**Note: this episode was recorded in late 2025, prior to the extremely violent suppression of protests in Iran, and prior to the strikes by the US and Israel that began in late February 2026**

“Being seen” has become a meme, pointing to the satisfaction felt at one’s true self being understood by another. But can we think more critically? Self-described “accidental” Professor of anthropology and ex-taxi driver Shahram Khosravi joins Uncommon Sense to discuss visibility, power, knowledge and the violence of unseeing.

Shahram describes how growing up in Iran’s Bakhtiari culture shaped his own way of seeing and taught him, early on, how some forms of knowing get legitimised while others are dismissed - including in academia, where asking one question obscures the possibility of another. Here, he calls out the topsy turvy optics by which certain people - delivery workers, taxi drivers - go “actively unseen”, while others are loaded with value, visibility and esteem. Plus, he calls out those who ask “where are you from?” of the migrantised person. This “question”, he suggests, is often really a statement of non-recognition.

An urgent conversation, with reflection on Édouard Glissant, George Orwell and Hannah Arendt. It is imperative, Shahram shows, that in what - via Arendt - he identifies as our present “dark times”, we challenge active “unseeing” and speak “clearly…with courage”.

Guest: Shahram Khosravi; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

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Episode Resources

By Shahram Khosravi

• How to Do Migration Studies in Dark Times
• "Bordered Imagination" in ‘Infrastructural Love: Caring for Our Architectural Support Systems’ (2022) eds: S. Karami, Adr. Carbonell, H. Frichot, H. Frykholm
• Doing migration studies with an accent
• “The Archive of Stolen Breaths” in 'Breathe – Critical Research into the Inequalities of Life' (2023)
• The Holes
• 'Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran' (2017), University of Pennsylvania Press
• 'Young and Defiant in Tehran' (2008), University of Pennsylvania Press
• De Verbranders podcast, Episode 30: “Outside the Law”

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Listen to Rhoda Reddock on Margins, Angelique Nixon on Desire, Nandita Sharma on Natives
• Why Stigma?

Further resources

• Miranda Fricker "Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing" (2007)
• Judith Butler "Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?" (2016)
• Hannah Arendt "Men in Dark Times" (1968)
• "For Opacity" in Édouard Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’, transl. Betsy Wing (1997/1990)

Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org

Why do we keep gifts that we don’t want, or can’t currently use? What role do these play in our relationships with others, with time, and perhaps even our future selves? Sophie Woodward discusses the richly creative research project that took her into strangers’ homes, drawers and cupboards, and led her to consider the gifts that lie “dormant” in our homes. Such items might appear “meaningless” or inactive, Sophie shows, but are far from dead or unimportant: “stuff” matters.

Via examples of gifts ranging from inconveniently big plastic toys to alcohol repeatedly gifted by relatives, Sophie explains how, beyond theories of gifts from thinkers like Marcel Mauss on the function of exchange, or Theodor Adorno on the perfect gift, it’s worth a deeper focus on the recipient – people, she observes, have an obligation not just to receive gifts but also to keep them, at least for a certain amount of time.

Plus, we ask: is it ok for recipients to pre-empt and refuse gifts before they’re given, or is gifting the prerogative of the giver? What can we do to reduce material overwhelm? We also celebrate Jane Bennett, who considers the powers of things, beyond the meanings we attribute to them.

A thoughtful and exploratory conversation, crucial in a time of climate emergency, waste, and cost-of-living crises.

Guest: Sophie Woodward; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

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Episode Resources

By Sophie Woodward

• Dormant Gifts: Animating the Imagined and Narrated Pasts and Futures of Gifts (2025)
• Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday (2025)
• Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities (2021)
• Object interviews, material imaginings and ‘unsettling’ methods: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding materials and material culture (2015)
• Sophie’s profile at The University of Manchester and the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• New Materialism – Nick J. Fox (2020)
• Shrinking domesticity – Mel Nowicki, Tim White, Ella Harris (2022)
• Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!

Further resources

• “The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies” – Marcel Mauss
• The Opposite of Forgetfulness: Adorno on Gift-Giving – from Stuart Jeffries’ “Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School”
• “Vibrant Matter: A Political

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Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org

“What is the effect of receiving something from someone who is not your biological kin?” Anthropologist Delwar Hussain introduces his new project on Queer Inheritance, born when a friend welcomed Delwar and his partner to enjoy items belonging to her late uncle – a man they had never met. This led Delwar to wonder: how are queer people today preparing for their deaths? How, with this in mind, can we think of “inheritance”? And what does the “good death”, of which inheritance is a key part, mean to queer people?

While the word “inheritance” often leads us to thoughts of taxation and legislation, class and inequality, finance and family feuds, this episode heads in a different direction. Reflecting on both physical items, but also those things that remain intangible and untaxable – wisdom, life stories, mentorship, communion – this conversation unites two classic areas of anthropological thought: kinship and the gift. Inheritance, Delwar reminds us – particularly at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis, for example, and when homosexuality was illegal in countries like the UK – can be a radical and communicative act. At other times, it reproduces dominant norms, among them heteronormativity and the privileging of biological kin. And then there’s disinheritance, too…

A fascinating and exploratory conversation about family, choice, meaning and death. Plus: the enduring popularity of Kath Weston’s “Families We Choose”.

Guest: Delwar Hussain; Hosts: George Kalivis, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

Find more about Uncommon Sense

Episode Resources

By Delwar Hussain

• ‘Just who do I leave my worldly possessions to, darling?’: A Study of Queer Inheritance – research project funded by a Wellcome Accelerator Award
• Boundaries Undermined: The Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh/India Border (2013)
• Delwar’s profile at The University of Edinburgh

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Uncommon Sense episodes: Love & Reproduction, with Alva Gotby (2025); Performance, with Kareem Khubchandani (2023); Desire, with Angelique Nixon (2025)
• Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!

Further resources

• “Families We Choose” – Kath Weston
• “The Gift” – Marcel Mauss
• “Forgetting Family” – Jack Halberstam, in “A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies”
• “How to Survive a Plague” – David France
• “Abolish the Family” – Sophie Lewis
• “Anthropology and Inheritance” – Current Anthropology special issue featuring the pieces by João Biehl, Adam T. Smith and Tim Ingold, mentioned by Delwar

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Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense

Interested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org