25 years, or 303 months ago, Tony Pulis was poached from us by Portsmouth. That was the last time a Bristol City manager was taken by another team, rather than resigned or sacked. One Kiss by Dua Lipa hadn't even been released yet.... Liam Manning is the man to break that duck, well, kinda. We host an X Spaces, with lots of contributors, reacting t…

This week the gang piles in the corner booth and stays through shift change to unpack the highs and lows of the Greatest Weekend in Motorsports. We've got plenty of dick stepping, foot touching, fans being fed fruit by hand, child bartenders, first responders taking lunch breaks, Prime knocking it out of the park, FOX rediscovering old habits, Harr…

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman’s direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman’s biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Im…

In Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025), anthropologist Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling illuminates the untold stories of Russia’s occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing the traumas of colonization, foreign occupation, and population displacement. Drawing upon extensive …

Camilla Annerfeldt joins to discuss Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome (Bloomsbury, 2025). This is the first book-length exploration of the clothes worn in early modern Rome and provides novel insights into the city of Rome during one of its most fascinating periods. It also challenges the notion – well-established in dress historical resea…

The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on diary entries and interviews from 2000 to 2023, the Dutch author--an anthropologist and peace activist--chronicles the spontaneous reactions of his Palestinian children and wife navigating the challen…

In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo renowned for the fandom and consumption of anime, manga, and games. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in josō and dansō cafe-and-bars, establishments wher…

This week the gang pushes a couple of two tops together to discuss a huge weekend of racing in North Wilkesboro, Indianapolis, and all points in between, short track racing putting its worst foot forward on national television, Ryan Preece vs. the choose cone, Joey Logano crying, bitching, and moaning, Roger Penske cheating at his own race, our dis…

Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia: Transnational Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Ofstehage investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world. Seeking adventure and profit, the transplanted f…

In Transformismo, M. Myrta Leslie Santana draws on years of embedded research within Cuban trans/queer communities to analyze how transformistas, or drag performers, understand their roles in the social transformation of the island. Once banned and censored in Cuba, transformismo, or drag performance, is now state-sponsored events. Transformismo su…

In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in China. Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics (Leiden UP, 2024) is a qualitative study exploring manifestations of the massive revival …

Bristol City's most successful season in 17 years! We discuss everything about it here. Sorry the audio quality isn't the best on this one. See you in August!

This week the gang occupies a six top over by the bathrooms to try and simulate Beer Hill as much as possible to discuss Rob and friends' big weekend at the legendary Williams Grove Speedway, the middle finger heard 'round the world, a whole lot of Kyle Busch content, Talladega's newest resident, drunk teenagers climbing fences, making friends with…

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explor…

Pete, Fevs and Paul discuss a bit of a lesson in the first Play-Off Semi-Final vs Sheffield United

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-rig…

This week, the gang orders salads for a change and discusses an entertaining weekend of NASCAR racing in the Lone Star State, the FOX broadcast making a face turn, Chipper Jones burying the hatchet with Joey Logano, F1 dominating the toy game, a rainy weekend in the Septic Tank, and much more. Also, Truelove goes to the hospital, Brien unexpectedly…

Built on the shifting grounds of post-Yugoslav transformation, Staging the Promises examines how the residents of Bor — a Serbian copper-mining town marked by both socialist prosperity and post-socialist decline — became spectators to the staged enactments of promised futures. Deana Jovanović traces how local authorities and the copper-processing c…

Pete, Stan, Dave and Harry discuss being a Play-Off team once again, the Preston game, and the upcoming Sheffield United semi.

Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Dr. Ipek A. Celik Rappas accounts the rising demand for original and affordable locations for screen projects due to the growth of streaming platforms. As a result, screen professionals are repeatedly t…

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of elections and an overarching mission of serving the will and well-being of a country's citizens. But how do we hold politicians accountable for such a mission? How are we to understand the efficacy of the pol…

Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? Why are there so many different global standards in mining? Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations (Manchester UP, 2024) develop…

Pete, Dave, Fevs and Paul discuss final day nerves and excitement. They're joined by James from S82 to discuss the amazing work they've done this season, and plans for the atmosphere vs Preston. One more to go!

In Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars (Yale University Press, 2025), Tim Grady recounts here a detailed history of the fate of combatants who died on enemy soil in England and Germany in World Wars I and II. The books draws on a rich archive of personal family experiences, and describes the often touching…

This week, the gang piles into the corner booth with some Presidente Margaritas that we snuck in to discuss Truelove's four night stand in Talladega, Highlights include unfortunate sunburns, how to buy boiled peanuts, how not to buy Zyns, a trip to a cool museum, human chains, the life cycle of the Boulevard, not a whole lot of racing, and a whole …

Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city a…

In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). This volume is part of the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds series. Solidarity economies, characterized by di…

After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in the early 2000s, Chinese policymakers came to see waste management as…

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the w…

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of…

This week the gang watches Truelove eat a bowl of cereal in the corner booth and discusses NASCAR's long awaited return to The Rock, Michael Waltrip rubbing on Carson Hocevar in an empty television studio, the case for Randy Lajoie to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, Rob's big weekend of DARFing around greater New England, a literal dogpile of em…

Pete, Paul and Dave discuss a fourth straight 2-1 home win, this time against Sunderland. Play-Off confirmation is within touching distance!

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In Th…

On the podcast today I am joined by Christof Lammer, a social anthropologist based at the University of Klagenfurt and inherit fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin. Christof is joining me to talk about his new book, Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China published in Open Access by Berghahn Books in 2024. Th…

How and why do local political processes in rural Nepal become an arena for political mythmaking? And, how do political myths obscure their own historical construction, thereby making hierarchical power structures appear inevitable? In this episode we discuss these questions with Ankita Shrestha whose ethnographic explorations into these issues for…

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press, 2024) provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social mo…

How do corporations use theater to reconcile the crises of late capitalism? In our latest interview on Ethnographic Marginalia, we speak with Dr. Sarah Saddler about her new book Performing Corporate Bodies (Routledge, 2024), where she describes how corporations have borrowed techniques from activist theater to manage their workers in India and bey…

This week the gang stays well after closing with their good friend Buddy Pulley ("On Tour" / ATYL Media) to discuss Truelove and Buddy's extended Saturday with the CARS Tour at Cordele, a whole lot of nothing at Bristol, whats left of Hulkamania coming to a late model race near you, taking yourself off the Epstein list, Rob actually getting an Edib…

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Through fieldwork in one of the “China malls” that has emerged along Johannesburg’s former mining belt, Huang identifies everyday relations of power and differen…

How do we acquire knowledge about societies? Does how we acquire social knowledge shape what we know? How conscious must we be of our own experiences as we do our research? What does feminism add to our methods and modes of research? Now in its second edition, Feminist Ethnography: Thinking through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities (Rowm…

Pete, Paul and Dan discuss an away point at QPR, results falling in our favour, and the belief coursing through everyone at the club.

Today I’m speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life (Princeton UP, 2023). A highly relevant book, Engage and Evade documents the interactions between undocumented people and the agents and institutions …

This week, an expanded version of the gang (featuring honorary cohost Kyle Ayala) gathers in the corner booth to share tales both tall and small from a big weekend in Darlington, SC. Rob met Richard Petty, Brien met Dave Marcis, Kyle lost his phone under the grandstands, and we all wish Truelove was there with us to experience it all. The gang also…