Luuc Brans

/4 🎓 This is the final episode before summer. For me, it marks the end of a relentless academic year of mostly teaching - the purest form of public sociology. This also wraps up my first decade of teaching. More reflections on this milestone and what changed for better and worse to follow later!💫

/3 🙏With thanks to our stellar guests, our support from the @aissr.bsky.social ‬and @erc.europa.eu funded BINQ project (Grant No. 101052649). Shout out as well as to co-editors Kobe de Keere and Sanne Pieters and our audio wizard Geert Veuskens.

Culture & Inequality Podcast How does culture feed into inequality? And the other way around? In Culture and Inequality, cultural sociologists from universities across the world explore these topics in-depth from various perspect...

/2🎙️✨ Great as summer travel listen or teaching companion for any MA seminar on the politics of meat, climate polarization, or the cultural sociology of the climate crisis! More platforms linked below.

You can find more about Happy Meat here (bit.ly/4527yKl) and Eco-Types here (bit.ly/40TStbf)

From Happy Meat to Eco-Types: The Cultural Politics of the Climate Crisis Culture & Inequality Podcast · Episode

🎧🌿 Our latest episode of the Culture and Inequality Podcast on the Cultural Politics of the Climate Crisis just dropped!

🥩 🐄 I talk with the great Josée Johnston, Emily Huddart, and Shyon Baumann about their and @merinoleschuk.bsky.social just-published book Happy Meat and Emily’s book Eco-Types!

Open vacancy for a Professorship in British Cultural Studies at TU Dortmund👀

tudberufung.hr4you.org/job/view/707...

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy.
Details found here👇

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

The Sound of Elites: How Elites Navigate a Meritocratic and Anti-Elite World Culture & Inequality Podcast · Episode

How do elites navigate a world with meritocratic expectations and calls for diversity? I had the absolute privilege to talk to both Kristina Kolbe and @aaronreeves.bsky.social about their new books that address these very questions! Listen to the podcast here:
open.spotify.com/episode/1t5V...

Green Against Greed: Negating Economic Capital Through Ecological Distinction Pro-environmental attitudes are more prevalent among the affluent and educated, both across and within societies. However, the underpinnings of this pattern remain debated. Some scholars view environ...

So: environmentalism isn’t just an expression of privilege. It’s also a way of opposing a different kind of privilege.

Read more here onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🌱📊

✨Abstract below. Looking forward to keep on working with colleagues at @kuleuvenuniversity.bsky.social and beyond. Grateful to those who kindly gave advice when writing this grant @giselinde.bsky.social @mlamont.bsky.social @dekkermischa.bsky.social Michiel Stapper @yoshaw.bsky.social & others 🙏

🎉Very happy I'm awarded a 3-year Postdoctoral Fellowship @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social. My project uncovers the cultural roots of climate polarization by studying how an 'oatmilk elite' of well-meaning climate advocates in 🇧🇪🇮🇹🇸🇪 fashion like eco-influencers may exclude & moralise people unlike them...🌿

'Wandeling' is ook zeer eufemistisch van de Standaard hier. Toen ze uit de halte op St Cat kwamen waren ze al voelbaar op jacht. En let op: VRT e.d. bestempelen dit niet zelf als racistisch, hoe overduidelijk het motief ook is, laat dat liever over aan lokale media (bruzz) en politici. Typisch.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The World Food Program says its food stocks in Gaza have run out under Israel's nearly 8-week-old blockade.

Queer in a housing crisis: how nonbinary and genderqueer young adults navigate housing precarity As many cities experience housing crises, those of minority identity within these cities are more vulnerable to housing exclusion and discrimination. This article explores how nonbinary and genderq...

New open access paper in Social & Cultural Geography!

Meghan Flood and I study how nonbinary and genderqueer young adults experience and navigate housing precarity in Amsterdam.

Very happy this is out. A thread sharing some key take-aways:

(1/n)
>>>
doi.org/10.1080/1464...

Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN Workers on a mission to help colleagues were buried in mass grave in southern Gaza, says humanitarian office

Er is een directe lijn te trekken van de minister die weigert vrijwilligers die vluchtelingen helpen te belonen met een lintje, naar de totale morele apathie bij de zoveelste oorlogsmisdaad van Israël. Het is zowel wrang als onmenselijk dat het eerste nieuws in Den Haag meer opschudding veroorzaakt.

Browse Shein’s new collection: lobbyists with ties to Trump, Macron and Starmer Shein’s Chinese owners have been trying to take the ultra fast fashion company public since late 2023, without success. So the retailer is enlisting lobbyists with contacts at the highest levels of po...

Another concerning expose from @yaravanheugten.bsky.social about SHEIN's lobbying network, with (very) close contacts in the White House, the Elysee, and 10 and 11 Downing Street...

Eppo Bruins wil in de voorhoede blijven van landen waar wetenschappers voor kiezen.

Daarom (checks notes):
- heftige bezuinigingen
- de-internationalisering (ten koste van studenten uit NL)
- morele steun voor beurzen voor wetenschappers VS, te betalen via bezuinigingen op andere onderzoeksbeurzen

Ik zag ook al een copilot ding verschijnen in outlook. En zelfs de zoekmachine van de KU Leuven bibliotheken wil nu een AI integreren. There's no escape...

Afl 201: Mode & de klimaatcrisis | Onder Mediadoctoren

De Duitse socioloog Werner Sombart noemde mode al in 1902 ‘het lievelingskind van het kapitalisme’. Dat staat op gespannen voet met de klimaatcrisis. We spraken met socioloog @luuc.bsky.social over zijn proefschrift naar mode en ideologie ondermediadoctoren.nl/afl-201-mode...

Freedom: An Unruly History Deze maand publiceert Harvard University Press het nieuwe boek van Annelien de Dijn: 'Freedom: An Unruly History'.

Bezos' statement equates freedom with personal liberties and free markets. That is seriously reductive and biased. Read the work by @adedijn.bsky.social on this topic: www.uu.nl/publicatie/f...

Seen this? Quite elegant and less reductive (but also somewhat less seductive...)

bsky.app/profile/camp...

Latest publication, together with Naïké Garny, exploring intersectional understandings of resistance with the Sisters' House 👇🏻

Maps like these are a seductive but also somewhat reductive reading of the result, and one that plays into western German stereotypes of the East and the Ossis. See also @benstanley.eu 's thread below bsky.app/profile/bens...

The one thing I really wanted to say on live TV tonight: If politicians want to be “muscular”, they should go to the gym. No one needs muscles in politics, it’s not a boxing ring and it should not become one. What one needs is intelligence, strategic thinking & an ability to collaborate.

Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn Exclusive: Analysis by the Guardian shows a third of major arts leaders were educated privately

Important that the collapse of the welfare state gets a mention in this - as the article says, back in the day there was more state support that gave artists breathing room to create.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

'They attack disabled, migrants, travellers, homeless - next they attack you"
Spotted in Liverpool, UK

Grabstein von Franz von Papen liegt vor der CDU-Parteizentrale in Berlin.

Grabstein von Franz von Papen liegt vor der CDU-Parteizentrale in Berlin.

Grabstein von Franz von Papen liegt vor der CDU-Parteizentrale in Berlin.

Polizei versucht den Grabstein zu heben.

Wir haben den echten Grabstein von Franz von Papen vor die CDU-Parteizentrale gebracht. Papen wollte mit den Konservativen über seine Erfahrungen sprechen, Faschisten einzubinden in der Hoffnung, sie dadurch klein zu kriegen. Spoiler: Ein Holocaust, ein Weltkrieg und 55 Millionen Tote.

This is very tragic news, amid all the gloom. Burawoy was an inspiration to many, including myself. I’ll never forget his great opening speech in Porto at
ESA last summer, in which he compared the role
of labour and capital in Apartheid in Palestine and SAfrica. A great sociologist has passed 😢

I appreciate all the people recommending the Shock Doctrine. I've been thinking about what makes Trump's use of these tactics a little different.

In recent decades, shock tactics were used mainly to rapidly impose neoliberal economic policies. But what Trump is doing goes way beyond that.

a 🧵

De AfD overlegt in het geheim met neonazi’s over het ‘zuiveren’ van Duitsland van ‘vreemde smetten’, en Elon Musk prijst hen als de toekomst van het land. Toch zijn er nog steeds mensen die twijfelen of zijn gebaar een Hitlergroet was.

‘De onbetwiste misdaden van Israël, en de steun die westerse staten bieden, ondermijnen de fundamenten van de rechtsorde’

Open brief van Belgische academici en studenten
"De situatie in Gaza toont aan dat het uitblijven van actie tegen deze juridisch vastgestelde schendingen het onrecht niet alleen verlengt, maar ook de internationale rechtsorde zelf dreigt uit te hollen."
www.demorgen.be/meningen/de-...