The Sociology of Everything Podcast

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss launch season 5 of their podcast by examining a trailblazing feminist text in classical sociology, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics . By centring gender in her social analysis, Gilman not only observes but critiques how women are forced to be economically dependent on men, on account of their largely being confined to the domestic sphe...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss introduce listeners to a noteworthy work in early classical sociology that often gets oversimplified for what it argues and observes about a key aspect of the process of modernisation. Georg Simmel’s noted essay on The Metropolis and Mental Life , originally published in 1903, provides varied insights about what effect living in an urban/metropolitan env...

In the second part of their series on Gaza, Genocide, and Social Theory, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss welcome Ernesto Verdeja onto their podcast to talk around an article Ernesto has written in the Journal of Genocide Research , titled ‘ The Gaza Genocide in Five Crises ’. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ernesto makes some very powerful points about why it is meaningful and apt to categorise the re...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to social theory to try to make better sense of the tremendous loss of life in Gaza since October 2023. They appeal to an article written by Bradley Campbell, titled ‘Genocide and Social Control’, which was published in 2009 in Sociological Theory.  If indeed developments in Gaza constitute a genocide, as bodies like the International Association of...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss celebrate their podcast reaching a quarter million downloads by spotlighting a work that has significantly developed the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS): Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman ’s influential introductory chapter in their anthology on The Social Shaping of Technology , first published in 1985, and later updated in 1999. This text...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss take the elevator to the severed floor of where they work so that their innies can talk about the sociological aspects of a television show they both really like, Apple TV+'s Severance. Partly drawing from a chapter written by Palmer and Schueths in the edited volume, Reintegrating Severance , Eric and Louis explore how ideas found in classical soci...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss spotlight the sociological concept of medicalization and Peter Conrad’s influential understanding of this idea, as captured in Conrad’s chapter in Medical Sociology on the Move . Eric and Louis’s coverage of Conrad’s account of medicalization perhaps unsurprisingly leads them to talk about some pretty weird topics. These include Tucker Carlson’s interest...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss launch the fourth season of their podcast by examining a concept that sociologists continue to engage with to produce insightful understandings of how social life is gendered. They use Connell and Messerschmidt's article in Gender & Society and an earlier piece by Connell in Teachers College Record to explore how the concept of hegemonic masculi...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have a discussion about the idea of the Anthropocene, a concept that was originally developed within the field of Geology. Despite it not being formally recognised as a defined geological period in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Anthropocene continues to feature in various discussions across different fields and sectors of soci...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss shamelessly self-promote Louis’s monograph, Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders: How Digital Technologies Transform Migration and Sovereign Borders (2024), published by DeGruyter. They want listeners to know that there is a special 20% off discount code they can use, ‘DGBMOBILITIES’, if they want to purchase this work through the following link: https:/...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss mark their 10,000th follower on Spotify by giving the people what they want, which apparently means exploring a prominent sociological account of the (perplexing) appeal of Donald Trump. By focusing on an essay by the noted American sociologist, Arlie Hochschild, published in 2016 in Contemporary Sociology , they discuss how sociological analysis of emot...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss what it means to be 'authentic' in the context of tourism. By examining the work of Ning Wang , they consider how authenticity in tourism research can be conceptualised in a number of different ways. One of these ways leads Louis to recount a time Eric ruined a sightseeing excursion they once went on. Louis also explains in this episode...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss do their best to have a reflexive discussion about a highly influential sociological account of the contemporary modern world: Anthony Giddens's idea of reflexive modernization, as captured in his work, The Consequences of Modernity . Eric somehow manages to use his bad Trump impression to promote the field of sociology, while Louis tries to keep th...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss launch the third season of their podcast by unpacking one of Karl Marx's most resonant and influential ideas in the field of sociology, his theory of estranged/alienated labour . Eric somehow manages to call Marx an 'emo' in this episode, while Louis admits that his ideal work situation is to play video games and travel a lot. Music and so...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to unpack a chapter in the Disability Studies Reader by the noted disability researcher, Tom Shakespeare . This work considers considers the  strengths and limitations of the social model of disability, which powerfully conceptualises disability as a socially constructed phenomenon.  In the second half of the episode, Eric and Louis welcome onto the...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have a discussion about Zygmunt Bauman's noted work, Wasted Lives (2003), which explores how the process of modernisation inevitably produces waste.  In discussing what it means to live in a disposable society, Eric and Louis imagine what it must have been like to have once worked in a fax machine factory. Listeners wanting to send Eric and Louis a...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss take time out of their somewhat busy schedules to talk about Hartmut Rosa's noted theory of 'social acceleration'. Rosa's (2003) article in the journal, Constellations , helps us make better sense of what it means to live in a high-speed society. Eric at one point in this episode recounts the time he gave a (hurried) presentation to B...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss explore Immanuel Wallerstein's influential and innovative approach to theorizing inequalities at a global level, which regards capitalism as a 'world-system' that is directly linked with colonialism. They also welcome onto the program a guest who you can either thank or blame for Eric having an academic career in sociology, Emeritus Profes...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss entertain the possibility that one of the previous episodes they did wasted everyone's time. They have a chat about Justin Rosenberg's polemical argument that scholars are paying too much attention to the concept of globalization. Not only is it being used in theoretically problematic ways, perhaps it actually does not say all that much. Eric a...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss examine a sociological theory that some scholars believe is vital to understanding the social implications of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the hazards posed by anthropogenic global climate change: Ulrich Beck's noted theory of 'risk society'. Eric asks Louis in this episode if 'danger' is his middle name and Louis thinks th...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss how biometric technologies and cultures are transforming how borders are constituted and being experienced in the contemporary era. The text their discussion revolves around is Louise Amoore's (2006) article in Political Geography , titled, ' Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror '. Eric and Louis talk at var...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss pay yet another visit to their dear friend, Emile Durkheim. They have a chat about his noted work, the Division of Labour in Society , which advances thought-provoking ideas of how social order is maintained in the modern world.  Eric laments something about this episode. He wishes he could have slipped in the line, 'if you can't beet them, joi...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss how some sociologists have come to theorize the phenomenon of globalization. They do so by examining what’s come to be known as the ‘Great Globalization Debate’, as described by David Held et al.’s highly influential work, Global Transformations . Eric and Louis believe fans of the cult television show, the Sopranos, will especially enjoy this ep...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to unpack David Beer's article in New Media & Society , titled, ' Power through the Algorithm '. Beer's work theorizes how algorithmically driven media technologies affect our experience of social life and how power might be expressed in distinctive ways in the contemporary era. At one point in this episode, Louis demonstrate...

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss explore sociological understandings of race by examining Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer's article on 'What is Racial Domination? ' in the Du Bois Review . Desmond and Emirbayer articulate how race structures and affects people’s experience and they theorize how race informs power relations. To explain a particular way sociologists h...