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Véronique Altglas, "Judaizing Christianity and Christian Zionism in Northern Ireland" (Routledge, 2025)
Véronique Altglas holds a PhD from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and has served as a as a lecturer in sociology at Queen’s University Belfast since 2009. Dr. Altglas’ publications include two monographs: Le nouvel hindouisme occidental (CNRS, 2005); and From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage (Oxford University Press, 2014), for which she won the book award of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion in 2017. She is also the editor of a four-volume reader, Religion and Globalization: Critical Concepts in Social Studies (Routledge, 2010). Her In this interview, she discusses her new book, Judaizing Christianity and Christian Zionism in Northern Ireland, recently published with Routledge. This book explores the contemporary Judaization of evangelical Christianity through the ethnography of a Messianic congregation in Northern Ireland. A constellation of Messianic "congregations" have expanded worldwide over recent years, combining Jewish liturgy, symbols, and artifacts with prophecies about the End Times and the return of Jesus. Increasingly recognized as a legitimate subdivision within evangelicalism, the Messianic movement has facilitated a popularization of Jewish practices and symbolism beyond its own congregations. The author considers: What insights do these congregations offer about the deregulation of religions? Is there any logic to the combinations of Christian and Jewish sources in Messianic beliefs and practices? How can we understand this fascination with Jews and Judaism? Finally, what is the political significance of Messianic relationship with Jewish people, the state of Israel, and Christian Zionism? The book will be of particular interest to scholars of the sociology and anthropology of religion, religion and politics, and Jewish-Christian relations. Judaizing Christianity and Christian Zionism in Northern Ireland. For God, Israel and Ulster is published with Routledge Aidan Beatty is a lecturer in the history department at Carnegie Mellon University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
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Matthew Allen, "Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public dinners with rounds of toasts. British colonists raised their glasses to salute the Crown in rituals that asserted fraternal equality and political authority. Yet these ceremonies were reserved for gentlemen, leaving others – notably women and Indigenous people – on the political margins. Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025) by Dr. Matthew Allen traces the development of democratic ideas in New South Wales through the history of public drinking and temperance. As the colony transformed from a convict autocracy to a liberal democracy, Dr. Allen argues, public drinking practices shaped the character of the emerging political order. The ritual of toasting was a symbolic display of restraint – drunkenness without loss of self-control – that embodied the claim to citizenship of white male settlers. Yet the performative sobriety of the temperance movement was also democratic, a display of respectability that politicized its supporters around a rival vision of responsible citizenship. Drink was a way to police the limits of the political realm. The stigma of female drunkenness worked to exclude women from the public sphere, while perceptions of heavy drinking among Aboriginal people cast them as lacking self-control and hence unworthy of political rights. Drink and Democracy reveals that long before the introduction of the franchise, colonists in Australia imagined themselves as citizens. Yet even as democracy expanded, drink marked its limits. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
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Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has circulated in transnational entanglements, particularly between Germany and India, into the research on human variation in India, racializing the understanding of caste and ethnicity. It focuses on the legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970), an Indian anthropologist trained at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity in Berlin, Germany (1927-1930) and a prominent scientist in post-colonial India. Besides a historical analysis of Karve's adaptation of racial approaches to the study of Indian castes, the book applies material-semiotic and ethnographic lenses to examine how her work is taken up today in anthropology and population genetics. By showing how transnational and transcolonial entanglements in race science shape knowledge on human diversity in India, the book offers novel insights to discussions in anthropology, STS, and global history, including the racialization of difference, colonial legacies, and post-colonial sovereignty in science. It contributes to a better understanding of the co-constitution of politics and sciences of human diversity and it argues for a closer attention to inequalities as a way to de-link from the legacies of scientific racism. Thiago Pinto Barbosa is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. Armanc Yildiz is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
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Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts to enact the UN’s counter-trafficking protocol and assist Filipina migrants working in Japan’s sex industry, Dr. Faier draws from interviews with NGO caseworkers and government officials to demonstrate how these efforts disregard the needs and perspectives of those they are designed to help. She finds that these campaigns tend to privilege bureaucracies and institutional compliance, resulting in the compromised quality of life, repatriation, and even criminalization of human trafficking survivors. Dr. Faier expands on Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” by coining the titular “banality of good” to describe the reality of the UN’s fight against human trafficking. Detailing the protocols that have been put in place and evaluating their enactment, Dr. Faier reveals how the continued failure of humanitarian institutions to address structural inequities and colonial history ultimately reinforces the violent status quo they claim to be working to change. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
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Claire Pierson, "Women's Troubles: Gender and Feminist Politics in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland" (Manchester University Press, 2025)
How do feminist movements develop and organise in ethno-nationally divided societies? How does this challenge our understandings of contemporary fourth wave feminism? Women's Troubles: Gender and Feminist Politics in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Claire Pierson sets out to answer these questions using rich empirical data and analysis in an examination of feminist activism after the Northern Irish peace agreement. Utilising feminist frameworks and debates on movement building, policymaking, abortion rights, gender-based violence and the UN women, peace and security agenda, Dr. Pierson interrogates the opportunities and challenges in articulating a feminist voice and creating feminist spaces in the conflict transformational politics and society. Capturing the complexities of contemporary feminist movement building in a divided society, Women's Troubles contributes to ongoing analysis of contemporary global feminisms. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
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