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Alex Hoppe

Sociologist and Kohli Fellow/Postdoctoral Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center studying the fashion industry and its global value chains.

Oct 7, 2026

4:22
But even though you were a little bit, uh, I don't know, philosophical about it, it seems like you still definitely wanted it.
4:29
Yeah, I...
4:29
Until-- So the, the thing that, the kind of the trigger for sociology in particular was when, so when I was 16, I did a trip to Nicaragua, so I was there for a month, um, just to do like a, uh, international exchange.
4:47
And there I had a completely different experience of what it, you know, what I had taken for granted the whole time.
4:55
Um, I saw a lot of poverty, uh, and I saw just a very different set of living conditions, a very different set of kind of daily concerns that had never been on my radar before then.
5:07
Um, I had a fairly privileged upbringing, and looking at that, it, it kind of shocked me a bit.
5:15
And so I came back and I, I remember typing into Wikipedia like difference between socialism and communism, just as something that had never been on my radar before.

10 MINS LATER

15:19
Can you draw the line between those two things? They, they seem a bit separate to me on first glance.

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