Uncommon Sense

What does "Reconstruction" mean in Gaza? What role does education play, amid scholasticide and devastation? And how can we learn from "Sumud" as a counter to the oft-troubled trope of "resilience"?Ahmed Kamal Junina joins us for this urgent conversation on what the "reparative" reconstruction of Higher Education in Gaza could look like - casting a critical eye on terms like "development" and "post war" amid ongoing violence and erasure. Places of education, shows Ahmed, are more than bricks and mortar; they are sites of storytelling and home; generators of futures, community and continuity. He also presents the Palestinian concept of "Sumud" - a kind of steadfastness - as a more radical and place-based notion than its more problematic counterpart, "resilience". And he shares what it’s like for educators in Gaza, including his own practice of "the pedagogy of hope and survival".Also: we hear from Ahmed’s colleagues from the ‘Reconstructing Home’ project, which links  scholars at UCL with those in and from Palestine. Nihad Al-Sheikh Khalil introduces his work on "the efforts of Gazan families" - how the home is reconstructed amid destruction and displacement.  Meanwhile, Abdrabou Al-Anzi describes his project on how spatial erasure, displacement and destruction impact individual and collective memories of "home/land".Guest: Prof Ahmed Kamal Junina; Contributors: Dr Nihad Al-Sheikh Khalil, Dr. Abdrabou Al-Anzi; Translation assistance: Saba Abd Elkarim; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles: Music: Joe Gardne; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Ahmed Kamal Junina:From Rubble to Campus, part of the Reconstructing Home project uniting co-investigators in Gaza with a UCL-based team Displaced but not replaced: challenges, adaptations, and resilience of higher education in Gaza in the context of war and scholasticideRemote higher education partnerships in crisis: reflections and practical insights from the Gaza education research virtual fellowshipBack to school in Gaza is now education reduced to fragmentsFrom the Sociological Review FoundationStatement of solidarity with the people of Palestine'Why are the soldiers hurting Palestinian children?’: Parenthood, identity and culture during genocideFurther resourcesThe Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, discussed further by Al Jazeera Statistics and reports from UNRWA, UNESCO, UNOCHA, as cited in the episodeIn Gaza, the schools are dying too: for more on the term "scholasticide" The work of Karma NabulsiThe Rise of Resilience in Education in EmergenciesSocial ecology of resilience and Sumud of PalestiniansResilient Voices: a youth-led digital storytelling initiative empowering young Palestinians to share their lived experiences, heritage, and unbreakable spirit through the power of words, sound, and visualsDevelopment as Erasure: Palestine, Genocide and ‘Reconstruction’Sard: Stories of Adversity, Resilience and DeterminationAcademic freedom: report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Farida ShaheedNew report documents scholasticide in Gaza – and the collective resilience sustaining Palestinian higher educationSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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 AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Shani Orgad:Confidence CulturePosting Vulnerability on LinkedinThe Survivor in Contemporary Culture and Public Discourse: A GenealogyFrom the Sociological Review FoundationListen to Kareem Khubchandani on Performance and Nicky Falkof on AnxietyReimagining MenopauseCarin Runciman on what thinking sociologically really means  Further resources:About Prof. Rosalind Gill, Shani's co-author and collaboratorYour body language may shape who you areFoucault's "Technologies of the Self"Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to LeadEmpowered: Popular Feminism and Popular MisogynyAbout Kimberlé Crenshaw and intersectionalitySara Ahmed on The Snap as breaking point The TV shows The Sopranos, The Bear, The MaidSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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 AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas Genres of Listening: An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos AiresFrom the Sociological Review FoundationListen to Nicky Falkof on Anxiety, Les Back on Listening, Hannah Proctor on Burnout and Billy Holzberg on EmotionFurther resources:About Argentina: the therapy capital of the worldAbout Roman Jacobson, who wrote on Functions of LanguageAbout Mikhail BakhtinAbout Ferdinand de SaussureAbout Franz BoasThe Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic CounterpublicsAbout Jacques LacanEthical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being HeardAbout The Frankfurt School and Critical TheoryGrand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt SchoolSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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 AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Julian GoPolicing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the USFanon's Postcolonial CosmopolitanismPostcolonial Thought and Social TheoryThinking against empire: Anticolonial thought as social theoryFrom the Sociological Review FoundationListen 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 UnionFurther resourcesFanon's Black Skin, White MasksFanon's The Wretched of the Earth The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz FanonAbout Frantz FanonAbout WEB Du BoisAbout Aimé CésaireAbout MartiniqueSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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.Plus: Jieyu celebrates the work of prominent sociologist and anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, and recommends Shen Fu’s memoir ‘Six Records of a Floating Life’ for its insights into Chinese society. An important conversation about love, relationships, family and social change - and the influential concept of ‘individualisation’.Guest: Jieyu Liu; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardiner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Jieyu LiuEmbedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary ChinaFrom the Sociological Review FoundationListen to Katherine Twamley on IntimacyObligated to Care: Intergenerational Family Relations in Contemporary China Raising Global Families by Pei-Chia LanGenerationalism: Understanding the difference between what generations are and what generations doFurther resourcesFei Xiaotong - ObituaryFei Xiaotong (1939) Peasant Life in ChinaThe Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern SocietiesIndividualisation: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences Shen Fu (1809/1877) Six Records of a Floating Life Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

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. 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 owe research participants, after a project has formally ended? And why, if we want to ensure “temporal justice”, should we consider actually asking “the people who are affected" whether they consider a thing to be “over”.Plus: Patricia evokes her experience of time on St Kitts, where she grew up, and celebrates the time-bending movie ‘All of Us Strangers’. A boundary-breaking, continent-spanning conversation on health, inequality, conflict and time.Guest: Patricia Kingori; Host: Rosie Hancock; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardiner; Artwork: Erin AnikerEpisode ResourcesBy Patricia Kingori and colleagues at the ‘After the End’ projectBeing the index-caseThe End and What Comes AfterIndigenous TimeFrom the Sociological Review FoundationGood vibrations: Why sociologists make ideal podcastersListen to Ilana Gershon on BreakupsFurther resourcesSand Talk and Right Story, Wrong StoryFeminist, Queer, CripWhat the land can teach usGrenfell Tower fire and key findings of the Grenfell Inquiry’s final reportOn the standardisation of timeDebora DenizPatricia DaleyAgainst TimeIn a Queer Time and PlaceAlice's Adventures in WonderlandAll of Us StrangersDora Vargha and her Polio Across the Iron CurtainSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

**Note: this episode was recorded in late 2025, prior to the extremely violent suppression of protests in Iran, and prior to the strikes by the US and Israel that began in late February 2026**“Being seen” has become a meme, pointing to the satisfaction felt at one’s true self being understood by another. But can we think more critically? Self-described “accidental” Professor of anthropology and ex-taxi driver Shahram Khosravi joins Uncommon Sense to discuss visibility, power, knowledge and the violence of unseeing. Shahram describes how growing up in Iran’s Bakhtiari culture shaped his own way of seeing  and taught him, early on, how some forms of knowing get legitimised while others are  dismissed - including in academia, where asking one question obscures the possibility of another. Here, he calls out the topsy turvy optics by which certain people - delivery workers, taxi drivers - go “actively unseen”, while others are loaded with value, visibility and esteem. Plus, he calls out those who ask “where are you from?” of the migrantised person. This “question”, he suggests, is often really a statement of non-recognition. An urgent conversation, with reflection on Édouard Glissant, George Orwell and Hannah Arendt. It is imperative, Shahram shows, that in what - via Arendt - he identifies as our present “dark times”, we challenge active “unseeing” and speak “clearly…with courage”.Guest: Shahram Khosravi; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardiner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Shahram KhosraviHow to Do Migration Studies in Dark Times"Bordered Imagination" in ‘Infrastructural Love: Caring for Our Architectural Support Systems’ (2022) eds: S. Karami, Adr. Carbonell, H. Frichot, H. FrykholmDoing migration studies with an accent“The Archive of Stolen Breaths” in 'Breathe – Critical Research into the Inequalities of Life' (2023)The Holes'Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran' (2017), University of Pennsylvania Press'Young and Defiant in Tehran' (2008), University of Pennsylvania PressDe Verbranders podcast, Episode 30: “Outside the Law”From the Sociological Review FoundationListen to Rhoda Reddock on Margins, Angelique Nixon on Desire, Nandita Sharma on Natives Why Stigma?Further resourcesMiranda Fricker "Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing" (2007)Judith Butler "Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?" (2016)Hannah Arendt "Men in Dark Times" (1968) "For Opacity" in Édouard Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’, transl. Betsy Wing (1997/1990)Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

Why do we keep gifts that we don’t want, or can’t currently use? What role do these play in our relationships with others, with time, and perhaps even our future selves? Sophie Woodward discusses the richly creative research project that took her into strangers’ homes, drawers and cupboards, and led her to consider the gifts that lie “dormant” in our homes. Such items might appear “meaningless” or inactive, Sophie shows, but are far from dead or unimportant: “stuff” matters. Via examples of gifts ranging from inconveniently big plastic toys to alcohol repeatedly gifted by relatives, Sophie explains how, beyond theories of gifts from thinkers like Marcel Mauss on the function of exchange, or Theodor Adorno on the perfect gift, it’s worth a deeper focus on the recipient – people, she observes, have an obligation not just to receive gifts but also to keep them, at least for a certain amount of time.Plus, we ask: is it ok for recipients to pre-empt and refuse gifts before they’re given, or is gifting the prerogative of the giver? What can we do to reduce material overwhelm? We also celebrate Jane Bennett, who considers the powers of things, beyond the meanings we attribute to them.A thoughtful and exploratory conversation, crucial in a time of climate emergency, waste, and cost-of-living crises.Guest: Sophie Woodward; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Sophie WoodwardDormant Gifts: Animating the Imagined and Narrated Pasts and Futures of Gifts (2025)Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday (2025)Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities (2021)Object interviews, material imaginings and ‘unsettling’ methods: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding materials and material culture (2015)Sophie’s profile at The University of Manchester and the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday LivesFrom the Sociological Review FoundationNew Materialism – Nick J. Fox (2020)Shrinking domesticity – Mel Nowicki, Tim White, Ella Harris (2022)Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!Further resources“The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies” – Marcel MaussThe Opposite of Forgetfulness: Adorno on Gift-Giving – from Stuart Jeffries’ “Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School”“Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things” – Jane BennettRead more about Jane Bennett.Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

“What is the effect of receiving something from someone who is not your biological kin?” Anthropologist Delwar Hussain introduces his new project on Queer Inheritance, born when a friend welcomed Delwar and his partner to enjoy items belonging to her late uncle – a man they had never met. This led Delwar to wonder: how are queer people today preparing for their deaths? How, with this in mind, can we think of “inheritance”? And what does the “good death”, of which inheritance is a key part, mean to queer people?While the word “inheritance” often leads us to thoughts of taxation and legislation, class and inequality, finance and family feuds, this episode heads in a different direction. Reflecting on both physical items, but also those things that remain intangible and untaxable – wisdom, life stories, mentorship, communion – this conversation unites two classic areas of anthropological thought: kinship and the gift. Inheritance, Delwar reminds us – particularly at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis, for example, and when homosexuality was illegal in countries like the UK – can be a radical and communicative act. At other times, it reproduces dominant norms, among them heteronormativity and the privileging of biological kin. And then there’s disinheritance, too…A fascinating and exploratory conversation about family, choice, meaning and death. Plus: the enduring popularity of Kath Weston’s “Families We Choose”.Guest: Delwar Hussain; Hosts: George Kalivis, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Delwar Hussain‘Just who do I leave my worldly possessions to, darling?’: A Study of Queer Inheritance – research project funded by a Wellcome Accelerator Award Boundaries Undermined: The Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh/India Border (2013)Delwar’s profile at The University of EdinburghFrom the Sociological Review FoundationUncommon Sense episodes: Love & Reproduction, with Alva Gotby (2025); Performance, with Kareem Khubchandani (2023); Desire, with Angelique Nixon (2025)Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!Further resources“Families We Choose” – Kath Weston“The Gift” – Marcel Mauss“Forgetting Family” – Jack Halberstam, in “A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies”“How to Survive a Plague” – David France“Abolish the Family” – Sophie Lewis“Anthropology and Inheritance” – Current Anthropology special issue featuring the pieces by João Biehl, Adam T. Smith and Tim Ingold, mentioned by DelwarRead more about the work of Judith Butler and Resto Cruz.Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter

How have maternal - and grandmaternal - ways of knowing been sidelined and undervalued? What role has sociology’s focus on its ‘founding fathers’ played? And what’s the cost, in South Africa and beyond? Babalwa Magoqwana, Director of the Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University, joins us from Gqeberha.In this fascinating conversation on knowledge and value, gender and care, Babalwa celebrates her grandmother - “a learning space, a space of imagination” - who provided her with “ways of knowing” that remain sidelined in academia. By foregrounding such maternal and grandmaternal figures, Babalwa argues, not only might we reduce the dissonance felt by students whose experience jars with that shown to them by classic sociological theory (of the “nuclear family”, for example); we also quickly see how the production of what we value as “knowledge” has been a colonial imposition - including rigid gender binaries, or notions of seniority rooted solely in chronology - that did not originate in Africa itself. Motherhood, says Babalwa, has been reduced to the identity of a single female person. We must de-gender it and recognise that all of us need to care.Plus: Babalwa celebrates the work of Ifi Amadiume, author of ‘Male Daughters, Female Husbands’, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, author of ‘The Invention of Women’. She also reflects on the unrecognised labour of Black women in the neoliberal university. And we ask: can we speak of “African Sociology” in general? Babalwa explains why we may.Guest: Babalwa Magoqwana; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Babalwa MagoqwanaInyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili: Theorising South African Women's Intellectual Legacies (2024, with S. Magadla and A. Masola)On maternal legacies of knowledge, ukwambathisa, and rethinking of the sociology of Eastern Cape, South Africa (2023, with P. Maseko)Thirty years of Male Daughters, Female Husbands (2021, with S. Magadla and N. Motsemme)Reconnecting African Sociology to the Mother (2020, with J. Adesina)“Forced to Care” at the Neoliberal University (2019, with Q. Maqabuka and M. Tshoaedi)From the Sociological Review FoundationUncommon Sense episodes: Margins, with Rhoda Reddock (2024); Natives, with Nandita Sharma (2022); Love & Reproduction, with Alva Gotby (2025)Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!Further resources“I Write What I Like” – Steve Biko“Three Mothers” – Anna Malaika Tubbs“Male Daughters, Female Husbands” – Ifi Amadiume“The Invention of Women” and “What Gender is Motherhood?” – Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí“Forced to Care” – Evelyn Nakano Glenn“Scholars in the Marketplace” – Mahmoud Mamdani“Eating from One Pot” – Sarah MosoetsaSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at [email protected] Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter