Afleveringen
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In this episode, Xiang Biao talks to Olaf Zenker, a leading anthropologist whose work spans Southern Africa, Germany, and Northern Ireland. Together, they explore one of the most urgent questions of our time: What happens when people lose faith in liberalism â not because they reject its ideals, but because they feel it has failed them?
This post-liberal fatigue is a deep, relational exhaustion with systems that promised justice, equality, and democracy, but delivered only delay, disillusionment, and fragmentation.
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In this episode, Xiang Biao speaks with Ferda Nur Demirci about her research on the indebtedness of miners in Soma, Turkey. Her findings reveal something that may seem contradictory to some: in a world of exploitation, debt is not merely a burden; rather, it can become a moral shield.
Ferda's research doesn't just tell a story about poverty or financial hardship. It explores how people, in the face of systemic precariousness, transform debt into self-discipline, solidarity, and even dignity.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In this episode, Biao Xiang interviews two extraordinary thinkers: Don Kalb, whose new book "Value and Worthlessness" has been hailed as a landmark in Marxist anthropology, and Xenia Cherkaev, a scholar whose work bridges Eastern European social history with contemporary existential questions.
Together, they reimagine ethnographic research by centering hidden histories, relational use values, and the emotional weight of being âworthlessâ in a world obsessed with exchange and performance. They further explore how Post-Socialism reveals the limits of the left and why the right isnât just âXenophobiaâ, but a response to abandonment.
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In this episode, Biao Xiang and researcher Siqi Tu speak about her ethnographic work on transnational education. Specifically, the phenomenon of affluent Chinese families sending their children to American private high schools at a young age.
What begins as a study of global mobility and elite education quickly unfolds into a profound meditation on the emotional, psychological, and existential costs of living a life meticulously engineered for success.
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In this episode, Xiang Biao, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, interviews Insa Koch, Professor of British Culture at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her work focuses on corruption, power, and political ontology, which challenge the very foundations of the Common Concerns approach. This is a critical conversation. Can we truly speak to people with these new concepts, or are we merely reinforcing the very systems we claim to criticize?
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In this episode, Xiang Biao, Andrew Haxby, and Xenia Cherkaev examine "suspicion" as a Common Concern in Nepal's land market, where people are deeply suspicious of brokers who facilitate land transactions, even though these brokers operate "legitimately."
The conversation reveals how Kathmandu's land market has become a 30-year investment bubble that "never pops," fueled by remittances and complex family land ownership structures. Land prices have outpaced income by 4-5 times, creating a situation where land is both a family bond and a financial asset. Haxby connects Nepal's situation to other protests worldwide, framing suspicion as an emotional response to an economic system where "the money disappears" and everyone is skimming.
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In this episode, Xiang Biao sits down with Zhipeng Duan, a design researcher-turned-anthropologist, to dismantle the idea that powerlessness is a lack of power. Isn't it rather a blindness to the worldâs hidden possibilities?
This episode reveals how "confrontation" can transform powerlessness into life force and how it rewires your relationship with the world.
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In this episode of our Common Concerns podcast, Xiang Biao welcomes Dr. Alf Gerlach, senior psychoanalyst and long-time contributor to the dialogue between psychoanalysis and social critique. Drawing on his decades of work in Germany and China, Alf reflects on the intersections of individual psychology and collective social conditions â particularly through the lens of the âsocial unconscious.â He shares how his early engagement with the Frankfurt School, especially the fusion of psychoanalysis and critical theory, shaped his approach to understanding both personal and societal struggles.
Alf discusses the differences and surprising parallels between psychoanalytic practice and the common concerns approach. While psychoanalysis focuses on helping individuals uncover repressed experiences and internal conflicts, the common concerns method seeks to clarify and structure the often unarticulated worries people carry in their everyday lives. He and Biao Xiang reflect on how institutionalization in Germany has, at times, limited the public role of psychoanalysts, contrasting this with the more engaged intellectual traditions in France and the Global South. The conversation reveals how both fields, though different in method, can deepen our understanding of power, identity, and social change.
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In the first episode of the âCommon Concernâ podcast, Siqi Tu and Sohail Jagat speak with Xiang Biao, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Looking back on his experiences and academic career in China and the United Kingdom, he traces the origins of his âCommon Concernâ approach.
The âCommon Concernsâ approach is an exercise in which researchers reflect together with their interlocutors. It is therefore not merely a research task carried out one-sidedly by the researchers. It is an analytical strategy designed to facilitate a type of research in which researchers can ultimately return to their conversation partners to report what they have discovered, what they think, what concepts emerge from this, or what further questions arise.
