Thinking Allowed Folgen

Laurie Taylor talks to Molly Conisbee, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, about her ‘people’s’ history of mortality, beyond queens and aristocrats. From the plague pits to grave-robberies and wakes, she explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped our society. What did it mean to die well in the past, what does it mean now? Also, Chao Fang, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, talks about his study of the meaning of a good death in China & how it differs from western notions which centre the dying person’s wishes rather than family harmony.Producer: Jayne Egerton

Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, talks to Laurie Taylor about his study into the stories of the plantation goods which reveal how the American national economy was once organised by slavery. He tracks the shoes made by Massachusetts farm women that found their way to the feet of a Mississippi slave and the entrepreneurs that envisioned fortunes to be made from “planter’s hoes”. Also, Lea David, Assistant Professor in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, describes the emotional force of everyday items found at the sites of atrocities, from a shoe to a broken watch and victims’ garments. Personal property recovered from places of death including concentration camps, mass graves, and prisons have become staples of memorial museums. How do these objects take on such power, and what are the benefits and pitfalls of deploying them for political purposes? Producer: Jayne Egerton

Laurie Taylor is joined by Jennifer Chudy, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, Boston, who discusses her pioneering exploration of racial sympathy. She looks at the reasons why racial inequality in America prompts distress amongst some white people, but not others, and why that sympathy does not necessarily translate into solidarity and political action. Andrea Sangiovanni, Professor of Philosophy at King's College, London explores the nature of solidarity and how definitions have changed. Calls for solidarity are heard everywhere but what does it mean, in practice, and how is it distinct from altruism, justice and fellow-feeling? Producer: Jayne Egerton