Show Notes
In party conference season, we look at what bonds party members and what it means to create a new network with its own shared beliefs and rituals. What light can the big thinkers from the worlds of anthropology and sociology shed? From political tribes to criminal gangs, from social media to social class - how do shared beliefs, rituals, rules and values bond us together - and pull us apart? Anne McElvoy is joined by Kit Davis, emeritus professor of anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; Lynsey Hanley writer and author of Estates and Respectable: The Experience of Class; Adele Walton, Journalist and author of Logging Off; Alistair Fraser, professor of criminology at Glasgow University; assistant editor of The Spectator and political journalist and Isabel Hardman; and, Rebecca Earle, Professor of History and Chair of the British Academy Book Prize Shortlist for the British Academy Book Prize announced on October 22nd: The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years by Sunil Amrith The Baton and The Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin by Lucy Ash The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women's Health by Sophie Harman Sound Tracks: Uncovering Our Musical Past by Graham Lawson Producer: Ruth Watts
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What is left unsaid and who is missing from historical archives? Reading against the grain is a way of thinking about these questions and in the week when Woman's Hour marks 80 years of broadcasting, Radio 4's Friday night round table discussion programme about ideas traces the way thinking about representation has changed through the decades. Matthew Sweet is joined by: Sally Alexander, an activist with the Women's Liberation Movement and founding editor of the History Workshop Journal, where ideas like reading against the grain were developed and put to use; Suzannah Lipscomb, whose book The Voices of Nîmes uses overlooked sources to reconstruct the lives of women in Early Modern France; Adjoa Osei researches women singers and performers who made their names in Paris and on stage in the 1930s including Josephine Baker; the Afro-Brazilian erotic acrobatic dancer, Miss Bartira; the Malian performer Melka Soudani; the British Tiller Girls; the Afro-Guadeloupean dancer and muse of Man Ray, Adrienne Fideline and others; Hetta Howes is the author of Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women; Sophie Oliver's book What The Dresses Know: A Women's History Of Modernism Told Through Clothes will be published in November Producer: Luke Mulhall
He renounced his fortune and lived amongst animals so does the example of St Francis help us think about issues like the wealth gap and our relationship with the environment and the natural world. October 4th is his feast day and this year the Catholic church is marking the 800th anniversary of his death. For Radio 4's Friday night roundtable discussion programme about ideas past and present Anne McElvoy is joined by: Peter Stanford is an author of articles and books on religion including about pilgrimage, angels, 50 religious ideas you really need to know and most recently Gaudí: God’s Architect. New Generation Thinker Dr Jakub Kowalewski, a Senior Research Fellow at St Mary's University Twickenham, author of A Philosophy of Climate Apocalypticism. He is working on the Guardians of Creation Project investigating paths to sustainable and ecologically sensitive change in the Catholic Church. Carmody Grey, is professor of Integral Ecology at the Laudato Si’ Institute at Radboud University. She also appears as a panelist on some episodes of Radio 4's Moral Maze. Rupert Read is Emeritus Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project. Daniel Susskind is Professor of Business at Gresham College, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and the author of What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI Producer: Ruth Watts
What is the role of intellectuals in public life? Matthew Sweet hosts Radio 4's Friday night round table discussion programme about ideas. His guests are: Emile Chabal, author of a new biography about Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm; Sophie Scott Brown, who’s researching BBC TV programme The Brains Trust, in which historians, philosophers and others answered questions sent in by the audience; critic and columnist Muriel Zagha; former editor of Prospect magazine David Goodhart; and curator and critic Pierre d'Alancaisez. Producer: Luke Mulhall
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