Uncommon Sense

• Fat, with Fady Shanouda

  How do we typically see fat, and how can thinking differently about it have emancipatory outcomes? Fady Shanouda of Carleton University’s Feminist Institute of Social Transformation introduces Fat Studies and their inextricable link to activism. Alert to the connection between living and other things, Fady unpacks his feminist new materialist approach, and explains what it means to say “I’m not fat in my house”, describing how our surroundings can liberate us or show bias. He also considers the harm caused by misconceptions of fat as simply “surplus”, “inanimate” or even “dead” material. How does such valuing get mapped onto whole bodies and lives? And what happens if, instead, we recognise fat as essential, pushing back against the idea that having a lower amount of body fat means somehow a more valuable life?Plus: how has fat come to be seen as a matter for psychiatry? And what are the manifestations of the “fat tax” in a world where things are made with certain bodies in mind and costs imposed on others?Featuring discussion on autoethnography in North America. Plus: celebration of TV drama “Shrill” and the gripping reality TV survival series “Alone”.Guest: Fady Shanouda; 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 Fady ShanoudaFat Animacy (forthcoming book chapter)Fat and Mad Bodies: Under, Out of, and Beyond Control (chapter in Fat Studies in Canada)Disability Saves the World (podcast)From the Sociological Review FoundationSugar Rush by Karen Throsby – Lucy AphramorFat Activist PodcastsJust my size? Our bodies, our waistbands, our triggered selves – Nina SökefeldFurther resources“Fat Studies” – an Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society“Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect” – Mel Y. Chen“The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain” – Margaret Price“Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction” – Tony E. AdamsThe “Pool” episode of the TV series “Shrill”The reality TV survival show “Alone”More on the “Obesity Paradox”“The impact of obesity on the short-term and long-term outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention: the obesity paradox?” – Luis Gruberg, et al.“‘Obesity paradox’ misunderstands the biology of optimal weight throughout the life cycle” – J. B. Dixon, et al.Read more about the work of Eli Clare on bodyminds and Hunter Ashleigh Shackleford.Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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• Scars, with Ellen T. Meiser

  From TV’s “The Bear” to the simmering restaurant thriller “Boiling Point” we seem drawn to angry-but-vulnerable chefs in pop culture. But how do such stereotypes shape who works in kitchens and how they treat their colleagues? Is “kitchen culture”, with its macho rough and tumble norms, always so different from the work culture so many of us face – including in academia? Sociologist Ellen T. Meiser joins us from Hawaii to discuss this and more, reflecting on her new book Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen. She tells us about her lifelong fascination with kitchens – from teenage shift work in Anchorage, Alaska, to studying baking and pastry at the Culinary Institute of America and entering the field of Food Studies.We ask: how do scars serve as a kind of currency in commercial kitchens amid values of stoicism, perseverance and pain? How does the transience of worker populations make kitchens sites of risk and low accountability? And how does “scarring” take place beyond the kitchen, in a traumatogenic society where individuals, but also our planet, face significant harm?With celebration of the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain.Guest: Ellen T. Meiser; 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 Ellen T. MeiserMaking It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen“It Was, Ugh, It Was So Gnarly. And I Kept Going”: The Cultural Significance of Scars in the WorkplaceThe Social Breakdown (podcast co-hosted with Penn Pantumsinchai and Omar Bird) – including the episode Culture and Systems: An Intro to Food StudiesFrom the Sociological Review FoundationFood and Work – The Sociological Review Magazine issuesTaste, Performance, Success, Burnout, Toxic – Uncommon Sense episodesFurther resources“Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi“Food and Culture: A Reader” – ed. Carole Counihan, Penny Van Esterik, Alice Julier“Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter” – Angela Hui“Scar Cultures: Media, Spectacle, Suffering” – Pramod Nayar“‘Yes Chef’: life at the vanguard of culinary excellence” – Robin Burrow, Chef John Smith, Christalla Yakinthou“The Forms of Capital” – Pierre Bourdieu“Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body” – Phillip Vannini“‘I see my section scar like a battle scar’: The ongoing embodied subjectivity of maternity” – Sally JohnsonMore links to resources available at thesociologicalreview.orgSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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• 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 feminist joy, ambivalence and futures, asking how Black feminists are remixing political media, meanings and messages to co-create manifestos for change. Akwugo has also been mapping the grassroots organising and activism of women of colour for more than 15 years, and in this episode shares her insights about the role of joy and other emotions in understanding society and social change. Plus: Akwugo introduces us to the work of bell hooks, including her take on Beyoncé’s album “Lemonade”, and gives her pop culture recommendation for some Japanese anime, much to Alexis’ delight!Guest: Akwugo EmejuluHosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu TruongExecutive Producer: Alice BlochGuest Producer: Chris GarringtonSound Engineer: David CracklesMusic: Joe GardnerArtwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesRosie, Alexis and Akwugo recommendedThe works of psychologist Rollo May and poet Toi DerricotteThe anime TV series Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and Fullmetal Alchemist: BrotherhoodBy Akwugo EmejuluFugitive FeminismTo Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (co-edited with Francesca Sobande)Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain (co-authored with Leah Bassel)The Black Feminism Remix Lab: on Black feminist joy, ambivalence and futures (co-authored with Francesca Sobande) Refusing politics as usual: mapping women of colour’s radical praxis in London and Amsterdam (co-authored with Inez van der Scheer)The politics of exhaustion (co-authored with Leah Bassel)From The Sociological ReviewThe lonely activist: On being haunted – Akwugo Emejulu, Leah BasselDissonant intimacies: Coloniality and the failures of South–South collaboration – Srila RoyFurther resources“Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center” – bell hooks“Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions” – Eduardo Bonilla-Silva“The (Un)Managed Heart: Racial Contours of Emotion Work in Gendered Occupations” – Adia Harvey Wingfield“Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure” – Arlie Russell HochschildSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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• 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 between voice and power and how can we amplify those voices that we can’t hear?In this special episode recorded at The Sociological Review Undisciplining II conference, Michaela Benson is joined by Claire Alexander (Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester), Dan McCulloch (Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy at The Open University) and Belinda Scarlett (Library Manager at the Working Class Movement Library) to talk about empowerment, representation and impact, under a common theme: VOICEGuests: Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch, Belinda ScarlettHost: Michaela BensonExecutive Producer: Alice BlochGuest Producer: Emma HoultonSound Engineer: David CracklesMusic: Joe GardnerArtwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Claire Alexander Our Migration StoryThe Art of Being Black: The Creation of Black British Youth IdentitiesStuart Hall and ‘Race’By Dan McCullochCritical Reflections on Participatory Visual Methods and VoiceWhy Deaf Prisoners Have Been in a State of Lockdown Since Well Before COVID-19Homelessness and Mortality: an Extraordinary or Unextraordinary Phenomenon? (co-authored with Vickie Cooper)By Belinda ScarlettWorking Class Movement LibraryBig Flame ProjectFrom The Sociological ReviewAccent and the Manifestation of Spatialised Class Structure – Michael Donnelly, Sol Gamsu, Alex BarattaYouth Voices in Post-English Riots Tottenham: The Role of Reflexivity in Negotiating Negative Representations – Julius ElsterFurther resources“Sidewalk” – Mitchell DuneierBlack British Voices – report of project led by Kenny MonroseValuing Voices in the Digital Age – Sharath Srinivasan“Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism” – Nick CouldryAt Home and Not at Home: Stuart Hall in conversation with Les Back; also available for listeningSupport our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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• 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 more serious side of the term – that of paperwork documenting human rights abuse – as well as a living, breathing archive and the analogue spreadsheet.Author of “Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting Atrocity”, Oriana talks about her substantial research in human rights archives documenting the atrocities that took place during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. She also talks us through “technologies of memory” and how archives have allowed the living to connect with the dead.Plus: Oriana introduces us to the works of Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida around performativity and gives her pop culture recommendation for the 16-part TV series “Una historia necesaria”.Guest: Oriana BernasconiHosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu TruongExecutive Producer: Alice BlochGuest Producer: Emma HoultonSound Engineer: David CracklesMusic: Joe GardnerArtwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesRosie, Alexis and Oriana recommendedWINHANGANHA – film by Jazz MoneyInside/Out: A Prison Memoir – theatre production by Patrick KeatingUna Historia Necesaria – TV series by Hernán CaffieroBy Oriana BernasconiResistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting AtrocityPolitical Technologies of Memory: Uses and Appropriations of Artefacts that Register and Denounce State Violence (co-authored with Elizabeth Lira and Marcela Ruiz)Archives of Violence: Case studies from South America (co-authored with Vikki Bell, Jaime Hernández-García and Cecilia Sosa)From The Sociological ReviewThe aesthetics of memory: Ruins, visibility and witnessing – Margarita PalaciosThe digital writing of human rights narratives: Failure, recognition, and the unruly inscriptions of database infrastructures – Josh BowsherFurther resourcesthe publications of the Tecnologías Políticas de la Memoria project“Documenting Dictatorship: Writing and Resistance in Chile's Vicaría de la Solidaridad” – Vikki Bell“Documentality: Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces” – Maurizio Ferraris“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” – Judith ButlerRead more about the concept of Speeach Acts, as well as the work of Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida.Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

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