? And is this threat somehow comparable to the threat of extinction facing tigers and other wildlife? Combining years of fieldwork and archival research with intensive theoretical interrogations, Ezra Rashkow's book The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination and Conservation, 1818-2020 (Oxford UP, 2023) offers a global intellectual history of efforts to ‘protect’ indigenous peoples and their cultures, usually from above. It also offers a critique of the activist impulse to cry ‘Save the tigers!’ and ‘Save the tribes!’ together in the same breath. It is not a history or an ethnography of the tribes of India but rather a history of discourses—including Adivasis’ own—about what is perceived to be the fundamental question for nearly all indigenous peoples in the modern world: the question of survival. Examining views of interlinking biological and cultural (or biocultural) diversity loss in western and central India—particularly in regard to Bhil and Gond communities facing not only conservation and development-induced displacement but also dehumanizing animal analogies comparing endangered tigers and tribes—the book problematizes the long history of human endangerment and extinction discourse. In doing so, it shows that fears of tribal extinction actually predated scientific awareness of the extinction of non-human species. Only by confronting this history can we begin to decolonize this discourse.Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

If we listen to the politicians and pundits, college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal orthodoxy and forcibly silence anyone who dares to disagree. These commentators lament the demise of free speech and academic freedom. But what is really happening on college campuses?Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford UP, 2022) shows how misinformation about colleges and universities has proliferated in recent years, with potentially dangerous results. Popular but highly misleading claims about a so-called free speech crisis and a lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses emerged in the mid-2010s and continue to shape public discourse about higher education across party lines. Such disingenuous claims impede constructive deliberation about higher learning while normalizing suspect ideas about First Amendment freedoms and democratic participation.Taking a non-partisan approach, Bradford Vivian argues that reporting on campus culture has grossly exaggerated the importance and representativeness of a small number of isolated events; misleadingly advocated for an artificial parity between liberals and conservatives as true viewpoint diversity; mischaracterized the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces; and purposefully confused critique and protest with censorship and "cancel culture." Organizations and think tanks generate pseudoscientific data to support this discourse, then advocate for free speech in highly specific ways that actually limit speech in general. In the name of free speech and viewpoint diversity, we now see restrictions on the right to protest and laws banning certain books, theories, and subjects from schools.By deconstructing the political and rhetorical development of the free speech crisis, Vivian not only provides a powerful corrective to contemporary views of higher education, but provides a blueprint for readers to identify and challenge misleading language--and to understand the true threats to our freedoms.Bradford Vivian is Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and past Director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State University. His previous books include Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical Invention, Historical Remembrance, and Public Culture (OUP 2017) and Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (2010), which received the Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address awarded by the National Communication Association.Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly.

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.In this episode, our host Yuval Katz discusses the book The Ethics of Engagement: Media, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020) by Herman Wasserman.You’ll hear about: The ethical and methodological challenges of studying media in Africa; Why democratization is not a linear process; What tools journalists have at their disposal to support processes of democratization; Reflections on the professional conduct of journalists and what they can do to be more attentive to the needs of ordinary people; Why conflicts are not necessarily detrimental to democracy; Some tips and advice for early career scholars studying the Global South. About the bookThe book discusses the relationship between media, conflict, and democratization in Africa from the perspective of media ethics. Despite the commonly held view that conflict is a destructive political force that can destabilize democracies, the argument in this book is that while many conflicts can indeed become violent and destructive, they can also be managed in a way that can render them productive and communicative to democracy. Drawing on theoretical insights from the fields of journalism studies, political studies, and cultural studies, the book discusses the ethics of conflict coverage and proposes a normative model for covering conflict and democratization. The book argues for an “ethics of listening” that would enable the media to help de-escalate violent conflict and contribute to the deepening of an agonistic democratic culture in contexts of high inequality, ethnic and racial polarization, and uneven access to media. This argument is illustrated by examples drawn from recent events in African democracies such as student protests, community activism, struggles for resources, and social media conflicts. The book also scrutinizes the media’s ethical roles and responsibilities in African societies by considering questions regarding journalistic professionalism, ethical codes, and regulation in the context of rising misinformation. The book provides a critical African perspective on global debates about media, politics, and democracy and the media’s ethical commitments in contexts of conflict. You can find the book here.Author: Herman Wasserman is a Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of several books, has published widely on media, ethics and democracy in Africa. His awards include the Georg Foster Prize from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Fulbright Fellowship and the Neva Prize for Journalism Theory from the University of St Petersburg, amongst others.Host: Yuval Katz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication with a joint appointment at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) and the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS). His work inspects how media help us rethink the relationship between people involved in intractable, violent conflicts. He is currently writing a book titled In Search of a Medium: Palestinian and Jewish Encounters in Media Texts and Industry Practices, where he examines Israeli media spaces in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians collaborate creatively.Editor & Producer: Jing WangKeywords: Africa, Agonism, Democratization, Journalism Studies, Listening, Media Ethics, PeaceOur podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.