Thinking Allowed Folgen

'Illicit' dance in India. Laurie Taylor talks to Anna Morcom, Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, about her extensive research into marginalised dancers in contemporary South Asia. From bar dancers to transgender erotic performers, she has chronicled their relationship with 'legitimate' performing arts; their struggles against stigma and the ways in which post colonial nation building has excluded these 'non elite' carriers of culture. Also, can war ever be a force for good? The historian, Ian Morris, argues that war, as well as provoking countless deaths & horrors, has also, in the very long term, allowed us to create peaceful societies.Producer: Jayne Egerton.

The rise & fall of the working class: Laurie Taylor talks to Selina Todd, social historian at St Hilda's College, Oxford, about her sweeping study of ordinary British people between 1910-2010. Rooting her analysis in first person accounts from factory workers, servants and housewives, she reveals a hidden history full of the unexpected: How many of us know that cinema audiences once shook their fists at Winston Churchill? Also, US sociologist, Yasemin Besen-Cassino, discusses her research on 'baristas', the preparers of coffee across the urban world. She finds a group of affluent young people who'll work for poor wages if they're associated with a 'cool' brand.Producer: Jayne Egerton.

The winner of Thinking Allowed's first Ethnography award, in association with the British Sociological Association.Laurie Taylor and a team of esteemed academics - Professor Beverley Skeggs, Professor Dick Hobbs, Professor Henrietta Moore and Dr Louise Westmarland - set themselves the task of finding the study that has made the most significant contribution to ethnography over the past year. In the past, ethnographic studies have cast light on hidden or misunderstood worlds, from the urban poor in 1930s Chicago to the mods and rockers in British seaside towns in the 1950s. This year they considered submissions of startling range, colour and diversity, in the process learning much about the struggles of the war wounded 'amputees' of Sierra Leone; the ties between mothers and daughters on a working class housing estate in South Wales; the hedonistic excess of young holidaymakers in Ibiza; and the dreams and desires of young women in hostess bars in Cambodia. After much passionate debate, finally the winner can be revealed.Laurie Taylor presents a programme about the winning entry which, in the judges' view, has made the most significant contribution to ethnography, the in-depth analysis of the everyday life of a culture or sub culture.Producer: Jayne Egerton.