State Of The Theory

This is Episode 42 of the State of the Theory Podcast. Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably. In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call. This week, we continue last week’s discussion about hierarchies within Higher Education by focusing on the norms and conventions of writing and reading recommendation letters – for student places, jobs, grant applications and peer-review. How does this help to continue the kind of structural inequalities that characterize the world of