Podcasts by New Books in Anthropology

Forbidden Fruit: Religious Fervor about Food from 2023-01-12T09:00

Contemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food. GuestsIsabel Foxen Duke, health coach Alan Levinovitz, Professor of Religious Studies a...

Forbidden Fruit: Religious Fervor about Food from 2023-01-12T09:00

Contemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food. GuestsIsabel Foxen Duke, health coach Alan Levinovitz, Professor of Religious Studies a...

On Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" from 2022-09-14T08:00

Victor Frankl was a leader in 20th century psychiatry. In 1942, Frankl was sent to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic. Frankl was already influential in the field of psychiatry by the time ...

On Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" from 2022-09-14T08:00

Victor Frankl was a leader in 20th century psychiatry. In 1942, Frankl was sent to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic. Frankl was already influential in the field of psychiatry by the time ...

Deterritorialization from 2022-05-10T08:00

Saronik talks to Shweta Krishnan, doctoral candidate in Anthropology at George Washington University. She speaks about how she uses Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of deterritorializatio...

Suzanne M. Hall, "The Migrant's Paradox: Street Livelihoods and Marginal Citizenship in Britain" (U Minnesota Press, 2021) from 2021-06-03T08:00

In this richly observed account of migrant shopkeepers in five cities in the United Kingdom, Suzanne Hall examines the brutal contradictions of sovereignty and capitalism in the formation of street...

Harriet Evans, "Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital’s Center" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing's “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar—one of the capital city's poorest nei...

Chandra Russo, "Solidarity in Practice: Moral Protest and the US Security State" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Solidarity in Practice: Moral Protest and the US Security State (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Chandra Russo explores how solidarity activists contest the practices of the US secur...

Telesphore Ngarambe, “Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law” (OSSREA, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The unprecedented crime of the 1994 Rwandan genocide demanded an unconventional legal response. After failed attempts by the international legal system to efficiently handle legal cases stemming fr...

Brad Walters, "The Greening of Saint Lucia: Economic Development and Environmental Change in the West Indies" (UWI Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Saint Lucia’s rural landscape is more forested today than at any time in at least seventy-five years (probably much longer). This change is profoundly significant given widespread efforts to achiev...

Amira Mittermaier, "Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her stunning new book, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (University of California Press, 2019), Amira Mittermaier, Associate Professor of Religion and Anthropology at the Un...

Erik W. Davis, “Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent monograph, Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia (Columbia University Press, 2015), Erik W. Davis explores funerary ritual in contemporary Cambodian Buddhism and the w...

Nathalie Peutz, "Islands of Heritage Conservation and Transformation in Yemen" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Soqotra, the largest island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, is one of the most uniquely diverse places in the world. A UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, the island is home not only to birds, rept...

Thomas S. Mullaney, “The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China” (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Chinese landscape is dramatically changing. Modernization has drastically altered Chinese infrastructure, urban zones, waterways, and even rural spaces. These changes have also affected Chinese...

Surekha Davies, “Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps, and Monsters” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You find a lot of strange things on late medieval and “Age of Discovery” era maps. Of course there are weird beasts of every sort: dragons, griffins, sea monsters, and sundry multi-headed predators...

João Costa Vargas, "The Denial of Antiblackness: Multiracial Redemption and Black Suffering" (U of Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An incisive new look at the black diaspora, examining the true roots of antiblackness and its destructive effects on all of society. Thanks to movements like Black Lives Matter, Western society's c...

Long T. Bui, "Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory (New York University Press, 2018), Long T. Bui examines the complicated relationship between the Vietnamese diasporic community and ...

Laura J. Olson and Svetlana Adonyeva, “The Worlds of Russian Village Women: Tradition, Transgression, Compromise” (U. Wisconsin Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Worlds of Russian Village Women: Tradition, Transgression, Compromise (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013) by Laura J. Olson and Svetlana Adonyeva casts a new look at the traditional represent...

Adam Rutherford, "How to Argue With a Racist" (The Experiment, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Racist pseudoscience has become so commonplace that it can be hard to spot. But its toxic effects on society are plain to see—feeding nationalism, fueling hatred, endangering lives, and corroding o...

Safet HadžiMuhamedovi?, "Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape" (Berghahn Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Set in the beautiful, sprawling Field of Gacko in southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Safet HadžiMuhamedovi?’s book Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (Berghahn Books, 2...

Claudia Malacrida, “A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Albertas Eugenic Years” (U of Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Claudia Malacrida explores the practices of the Michener Center in Red Deer, Northern Alberta, ...

Ellyn Lem, "Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As Baby Boomers reach the tipping point of aging into later life, the record numbers of seniors int the 65 and over crowd generates greater interest and in aging and its representation. Gray Matter...

Jeevan Sharma, "Crossing the Border to India: Youth, Migration, and Masculinities in Nepal" (Temple UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

People’s decisions to migrate in search of work are often discussed in terms of economic necessity, but these decisions are also shaped by a host of historical and cultural factors. In his new book...

Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, “Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine” (Brandeis UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much of the existing literature on Mandatory Palestine adheres to a dual society model which assumes that the Palestinian Arab community and the Jewish Yishuv had separate economic, social, and cul...

William G. Pooley, "Body and Tradition in 19th-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The moorlands of Gascony are often considered one of the most dramatic examples of top-down rural modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. From an area of open moors, they were transformed in on...

Scott Wallace, "The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes" (Broadway Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Journalist Scott Wallace talks about a 2002 FUNAI expedition to find the Arrow People, one of the last uncontacted tribes in the world. Wallace is a writer and photojournalist who covered the wars ...

Noah Salomon, “For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In popular discourse today, few concepts are more sensationalized and maliciously caricatured than that of the Islamic State. In his fascinating new book For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of ...

Kareem Khubchandani, "Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife" (Michigan UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020) follows queer South Asian men across borders into gay neighborhoods, nightclubs, bars, and house parties in Bangalore an...

Anne Balay, "Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this multi-layered ethnography that centers truck drivers, Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) describes both the long-...

Pamela McElwee, “Forest are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Forests are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam (University of Washington Press, 2016) begins with two related puzzles: why does Vietnam simultaneously plant and cut trees at unpr...

Amelia Moore, "Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in The Bahamas" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Despite being a minor contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, like many other small island nations, The Bahamas’s ecology and society are especially vulnerable to current and expected chang...

Jennifer Fluri and Rachel Lehr, "The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements" (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For most people, geopolitics is something that happens out there, in boardrooms and on battlefields. But critical geographers, and feminist political geographers in particular, have in recent years...

Banu Bargu, “Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Pre...

F. Henry and D. Plaza, "Carnival Is Woman: Feminism and Performance in Caribbean Mas. (UP of Mississippi, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Through a feminist perspective, Carnival Is Woman: Feminism and Performance in Caribbean Mas (University Press of Mississippi, 2019) examines the presence of women in contemporary Carnival by demon...

A. Harkins and M. McCarroll, "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (West Virginia University Press, 2019) is a retort, at turn rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow J.D. Vance’s Hillb...

Carol Upadhya, “Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is India’s burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are software engineers managed? What are their goals and as...

C. Besteman and H. Gusterson, "Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we understand computerization as a social process? Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is a timely and welcome edited volume in ...

Dia Da Costa, "Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theater" (U Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world where heritage, culture, creativity, and the capacity to imagine are themselves commodified and sold under the banner of neoliberal freedom, (how) can art be harnessed for anti-capitalis...

Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Widely known for his pioneering work in the field of settler colonial studies, Patrick Wolfe advanced the theory that settler colonialism was, “a structure, not an event.” In early 2016, Wolfe deep...

Lauren R. Kerby, "Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation’s Capital and Redeem a Christian America" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Millions of tourists visit Washington D.C. every year, vying to see its landscape, museums, and buildings and learn about seminal moments in US history. Attracting white evangelicals to the nation’...

Gökçe Günel, "Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether in space colonies or through geo-engineering, the looming disaster of climate change inspires no shortage of techno-utopian visions of human survival. Most of such hypotheses remain science...

Douglas Rogers, “The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism” (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ever since the accidental discovery of oil in Perm in 1929, the so-called “Second Baku” has been known to be an industrial hub as well as the home to a GULAG labor camp. In post-Soviet times, howev...

Pamila Gupta, "Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pamila Gupta’s Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020), takes a unique approach to examining decolonization processes across L...

David Bissell, "Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities" (MIT Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What kind of time do we endure on our daily commutes? What kind of space do we occupy? What new sorts of urbanites do we thereby become? In Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities (M...

Doreen Lee, “Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2016) is a book about Indonesian youth activism both before 1998 and after. But it is no ordinary chrono...

Ghassan Moussawi, "Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut (Temple UP, 2020) challenges representations of contemporary Beirut as an exceptional space for LGBTQ people by highlightin...

Gregory Smits, "Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650" (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Conventional portrayals of early Ryukyu are based on official histories written between 1650 and 1750. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Gregory Smits makes extensive use of scholarship in arch...

Roman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Roman Sieler’s?? Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a fine-grained ethnographic study of varmakkalai–the art of vital spots, a ...

Maile Arvin, "Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai‘i and Oceania" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From their earliest encounters with Indigenous Pacific Islanders, white Europeans and Americans saw Polynesians as almost racially white, and speculated that they were of Mediterranean or Aryan des...

Kimberly Chong, "Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do management consultants do, and how do they do it? These two deceptively simple questions are at the centre of Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in Chin...

Damien M. Sojoyner, “First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Damien M. Sojoyner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, entitled First Strike: Educa...

Nadia Eghbal, "Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software" (Stripe Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Open source is the once-radical idea that code should be freely available to everyone. Open-source software was once an optimistic model for public collaboration, but is now a near-universal standa...

Rosalyn LaPier, "Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet" (U Nebraska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental stud...

Stephen Dupont, “Piksa Niugini” (Peabody Press/Radius Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Piksa Niugini by Stephen Dupont, with forward by Robert Gardner and essay by Bob Connolly, is published by the Peabody Press and Radius Books, (2013). Volume 1: 144 pages, 80 duotone, 6 color image...

Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,175. You must spend twenty nights literally loc...

Diane Tober, "Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The development of a whole suite of new reproductive technologies in recent decades has contributed to broad cultural conversations and controversies over the meaning of family in the United States...

Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, “Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do new policies move from one city or country to another, and is there something distinct about how those transfers work in our perpetually accelerating and ever-more interconnected world? Join...

Charles Piot, "The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles"?(Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the West African nation of Togo, applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery is a national obsession, with hundreds of thousands of Togolese entering each year. From the street frenzy of the lo...

Deonnie Moodie, "The Making of a Modern Temple and a Hindu City: K?l?gh?? and Kolkata" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Deonnie Moodie is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions at the University of Oklahoma. Her book, The Making of a Modern Temple and a Hindu City: K?l?gh?? and Kolkata (Oxford University P...

Kelly Watson, “Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kelly Watson’s Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World (New York University Press, 2015) explores the history of the New World through the lens of the c...

Jennifer Atkins, "New Orleans Carnival Balls: The Secret Side of Mardi Gras, 1870-1920" (LSU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In New Orleans Carnival Balls: The Secret Side of Mardi Gras, 1870-1920 (LSU Press, 2017), Dr. Jennifer Atkins draws back the curtain on the origin of the exclusive Mardi Gras balls, bringing to li...

Karin Rosemblatt, "The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Karin Rosemblatt’s new book, The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), traces how U.S.- and Mexican-trained intellectua...

Rory Dickson, “Living Sufism in North America: Tradition and Transformation” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rory Dickson’s Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation (SUNY Press, 2015) is the first monograph in English to focus on Sufism in North America. On this note, Dickson t...

Mathangi Krishnamurthy, "1-800-Worlds: The Making of the Indian Call Center Economy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

1-800-Worlds: The Making of the Indian Call Center Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018) chronicles the labour practices, life-worlds, and media atmospheres of Indian call centre workers, and loc...

Kristin D. Phillips, "An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Families in parts of rural Tanzania regularly face periods when they cut back on their meals because their own food stocks are running short and they cannot afford to buy food. Kristin D. Phillips'...

Christopher Woolgar, “The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Food was central to the lives of people in England during the Middle Ages in ways different than it is today. As Christopher Woolgar reveals in his book The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500 (Y...

Ananya Chakravarti, "The Empire of Apostles" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ananya Chakravarti’s The Empire of Apostles: Religion, Accommodatio and the Imagination of Empire in Modern Brazil and India (Oxford University Press), recovers the religious roots of Europe's firs...

Jack Wertheimer, "The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at worship services remains very low and approximatel...

Megan C. Thomas, “Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2012 ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Orientalists, Propagandists and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Megan Thomas offers a thoroughly researched and closely...

David Tavárez, "Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America" (U Colorado Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor David Tavárez’s edited volume, Words & Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017), is a collection of eleven e...

Susan Lepselter, "The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, and UFOs in the American Uncanny" (U Michigan Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we talk about stories of alien abduction in the United States, we often do so through a framework of belief vs. disbelief. Do I think this story is true, or do I think it’s false? Anthropologi...

Kenneth Schaffner, “Behaving: What’s Genetic, What’s Not, and Why Should We Care?” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the genes vs. environment debate, it is widely accepted that what we do, who we are, and what mental illnesses we are at risk for result from a complex combination of both factors. Just how comp...

Leah Zani, "Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Leah Zani, a public anthropologist and poet based in California, about her truly wonderful book Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos (Duke Univers...

Crystal Abidin, "Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online" (Emerald Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be famous on the Internet? How do people become Internet celebrities, and what can that celebrity be used to do? Dr. Crystal Abidin offers anthropological insight into these qu...

Jessica Greenberg , “After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia” (Stanford University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jessica Greenberg’s After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014) explores a dual tension at work in Serbia in the early 200...

Kathleen Klaus, "Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathleen Klaus, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco has written a terrific book, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making published in 2020 by C...

Melissa Johnson, "Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing from Sylvia Wynter’s call for rethinking our category of “human”, Melissa Johnson's ethnography Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize (Rutgers University Press, 2018) demonstrates how ...

Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling” (Lexington, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Darian M. Parker joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, Sartre and No Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling (Lexington Books,...

Greg Beckett, "There is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s episode, I talk with Dr. Greg Beckett, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Western University, about his richly grounded book There is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au...

Ann Gleig, "American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-base...

Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can social theory offer to visions of an alternative society? In his new book, Social Theory for Alternative Societies (Palgrave, 2016), Dr Matt Dawson, a Lecturer in Sociology at the Universi...

Gabriel Dattatreyan, "The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi (Duke University Press, 2020), Gabriel Dattatreyan departs from the existing literature on masculinity in I...

Tricia Bruce, "Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does a typical American Catholic parish look like? Tricia Bruce, an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society, argues in her new book that Americ...

Nicole Nguyen, “A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in US Public Schools” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It can be tempting to generalize certain attributes of schools as either being good or bad. Magnet and charter schools are often characterized as being inherently good. They usually offer special p...

Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities c...

James L. A. Webb, "The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is estimated that malaria kills between 650,000 to 1.2 million Africans every year; experts believe that nearly 90 percent of these deaths occur in Africa. In The Long Struggle against Malaria i...

Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, promoting peace, and building a modern national identity. Yasuku...

Vanita Reddy, "Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity and South Asian American Culture" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vanita Reddy, in her book Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity and South Asian American Culture (Duke University Press, 2016), locates diasporic transnationality, affiliations and intimacies thr...

Chip Colwell, "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Gr...

Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India” (Temple UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoli...

Jan Doering, "Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With such high levels of residential segregation along racial lines in the United States, gentrifying neighborhoods present fascinating opportunities to examine places with varying levels of integr...

David V. Mason, "The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

To what extent may we say that religion is a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre is a religious experience? Can making sense of one help us make sense of the other? Join us as we dive into The ...

D. Asher Ghertner, “Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

D. Asher Ghertner explores why the ways things look are fundamental for Delhi’s transformation into a “world class”city. Based on deep ethnographic engagement in one of the city’s slums that is des...

Patricia Zavella, "The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism (NYU Press, 2020), Pat Zavella shows how reproductive justice organizations' collaborative work across ra...

Kevin T. Smiley, "Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Are market cities better than people cities? Does the satisfaction that residents take in their city vary from market city to people city? In Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Fu...

Morgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Morgan Pitelka’s new book looks closely at the material culture of the Three Unifiers of the late sixteenth century in Japan– Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu–in order to foreg...

Mayfair Yang, "Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Re-enchanting Modernity: Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life af...

Levi S. Gibbs, "Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China" (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local, regional and national borders? What are the c...

Lisa Bjorkman, “Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mumbai is in many ways the paradigmatic city of India’s celebrated economic upturn, but the city’s transformation went hand-in-hand with increasing water woes. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: E...

Laura S. Grillo, "An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What if the moral guardians of West African societies are postmenopausal women? This is the argument that Laura S. Grillo makes in her 2018 book, An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual ...

Ward Keeler, "The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma" (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they...

Peter Wade, et. al. “Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the past quarter-century, scientists have been mapping and exploring the human genome to locate the genetic basis of disease and track the histories of populations across time and space. As pa...

Schneur Zalman Newfield, "Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Those who exit a religion—particularly one they were born and raised in—often find themselves at sea in their efforts to transition to life beyond their community. In Degrees of Separation: Identit...

Jules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishin...

Paul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)...

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, “Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds” (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her fascinating book, Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds (SUNY Press, 2020), Joyce Flueckiger analyzes the agency of materiality, that is, the ability of materials to have effect beyond what...

Borayin Larios, "Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra" (De Gruyter, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroke...

Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark R. E. Meulenbeld’s new book looks closely at the relationship between vernacular novels and vernacular rituals in Ming China. Focusing on a particular novel called Canonization of the Gods (Fe...

Oluwakemi M. Balogun, "Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Even as beauty pageants have been critiqued as misogynistic and dated cultural vestiges of the past in the US and elsewhere, the pageant industry is growing in popularity across the Global South, a...

R. S. Dieng and A. O'Reilly, "Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond" (Demeter Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How have the everyday practices of parenting been shaped by patriarchy and coloniality? What are the transformative potentials of feminist parenting? In Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa...

Alex Colas et al., "Food, Politics, and Society Social Theory and the Modern Food System" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The consumption of food and drink is much more than what we put in our mouth. Food and drink have been a focal point of modern social theory since the inception of agrarian capitalism and the indus...

Phaedra Daipha, “Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Phaedra Daipha’s thoughtful new book uses a careful sociological study of a particular community of weather forecasters to develop a sociology of decision making. Based on fieldwork conducted over ...

Richard Seymour, "The Twittering Machine" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it ...

Will Rollason, "Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Will Rollason is senior lecturer of anthropology at Brunel University London. He’s written a fascinating book titled Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets (Lexington Books, 2020)....

Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...

Nick Cheesman, “Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar’s Courts Make Law and Order” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Working against the tendency to conflate the analytic categories “rule of law,” and “law and order,” Nick Cheesman’s Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar’s Courts Make Law and Order (Cambridge Uni...

Claire Herbert, "A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality" (U California Press, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bringing to the fore a wealth of original research, A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality (University of California Press, 2021) examines how the informal reclamation ...

Mark Anderson, "From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Anderson’s From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology (Stanford University Press) is at once a story about US anthropology and US liberalism from the 1930s to the 1...

Claire Pamment, "Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claire Pamment’s book Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) is a fantastic new book centered on the Punjabi folk art of the Bh?nd, or comic performance. Pamment explor...

Anand Pandian, “Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do we live in a real world or a ‘reel world,’ in which life begins to feel like a film? In this wonderful ethnography of the Tamil film industry, Anand Pandian explores topics as grand, rich and ti...

Matthew H. Rafalow, "Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Matt Rafalow, about his book, Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era (University of Chicago Press, 2020). This book provides an ethnographic ...

L. L. Wynn, "Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability" (U Texas Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

L. L. Wynn’s book Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability (University of Texas Press, 2018) is an interrogation of urban life and gendered mobilities in Cair...

Jessica Hardin, "Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jessica Hardin's new book Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa (Rutgers University Press, 2018)explores how Pentecostal Christians manage chronic illness in ways that...

Bard Kartveit, “Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians” (Brill, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bard Kartveit‘s Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians (Brill, 2014) is an outstanding book, which carefully describes the constraints faced by Palestinian Chri...

Jonathan Boyarin, "Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to s...

Sara Smith, "Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What’s love got to do with it? Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by feminist political geographer Sara Smith tell u...

Thomas F. Gieryn, "Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe" (U Chicago, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is the existence of truth coming to a screeching halt? Does truth still exist? In Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. Thomas F. Gieryn takes time to...

Kirk A. Denton, “Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kirk A. Denton‘s recent book explores the role of the state in China in shaping particular visions of the past through work in and with museums. Focusing on history museums in particular, Exhibitin...

Jennifer M. Randles, "Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering (University of California Press, 2020), sociologist Jennifer Randles shares the stories of more than 60 marginalized men as they sought...

Kregg Hetherington, "The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

By the time Bolivian President Evo Morales was deposed in December 2019, it had become increasingly clear that Latin America’s Pink Tide – the wave of left-leaning, anti-poverty governments which t...

Martin Demant Frederiksen, "An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular" (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018) is an “exploration of what goes missing when one looks for meaning” (p. 1). The book is both an experimental ethnography and a theoretica...

Srimati Basu, “The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Are solutions to marital problems always best solved through legal means? Should alternative dispute resolutions be celebrated? In her latest book The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law ...

Jason Keith Fernandes, "Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa" (Orient BlackSwan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the mid-1980s, Goa witnessed mass demonstrations, violent protests and political mobilising, following which Konkani was declared the official language of the Goan territory. However, Konkani wa...

Ismael Garcia-Colon, "Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ismael Garcia-Colon, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms (University of California Press, 2020) is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rica...

Bernadete Barton, "Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More Stories from Exot...

Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael F. Robinson‘s new book is such a pleasure to read, I cant even. It’s not just because you get to say Gambaragara over and over again if you read it aloud. (I recommend doing this, even if j...

Suraj Yengde, "Caste Matters" (India Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“India is not yet a nation. It is still in an improvisational mode like a jazz band that needs to perform repeatedly together in order to uplift every voice in the chorus,” Suraj Yengde writes in h...

Hanna Garth, "Food In Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Food In Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal (Stanford University Press, 2020), Hanna Garth examines the processes of acquiring food and preparing meals in the midst of food shortages. Garth draws...

Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of ...

Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexingto...

Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village with Associate Professor Holly High from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her latest book, Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village (University of Hawaii Press), due out in May 2021, Associate Professor Holly High argues that socialism remains an important c...

J-B. Tchouta Mougoué, "Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2019) illuminates how issues of ideal womanhood shaped the Anglophone Cameroonian nationalist moveme...

Catherine Baker, “Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial?” (Manchester UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine Baker’s fascinating new book poses a deceptively simple question: what does race have to do with the Yugoslav region? Eastern European studies has often framed the region as unimplicated ...

Sahana Udupa, “Making News in Global India: Media, Publics, Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What role does Bangalore’s private news culture play in shaping the southern Indian metropolis’ ongoing urban transformation? Sahana Udupa‘s new book Making News in Global India: Media, Publics, Po...

Jim Mason, "An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature" (Latern Books, 2002) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

First published by Simon & Schuster in 1993 and then by Continuum in 1998, Jim Mason’s An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature has become a classic. With a new Lantern edition ex...

Jonathan Parry, "Classes of Labor: Work and Life in an Indian Steel Town" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town (Routledge, 2020) is a classic in the social sciences. The rigour and richness of the ethnographic data of this book and its analysis...

Bianca Williams, “The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Analyses of the lives of black women in the United States often focus on narratives of struggle and sorrow, as black women must contend daily with the intersecting oppressions of sexism and racism....

Malcolm James, “Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City” (Palgrave, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the...

Dwaipayan Banerjee, "Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi (Duke UP, 2020) Dwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as patients and families n...

Sarah Knott, "Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity—the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter wi...

Justine Howe, “Suburban Islam” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The study of Islam is often focused on subjects involved in legal debates or ritual practice. But our understanding of Muslims should also be informed by everyday practices found in the suburbs. In...

Brooke Schedneck, “Thailand’s International Meditation Centers” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her recent monograph, Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Global Commodification of Religious Practices (Routledge, 2015), Brooke Schedneck examines Buddhist meditation ...

Lamont Lindstrom, "Tanna Times: Islanders in the World" (U Hawaii Press, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For four decades, Lamont "Monty" Lindstrom has conducted research on the island of Tanna in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. Considered by outsiders to be incredibly exotic, Tanna attracts tourists w...

Ali Meghji, "Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who are the Black middle-class in Britain? In Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption (Manchester University Press, 2019) Ali Meghji, a lecturer in social inequa...

Caleb Simmons, "Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navaratri Festival in South Asia" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navaratri Festival in South Asia (SUNY Press, 2018), edited by Caleb Simmons, Moumita Sen, and Hillary Peter Rodrigues, is a diverse collection of cutting-edge inter...

Mary M. Steedly, “Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence” (U of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mary M. Steedly‘s book, Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence, is “one of a kind and will continue to be so,” writes Benedict Anderson. This is high praise from one of the greats of Sou...

Ellen Lamont, "The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ellen Lamont's new book The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date (University of California Press, 2020) offers an in-depth analysis of how gender shapes dating practices. Despite enormo...

Drew Thomases, "Guest is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Guest is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India (Oxford University Press, 2019) Drew Thomases investigates the Indian pilgrimage town of Pushkar. While the town consists of 20,00...

Jonathan Birch, "The Philosophy of Social Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It seems to go against evolutionary theory for an individual to give up its own chances at reproducing in order to increase the fitness of others. Yet social behavior is found throughout nature, fr...

Lynn Davidman, “Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews (Oxford University Press, 2015), Lynn Davidman, Robert M. Beren Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas, uti...

Ani Maitra, "Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The politics of identity have played center stage in many political debates in the last few years, and is often seen somewhat pejoratively as an epiphenomenal manifestation of the dynamics of capit...

Candi K. Cann, "Dying to Eat: Cross Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death and the Afterlife" (UP of Kentucky, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Candi K. Cann, editor of the new collection, Dying to Eat: Cross Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death and the Afterlife (University Press of Kentuck...

Thomas Patton, "The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent monograph, The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism(Columbia University Press, 2018), Thomas Patton examines the weizz?, a figure in Burmese Buddhism w...

Birgit Meyer, “Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anthropologist Birgit Meyer‘s most recent book, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015), explores the dynamic process of popular video fi...

Amit S. Rai, "Jugaad Time: The Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In India, the practice of jugaad—finding workarounds or hacks to solve problems—emerged out of subaltern strategies of negotiating poverty, discrimination, and violence but is now celebrated in man...

Pepper Glass, "Misplacing Ogden, Utah" (U Utah Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pepper Glass’s?new book Misplacing Ogden, Utah: Race, Class, Immigration, and the Construction of Urban Reputation?(University of Utah Press, 2020) evaluates the widely held assumption that divisio...

Gary Metcalf, "Social Systems and Design" (Springer Verlag, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the opening chapter of his edited volume, Social Systems and Design, out from Springer in 2014, Gary Metcalf asks if it is possible to establish ethical “first principles” for the design of soci...

Mark Schuller, “Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed and destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Mark Schuller‘s book Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti (Rutgers University Pr...

George Musgrave, "Can Music Make You Sick?: Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition" (U Westminster Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detail...

Macabe Keliher, "The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bringing attention to the importance of li (an articulated system of social domination and political legitimization, consisting of rituals, ceremonies, and rites) as the foundation of the Qing poli...

Mani Rao, "Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity, and Visionary Experience Today" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What role does mantra play in the lives of Hindu practitioners? Mani Rao takes us on a journey to three sacred sites across India’s Andhra-Telangana region. The practitioners she engages at these s...

Rebecca Lemov, “Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity” (Yale University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rebecca Lemov‘s beautifully written Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity (Yale University Press, 2015) is at once an exploration of mid-century social science through paths less t...

A. Kanna et al., "Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the nearly two decades that they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, Ahmed Kanna, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora have regularly encountered exoticizing and exception...

Ayesha Siddiqi, "In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the last couple of decades, a number of books written both by the academics and journalists  have appeared on many dysfunctions of the Pakistani state, a few of them even predicting why and ho...

David J. Puglia, "Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore 'Hon': The Folk in the City" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Folklorist David J. Puglia is an assistant professor at the City University of New York and in his latest book - Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore “Hon": The Folk in the City (Lexington ...

David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David J. Meltzer‘s new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American archaeology as a practice and discipline, tracing it ...

Sujatha Fernandes, "Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life" (Duke, UP 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cuban resourcefulness is on full display in Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life (Duke 2020), as sociologist Sujatha Fernandes presents an array of strategies not just for survival but fo...

Pehr Granqvist, "Attachment in Religion and Spirituality: A Wider View" (Guilford Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Attachment theory is a popular lens through which psychologists have examined human development and interpersonal dynamics. In Attachment in Religion and Spirituality: A Wider View (Guilford Press,...

Jan English-Lueck, "Cultures@SiliconValley: Second Edition" (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Silicon Valley is understood to be one of the most fast-paced regions on earth, where innovation and upheaval are part and parcel of daily life. Imagine the challenge, then, when it’s your job to d...

David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer Dav...

Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Du...

Oded Y. Steinberg, "Anglo-German Thought in the Victorian Era" (U Penn Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Oded Y. Steinberg (DPhil Oxford) is a fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters,?Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Next year (2020-21), Steinberg will begin ...

Daromir Rudnyckyj, "Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. In Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance (University of Chicago Press, 2...

Tran Ngoc Angie, “Ties that Bind: Cultural Identity, Class, and Law in Vietnam’s Labor Resistance” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Labour consciousness is not just class-based; it also emerges out of cultural identities, as Tran Ngoc Angie argues powerfully in Ties that Bind: Cultural Identity, Class, and Law in Vietnam’s Labo...

Charlotte Bruckermann, "Claiming Homes: Confronting Domicide in Rural China" (Berghahn Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I talked to Charlotte Bruckermann about her new book Claiming Homes: Confronting Domicide in Rural China (Berghahn Books, 2019). Chinese citizens make themselves at home despite economic tran...

Noah Coburn, "Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Noah Coburn's Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War (Stanford University Press, 2018) is about the hidden workers of American’s foreign wars: third country nationals who whi...

Eric Dietrich, “Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World” (Columbia UP, ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although there are many deep criticisms of a scientific view of humanity and the world, a persistent theme is that the scientific worldview eliminates mystery, and in particular, the wonders and my...

Ehud Halperin, “The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hadimba is a primary village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a rural area known as the Land of Gods. As the book shows, Hadimba is a goddess whos...

Jamal Elias, "Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his groundbreaking new book, Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies (University of California Press, 2018), Jamal Elias takes his readers on a riveting in...

Emma Jackson, “Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the experience of young homeless people? What does this experience tell us about space, place and society? In Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility (Routledge, 2015), Dr....

Matt Tomlinson, "God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and Theology in the Pacific" (U Hawai‘i Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christian theologians in the Pacific Islands see culture as the grounds on which one understands God. In God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and Theology in the Pacific (University of Hawai‘i ...

Marcia Morgan, "Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race" (Edwin Mellen Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With prison reform a topic of international conversation and debate, Marica Morgan’s Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race  offers an in-depth and unique analysis o...

Heather Kopelson, “Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Heather Miyano Kopelson explores how religion, primarily expressed through bodily action, contributed to colonial notions of difference in her recent book Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and R...

Ashley E. Kerr, "Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina (1860-1910)" (Vanderbilt UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Analyzing a wide variety of late-nineteenth-century sources, Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina (1860-1910) (Vanderbilt University Press, 2020) argues that Argentine ...

Ben Gatling, "Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan" (U Wisconsin Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

George Mason University professor Ben Gatling’s debut book, Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), is a beautifully written ethnography exploring the lives...

Brian Epstein, “The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The social sciences are about social entities – things like corporations and traffic jams, mobs and money, parents and war criminals. What is a social entity? What makes something a social entity? ...

Rebecca Hanson and Patricia Richards, "Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Researchers frequently experience sexualized interactions, sexual objectification, and harassment as they conduct fieldwork. These experiences are often left out of ethnographers’ “tales from the f...

John Witte, Jr., "The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Witte, Jr.'s The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an extensively researched book showcasing the author's deep knowledge and experience in the field...

Phillip Penix-Tadsen, “Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America” (MIT Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Symbols have meanings that change depending upon the cultural context. But how do we discuss symbols, their meanings, and their cultural contexts without an adequate vocabulary? Phillip Penix-Tadse...

Robert Samet, "Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, has been ranked as one of the most violent cities in the world. In Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Robert Samet...

Derek Hird and Geng Song, "The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age" (Hong Kong UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

China’s global rise has been analysed from many perspectives in recent years. But pressing questions over how understandings of gender – and particularly masculinity – have been changing amidst inc...

Krista A. Thompson, “Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press, 2015) is a gorgeous book. It’s about light and the practices of self representation in diasporic a...

Allan Downey, "The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood" (UBC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Allan Downey, Associate Professor of History and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University, and author of The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood (U...

Maria Kronfeldner, "What's Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept" (MIT Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much of the debate about the roles of nature vs. nurture in the development of individual people has settled into accepting that it's a bit of both, although what each contributes to a given trait ...

Deirdre de la Cruz, “Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There is no female religious figure so widely known and revered as the Virgin Mary. Filipino Catholics are especially drawn to Mama Mary and have a strong belief in her power, including her ability...

R. Farrugia and K. D. Hay, "Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay of Oakland University on their new book Women Rapping Revolution.(University of California P...

Michele Gelfand, "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World" (Scribner Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World(Scribner Books, 2018), Dr. Michele Gelfand leverages cultural psychology research to examine social norms and their implic...

Christopher Bondy, “Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“You are a member of a minority group but do not know it. How is this possible?” Christopher Bondy’s new book explores this question in a study of the making of burakumin identity in the schools a...

Joy White, "Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City" (Repeater Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are black lives lived in the contemporary city? In Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City, Dr Joy White, a sociologist and ethnographer based in London, explores the case study of New...

Alf Gunvald Nilsen, "Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost a decade in the making, Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland(Cambridge University Press, 2018) draws on collaboratively collected oral histories of ...

Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi, “The Han: China’s Diverse Majority” (U of Washington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi‘s new book opens with a series of questions that animate the study. They include but are not limited to: What does being Han mean to those classified as Hanzu? What are the n...

Sa’ed Atshan, "Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In?Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020) anthropologist and activist?Sa’ed Atshan?explores the Palestinian LGBTQ movement and offers a window into the diverse...

Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, "The Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our evolutionary success, according to co-authors Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, lies in our ability to acquire cultural wisdom and teach it to the next generation. Today, we follow social media...

Sara Shneiderman, “Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Sara Shneiderman is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a Himalayan comm...

Nora Haenn, "Marriage after Migration: An Ethnography of Money, Romance, and Gender in Globalizing Mexico" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marriage after Migration: An Ethnography of Money, Romance, and Gender in Globalizing Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2019) tells the stories of five women in rural Mexico, each navigating the tri...

Tania Li, "Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier" (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you want to read just one book to properly understand capitalism, let it be Tania Li’s award-winning 2014 book Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, ...

David Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), David Wright, Associate Professor at ...

Barbara J. Risman, "Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure (Oxford University Press 2018), Barbara J. Risman uses her gender structure theory to tackle the question ...

Denis Provencher, "Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations" (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometimes a book can take inspiration from a (not so) simple map. At the end of his previous book, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge, 2007), Denis Provencher ...

Tam Ngo and Justine B. Quijada, eds., “Atheist Secularism and its Discontents: A Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia” (Palgrave, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Secularism has emerged as a central category of twenty-first century political thought and critical theory. Following the lead of anthropologist Talal Asad, there is a growing literature that trace...

A Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 1: Man into Wolf from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, we discuss how I discovered Robert Eisler’s Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy and unpack the book’s argument that modern humans...

Patrick Eisenlohr, "Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World(University of California Press, 2018) by Patrick Eisenlohr is an exciting ethnographic study of Mauritian Muslims’ sound...

Annette Miae Kim, “Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is a remarkable book about overlooked yet ubiquitous urban spaces, and the people and things that occup...

Russell T. Warne, "In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths about Human Intelligence" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode I talked to Russell T. Warne about his book In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths about Human Intelligence (Cambridge UP, 2020). Warne  takes on the “nature versus nurture” debate regardi...

Martina Cvajner, "Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration" (U Chicago, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jana Byars talks with Martina Cvajner, Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Trento, about her new book, Soviet Signoras: Pers...

Steve Stewart-Williams, "The Ape That Understood the Universe: How Mind and Culture Evolve" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, cross-posted from from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun takes a dive into evolutionary psychology with professor and author, Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams. ...

Ulla Berg, “Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S.” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ulla Berg’s new book Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (New York University Press, 2015) highlights the deeply historical and central role of migration as a strateg...

Isar P. Godreau, "Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico" (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, in addition to the rise ...

John Stratton Hawley, “Krishna's Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century” (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Stratton Hawley's new book Krishna's Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2020) is about a deeply beloved place-many call it the spiritual capital of India. Loca...

Till Mostowlansky, "Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In eastern Tajikistan, the Trans-Pamir Highway flows through the mountains creating a lunar-like landscape.  In his latest work, Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir High...

Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machines” (MIT 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, became popular in the West in the late 1940s and early 1...

Eben Kirksey, "The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans" (St. Martin's Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin's Press, 2020), anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask:...

Kathryn M. De Luna, "Collecting Food, Collecting People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa" (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Collecting Food, Collecting People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa (Yale University Press, 2016), Kathryn M. De Luna documents the evolving meanings borne in the collection of wild fo...

Ayça Çubukçu, "For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harkening back to the tribunal on Vietnam once convened by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) emerged in 2003 from the global antiwar movement that had mobilize...

Sean McCloud, “American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Exorcisms and demons. In his new book American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sean McCloud argues that not only have such phenomena ...

Joseph David, "Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joseph E. David, Professor of Law at Sapir Academic College in Israel, has written an intellectual history of the concept of belonging. David reviews the ancient Greek, Christian Biblical, Talmudic...

James C. Scott, "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), ...

Radhika Govindrajan, "Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In what is sure to become a classic, Radhika Govindrajan’s Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (University of Chicago Press, 2018) mobilizes the thematic of “in...

Carla Freeman, “Entrepreneurial Selves: Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class” (Duke University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This marvelous ethnography traces one of the surprising outcomes of shifting neoliberal regimes in Barbados. As women find themselves leading entrepreneurial lives, they also find themselves engagi...

Johanna Drucker, "Visualization and Interpretation: Humanistic Approaches to Display" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the several decades since scholars in the humanities have taken up computational tools, they have borrowed many techniques from other fields, including visualization methods to create charts, gr...

Michele Wakin, "Hobo Jungle: A Homeless Community in Paradise" (Lynne Rienner, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michele Wakin’s new book Hobo Jungle: A Homeless Community in Paradise (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020) is an up-close exploration of the evolution that has taken place with unsheltered homelessnes...

Victoria Cann, "Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures" (I.B.Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does cultural taste regulate our lives? In Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Dr. Victoria Cann, a l...

Sujey Vega, “Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest (New York University Press, 2015), Sujey Vega Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, traces the wa...

Constance Smith, "Nairobi in the Making: Landscapes of Time and Urban Belonging" (James Currey, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, urban life unfolds in the shadow of a billboard promising a bright hypermodern global future. How do ordinary residents inhabit this temporal condition?...

Sam Han, "(Inter)Facing Death: Life in Global Uncertainty" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration...

Snigdha Poonam, "Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the World" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

49.91% of India’s population was below the age of 24 in the 2011 Census. By 2020 India will become the world’s youngest country with 64% of its population in the working age group of 15-64 years. T...

Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After reading Natasha Myers’s new book, the world begins to dance in new ways. Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter (Duke University Press, 2015) is a sensory ethnograph...

Salih Can Aç?ksöz, "Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey (University of California Press, 2020) is an exploration of “the ways in which . . .veterans’ gendered and classed exper...

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...

Thomas Borchert, “Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border” (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What makes a Buddhist monk? This is the motivating question for Thomas Borchert, Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, as he explores the social and educational formation of Buddhists...

Marcia C. Inhorn, “The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East” (Princeton UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Winner of the 2015 American Anthropological Associations Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and the 2014 JMEWS Book Award of the Association for Middle Ea...

Ethnographic Fieldwork in Ecuador: A Discussion with Maricarmen Hernandez from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is it like to do research in a marginalized community in the shadows of Ecuador’s largest oil refinery? On today’s episode we talk with Maricarmen Hernandez, assistant professor of sociology a...

Alexander L. Fattal, "Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2019) investigates the Colombian government’s campaign to turn Marxist guerrilla fighters in the FARC...

McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...

Michael Kimmel, “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era” (Nation Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Kimmel is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. He is also executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities. His book...

Sienna R. Craig, "The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020), anthropologist Sienna Craig examines the inter-generational shifts that increas...

Govind Gopakumar, "Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Automobiles and their associated infrastructures, deeply embedded in Western cities, have become a rapidly growing presence in the mega-cities of the Global South. Streets, once crowded with pedest...

Sara Komarnisky, "Mexicans in Alaska: An Ethnography of Mobility, Place, and Transnational Life" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“There are Mexicans in Alaska?” This was the response Sara Komarnisky heard repeatedly when describing her research on three generations of transnational migrants who divide their time between Anch...

Arlene Davila, “Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People” (U California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (University of California Press, updated ed. 2012) Arlene Davila, Professor of Anthropology at New York University, questions the profound infl...

S. L. Lewis and M. A. Maslin, "The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics--the old forces of nature--have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new geological force--humans. Our actions have driv...

Ashley Mears, "Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ashley Mears’ new book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit (Princeton University Press, 2020) provides readers with a closer look at the global party circuit. A lif...

D.A. Silver and T.N. Clark, "Scenescapes: How Qualities of Place Shape Social Life" (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I don’t mean to make a scene, but please open your eyes and look around. There are complex scenes everywhere and we have all served witness to them. A scene is an experience in which we feel connec...

Erica Weiss, “Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Erica Weiss, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropo...

John Hartigan Jr., "Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and shave their manes and tails...

C. M. Driscoll and M. R. Miller, “Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion” (Lexington, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the study of religion there are various camps that each approach their subjects in unique ways. Each method is shaped by particular interpretive choices, such as to be objectively neutral, exper...

Llerena Searle, "Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India" (U Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few who have visited India in the past two decades will have failed to noticed the sudden and spectacular urban transformation that has taken place in many of its cities. Gated residential complexe...

Yarimar Bonilla, “Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As overseas departments of France, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are frequently described as anomalies within the postcolonial Caribbean. Yet in reality, as Yarimar Bonilla argues in her...

David Henig, "Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their rel...

Jacqueline H. Fewkes, "Locating Maldivian Women's Mosques in Global Discourses" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a mosque? What are women's mosques specifically? What historical values do women's mosques offer, and what is the relationship between mosque spaces and women's religious work? How do women...

Alireza Doostdar, "The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, Alireza Doostdar’s The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University P...

Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-Find-A-Way-To-Somehow-Engage-Even-If-Reading-Is-No...

Michal S. Raucher, "Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women" (Indiana UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), Michal Raucher explores the ways ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel make decisions about their r...

Nusrat S. Chowdhury, "Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few places are as politically precarious as Bangladesh, even fewer as crowded. Its 57,000 or so square miles are some of the world's most inhabited. Often described as a definitive case of the bank...

Jessica Marie Falcone, "Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can we learn from the anthropological study of projects that are never realized, or of dreams that are never fulfilled? In her new book Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the...

Angelique V. Nixon, “Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture” (U Press of Mississippi, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s easy to conjure images of paradise when thinking of the Caribbean. The region is know for its lovely beaches, temperate weather, and gorgeous landscapes. For the people who live there, however...

Sharon J. Yoon, "The Cost of Belonging: An Ethnography on Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing's Koreatown" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How vulnerable can you be as a researcher? Why, in a commercially successful city like Wangqing, are Chinese Koreans more successful in their businesses than entrepreneurs from Korea who often have...

T. Sangaramoorthy and K. Kroeger, "Rapid Ethnographic Assessments" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can researchers gather information quickly, for instance in the times of COVID-19? IN their new book, Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A Practical Approach and Toolkit for Collaborative Communit...

Sohini Kar, "Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is microfinance the magic bullet that will end global poverty or is it yet another a form of predatory lending to the poor? In her new book Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfin...

Philip Roscoe, “A Richer Life: How Economics Can Change the Way We Think and Feel” (Penguin, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

So many of our social questions are now the subject of analysis from economics. In A Richer Life: How Economics can Change the Way We Think and Feel (Penguin, 2015), Phillip Roscoe, a reader at the...

Christopher M. Kelty, "The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, algorithms, and software offer to make participa...

Nancy Mattina, "Uncommon Anthropologist: Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Protégé of Elsie Clews Parsons and Franz Boas, founder and head of Barnard College's anthropology department, and a trailblazer in Native American linguistics and anthropology, Gladys Reichard (189...

Jeong-Hee Kim, "Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research" (Sage Publications, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s episode, I talked with Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim about her new book, Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research (Sage Publications, 2016). The book offers ...

Anderson Blanton, “Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anderson Blanton‘s Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined wi...

Steven Fabian, "Making Identity on the Swahili Coast: Urban Life, Community, and Belonging in Bagamoyo" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Situated at a crossroads of trade in the late nineteenth century, and later the economic capital of German East Africa, the thriving caravan and port town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania is one of many diver...

Maria Rashid, "Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020), Maria Rashid conducts an intimate...

David Charles Sloane, "Is the Cemetery Dead?" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is the Cemetery Dead? (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. ...

Adam Rosenblatt, “Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science After Atrocity” (Stanford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do dead bodies have human rights? This is one of many fascinating questions Adam Rosenblatt asks in his compelling new book Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science After Atrocity (Stanford U...

Michal Pagis, "Inward: Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There is a strong interest today in turning inward to explore the mind and body. Mindfulness meditation exemplifies this trend, and has become increasingly well-known and widely practiced. In Inwar...

Mythri Jegathesan, "Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, commodity chain analysis – the scholarly effort to piece together the production and consumption ends of various commodities – has really taken off. For goods ranging from cotton t...

Kathleen Hull and John Douglass, "Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California" (U Arizona Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between 1769 and 1834, an influx of Spanish, Russian, and then American colonists streamed into Alta California seeking new opportunities. Their arrival brought the imposition of foreign beliefs, p...

Eric H. Cline, “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” (Princeton University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It quickly sold out in hardback, and then, within a matter of days, sold out in paperback. Available again as a 2nd edition hardback, and soon in the 10th edition paperback with a new Afterword by ...

Andrea Ballestero, "A Future History of Water" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are joined by Dr. Andrea Ballestero, associate Professor of Anthropology and Director Ethnography Studio, at Rice University. We will be talking about her book A Future History of Water, publish...

Ayala Fader, "Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? Dr. Ayala Fader explores this question ...

Jack David Eller, “Inventing American Tradition: From the Mayflower to Cinco de Mayo” (Reaktion Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Americans gathering for Thanksgiving this week may assume they are continuing an unbroken chain of tradition that traces directly back to Massachusetts settlers in 1620. In fact, many of our most c...

Kate Pahl, “Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Literary practices are often associated with specific social groups in particular social settings. Kate Pahl‘s Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2...

Amanda J. Lucia, "White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world.  In White Ut...

Jyoti Puri, "Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India (Duke UP, 2016), Jyoti Puri tracks the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of s...

Lee Bidgood, “Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although bluegrass music is typically associated with the bluegrass state of Kentucky and Appalachia, the genre is actually played in many pockets all around the world.  In Czech Bluegrass: Notes f...

Sanjay Srivastava, “Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (Oxford University Press, 2015) is the latest book by Sanjay Srivastava. A wonderfully readable piece of urban anthr...

Abigail A. Dumes, "Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While many doctors claim that Lyme disease--a tick-borne bacterial infection--is easily diagnosed and treated, other doctors and the patients they care for argue that it can persist beyond standard...

Katie Horowitz, "Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Published by Routledge in 2019, Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness is a comparative ethnography of drag king and drag queen performances in Cleveland Ohio. It uses the concept o...

David P. Barash, “Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Human beings have long seen themselves as the center of the universe, as specially-created creatures who are anointed as above and beyond the natural world. Professor and noted scientist David P. B...

Jonathyne Briggs, “Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music, 1958-1980” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Pop pop pop pop musik” -M Jonathyne Briggs‘ new book, Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music, 1958-1980(Oxford University Press, 2015) makes music the historical focus ...

Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, "Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It" (FSG Originals, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (FSG Originals, 2020), the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unpreceden...

Shay Welch, "The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019), Shay Welch investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreogr...

Kate Parker Horigan, “Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative” (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kate Parker Horigan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, and a co-editor of the Journal of American Folklore. In Consuming Ka...

Amanda Lucia, “Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Waiting several hours in line for a hug is well worth it for thousands of people, the devotees of the Guru, Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi. In Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (Univers...

Introduction to the 'Ethnographic Marginalia' Podcast from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Far too often, the most evocative and interesting experiences that come out of ethnographic fieldwork are pushed to the margins. In the first episode of Ethnographic Marginalia, series hosts Sneha ...

Fiona Vera-Gray, "The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety" (Policy Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever thought about how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe goes largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, and yet wom...

Joanna Davidson, “Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a book about change. The Jola, a people living in Guinea-Bissau, have l...

Kimberly Arkin, “Rhinestones, Religion, and the Republic: Fashioning Jewishness in France” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), Jeffrey S. Shoulson, the Doris and Simon Konover Chair in Judai...

Lessie Jo Frazier, "Desired States: Sex, Gender, and Political Culture in Chile" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Hines (Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Oklahoma) and James Cane-Carrasco (Associate Professor, Departments of History and International & Area Studies, University of...

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...

Sandra Fahy, “Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amidst an atmosphere of hope on the Korean Peninsula over the past year, questions over the wellbeing of North Korea’s population have again come to global attention. But this is far from the first...

Neha Vora, “Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Neha Vora‘s Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2013) is a wonderfully rich and engaging account of middle class Indians who live and work, supposedly temporarily, ...

Baptiste Brossard, "Forgetting Items: The Social Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alzheimer's disease has not only profound medical consequences for the individual experiencing it but a life-changing impact on those around them. From the moment a person is suspected to be suffer...

Anand Taneja, “Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anand Taneja’s Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a landmark publication that interrogates modes of religious practi...

Gerard Russell, “Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s ex...

Carlo Caduff, "The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger" (U California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is an ethnographic inquiry into pandemic anxieties in the mid-2000s when su...

Adam Reich and Peter Bearman, “Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we hear about the “future of work” today we tend to think about different forms of automation and artificial intelligence—technological innovations that will make some jobs easier and others o...

Brett Hendrickson, “Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mexican American religious healing – often called curanderismo – is a vital component of life in the US-Mexican borderlands. In his book Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American...

Maura Finkelstein, "The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mumbai's textile industry is commonly but incorrectly understood to be an extinct relic of the past. In The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2019), Maur...

Gary Alan Fine, “Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice o...

Bruce A. Bradley, et al., “Clovis Technology” (International Monographs in Prehistory, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

13,000-years ago, the people of the first identifiable culture in North America were hunting mammoth and mastodon, bison, and anything else they could launch their darts and spears at, and undoubte...

Miriam J. Abelson, "Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American masculinity is being critiqued, questioned, and reinterpreted for a new era. In Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Miria...

James S. Bielo, “Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (NYU Press, 2018), James Bielo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, goes behind the scenes at Grant Count...

Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade links West Africa within a larger global economy. ...

A Discussion with Kelly McFall about Using "Reacting to the Past" in College Courses from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How best to teach history and, for that matter any social science subject, to college students? The traditional answer has been to lecture them. Given that the typical length of an attentive lectur...

Smadar Lavie, “Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Revised Edition)” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Revised Edition) (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Smadar Lavie analyzes the racial and gender justice protest...

Liz McFall, “Devising Consumption Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The role of financial services in individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives is more important than ever. In Devising Consumption: Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending (Routledge,...

Christopher Houston, "Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, Christopher Houston's new book Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey (University of California Pre...

Lee Humphreys, “The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life” (MIT Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Physical journals, scrapbooks, and photo albums all offer their owners the opportunity to chronicle both mundane and extravagant events. But unlike social media posting, this analog memorializing o...

Douglas B. Bamforth et al., “The Allen Site: A Paleoindian Camp in Southwestern Nebraska” (U of New Mexico Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of New Books in Archaeology we talk with Douglas B. Bamforth about his new book The Allen Site: A Paleoindian Camp in Southwestern Nebraska (University of New Mexico Press, 2015). B...

Chelsea McCracken, "A Grammar of Belep" (Walter de Gruyter, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Chelsea McCracken talks about her new book A Grammar of Belep (Walter de Gruyter, 2019). McCracken is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at Dixie State University and Senior R...

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, “What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize what They Do” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to the Walk Free Foundation, there are currently 46 million slaves in the world. Despite being against international law, slavery is not yet culturally condemned everywhere. Despite being...

Stefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drugs exist that are meant to help people feel better. The doctors who prescribe them might believe that they work, while their patients do not. In explaining the drugs to their patients, should th...

Great Books: Denis Hollier on Lévi-Strauss' "Tristes Tropiques" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques is one of the great books of the 20th century: intellectually bold, morally capacious, and it aims to understand nothing less than the elemental workings of t...

Jill Kelly, “To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996” (Michigan State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we talked with Jill Kelly about her new book To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996 published by Michigan State University Press in 2018. Her book i...

Paul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo” (Lexington Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul A. Christensen‘s new book is a thoughtful ethnography of drinking, drunkenness, and male sociability in modern urban Japan. Focusing on two major alcohol sobriety support groups in Japan, Alco...

Oliver Kaplan, "Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Reporters and scholars often focus on violence and victimization: “if it bleeds, it leads.” But unarmed civilians around the world often protect themselves against armed combatants using social pro...

David C. Posthumus, “All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), David C. Posthumus, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at the U...

Donald M. Nonini, “‘Getting By’: Class and State Formation Among Chinese in Malaysia” (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Getting By”: Class and State Formation Among Chinese in Malaysia (Cornell University Press, 2015) is a powerful and multilayered book that upbraids overseas Chinese studies for their neglect of cl...

J. S. Hirsch and S. Khan, "Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The fear of campus sexual assault has become an inextricable part of the college experience. Research has shown that by the time they graduate, as many as one in three women and almost one in six m...

Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark, “The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), editors Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark curate a wide-ranging collection of essays abou...

Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis, “The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who were the Indo-Europeans? Were they all-conquering heroes? Aggressive patriarchal Kurgan horsemen, sweeping aside the peaceful civilizations of Old Europe? Weed-smoking drug dealers rolling acro...

Marco Z. Garrido, "The Patchwork City: Class, Space and Politics in Metro Manila" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical patt...

Rachel O’Neill, “Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy” (Polity , 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the seduction, or “pick-up artist,” industry work? In her new book Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy (Polity, 2018), Rachel O’Neill provides a sociological analysis of the...

Joyce B. Flueckiger, “When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joyce B. Flueckiger‘s new bookWhen the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess (Indiana University Press, 2013) is a rich and colorful analysis of the goddess Gangamma’s festival and...

Sanjib Baruah, "In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sanjib Baruah’s latest book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (Stanford University Press, 2020) completes a trilogy on India’s northeastern borderland region of which the first two...

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers, “Violence’s Fabled Experiment” (August Verlag, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment (August Verlag, 2018), they exam...

J. Laurence Hare, “Excavating Nations: Archaeology, Museums, and the German-Danish Borderlands” (U of Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A recent book review I read began with the line “borderlands are back.” It’s certainly true that more and more historians have used borderland regions as the stage for some excellent work on the co...

Jatin Dua, "Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019) is a pirate story of a different kind. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Somalia, the UK ...

Thomas Schmidinger, “Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds” (Pluto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thomas Schmidinger‘s Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (Pluto Press, 2018) is an exploration of the history and present of Syrian Kurdistan. It is an excellent introduction to...

Gary Wilder, “Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritu...

Frederic C. Schaffer, "Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide" (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the third installment in our special series on interpretive political and social scientific research, Frederic C. Schaffer joins us to discuss his Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interp...

Peter Harries-Jones, “Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson’s World of Difference” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The work of polymath Gregory Bateson has long been the road to cybernetics travelled by those approaching this trans-disciplinary field from the direction of the social sciences and even the humani...

Allison Truitt, “Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City” (U of Washington Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There’s a lot more to money than its exchange value, as Allison Truitt reveals in her smartly written and lively study, Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City (University of Washington Press, 2013)a...

Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...

Bill Ivey, “Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America” (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bill Ivey’s Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana University Press, 2018) advances the idea that we are entering a post-enlightenment world increasingly characterized by al...

Julie Billaud, “Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Julie Billaud is a fascinating account of women and the state and ongoing ‘reconstruction’ project...

Baptiste Brossard, "Why do We Hurt Ourselves? Understanding Self-Harm in Social Life" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does an estimated 5% of the general population intentionally and repeatedly hurt themselves? What are the reasons certain people resort to self-injury as a way to manage their daily lives? In W...

Irfan Ahmad, “Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the last few decades, questions relating to Islam’s compatibility with liberal secular democracy, or the question of why Islam remains incompatible with Western liberal norms of thought and poli...

Kevin O’Neill, “Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin O’Neill‘s fascinating book Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala (University of California Press, 2015) traces the efforts of multi-million dollar programs aimed a...

Joseph E. Taylor III, "Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast" (Oregon State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

George Perkins Marsh Prize winning environmental historian and geographer Joseph E. Taylor III's new book, Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast (Oregon State Univer...

Tala Jarjour, “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Religious music can be a source of comfort and release, but also a remembrance of sadness and loss. In Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press, 2018), Tala Jarjour analyz...

Joseph Webster, “The Anthropology of Protestantism: Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Anthropology of Protestantism:Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), anthropologist Joseph Webster takes readers deep into the lives of fishermen in Gamrie, a ...

Joseph Reagle, "Hacking Life: Systematized Living and its Discontents" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces a...

S. Hayes and D. S. Wilson, “Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Human Behavior” (Context Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Evolution science and behavioral science both have strong theories that can help us understand humans in context, and yet, until now, the two fields have been mostly separate. In this episode, cros...

Todd Meyers, “The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy” (U of Washington Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Todd Meyers‘ The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy (University of Washington Press, 2013) is many things, all of them compelling and fully realized. Most di...

Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "HandiLand: The Crippest Place on Earth" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Throughout her new book, HandiLand: The Crippest Place on Earth (University of Michigan Press 2019), Elizabeth A. Wheeler uses a fictional place called HandiLand as a yardstick for measuring how fa...

Elana Buch, “Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are the vulnerabilities of older adults in need of care and their care workers intertwined? In Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care (New York University Press,...

Nicholas B. Dirks, “Autobiography of an Archive : A Scholar’s Passage to India” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nicholas B. Dirks‘ Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar’s Passage to India (Columbia University Press, 2015) is a wonderful collection of essays, loosely arranged along the line’s of the author’s...

D. A. Bell and W. Pei, "Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the arguments in favor of social hierarchies? Are there differences in how hierarchy is viewed and valued in China compared with other countries? Which forms of social hierarchy are morall...

Michael Levien, “Dispossession Without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historically ubiquitous at least since the 15th century and integral to the rise and consolidation of capitalism, land dispossession has re-emerged as a hot button issue for governments, industries...

Eben Kirksey, “The Multispecies Salon” (Duke University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eben Kirksey‘s wonderful new volume is an inspiring introduction to a kind of multispecies ethnography where artists, anthropologists, and others collaborate to create objects and experiences of gr...

Tania Jenkins, "Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession (Columbia University Press, 2020), Dr. Tania Jenkins engages readers in readers in a ethnography where she ...

Alyshia Gálvez, “Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico” (U. California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The North American Free Trade Agreement—or NAFTA, as we Americans call it—is very much in the news of late, primarily because President Trump has decided to make good on what he famously called “th...

Ritu G. Khanduri, “Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a wonderful piece of visual anthropology by Ritu Gairola Khanduri, which uses the histo...

Josh Seim, "Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect de...

Steven Roberts, “Young Working-Class Men in Transition” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do young working-class men experience the transition to adulthood? In his new book Young Working-Class Men in Transition (Routledge, 2018), Steven Roberts talks directly to young men to gain th...

Peter Gottschalk, “Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When did religion begin in South Asia? Many would argue that it was not until the colonial encounter that South Asians began to understand themselves as religious. In Religion, Science, and Empire:...

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, "Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019) is an ethnography of Palestinian life under occupation that takes waste infrastructures as a starting point fo...

Azra Hromadži?, “Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Despite all the buzz about the reconstruction of Mostar’s beautiful Old Bridge, Mostar remains a largely divided city, with Bosniaks on one side and Croats on the other. In Citizens of an Empty Nat...

Jie Li, “Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What’s not to love about Jie Li‘s new book? Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (Columbia University Press, 2015) explores the history and culture of Shanghai alleyway homes by focusing on...

M. Maloney, S. Roberts, and T. Graham, "Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can online social spaces like Reddit’s r/gaming reveal about gender attitudes, masculinized spaces, and turning points in gamer communities? In their new book Gender, Masculinity and Video Gam...

Jan M. Padios, “A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines” (Duke UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jan M. Padios‘ new book A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines (Duke University Press, ) sheds light on the industry of offshore call centers in the Phil...

Abdelwahab El-Affendi, “Genocidal Nightmares” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Genocide studies is one of the few academic fields with which I’m acquainted which is truly interdisciplinary in approach and composition. Today’s guest Abdelwahab El-Affendi, and the book he has e...

Jerome Whitington, "Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jerome Whitington's Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower (Cornell University Press, 2019) examines the dynamics and discourses centered around the development of hy...

Jessica Johnson, “Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), Dr. Jessica Johnson chronicles the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church, an evang...

Mukulika Banerjee, “Why India Votes?” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why India Votes? (Routledge, 2014) is the latest book by Mukulika Banerjee and is a deep, engaging and continually surprising account of elections in India. Weaving together ethnographic research i...

Kate Devlin, "Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots" (Bloomsbury, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the ancient Greeks to twenty-first century movies, robots in human form have captured our imagination, our...

Tom Cliff, “Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang” (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Compared to the provinces’s native Uyghur population, Han Chinese settlers in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not attracted as much scholarly or indeed journalistic attention of late...

Lisa Stevenson, “Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lisa Stevenson‘s new book opens with two throat-singing women and one listening king. Whether we hear them sitting down to a normal night’s dinner (as the women) or stalking the pages of a short st...

Darryl Li, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-calle...

Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner, “Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas (Yale University Press, 2018), edited by Yale University History and American Studies Professor Ned Blackhawk and University of Chicago Pos...

Cabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of...

Great Books: Peter Brooks on Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We want to be happy, we want to get what we want, we want to love and be loved. But life, even when our basic needs are met, often makes us unhappy. You can't always get what you want, Freud noted ...

Laura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of the large, government-sponsored housing projects called danch...

Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland, “Handbook of Anthropology in Business” (Left Coast Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland‘s bookHandbook of Anthropology in Business (Left Coast Press, 2014) isa groundbreaking collection of essays all related to Business Anthropology. As with all inte...

David Morton, "Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique" (Ohio UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who built Africa’s cities? Going beyond the colonial archive and the planner’s gaze, David Morton’s Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique (Ohio Universit...

Francesca Merlan, “Dynamics of Difference in Australia: Indigenous Past and Present in a Settler Country” (UPenn Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Dynamics of Difference in Australia: Indigenous Past and Present in a Settler Country (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Francesca Merlan, Professor of Anthropology at the A...

Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North ...

Elise Berman, "Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since World War II, the fate of the Marshal Islands has been tied to the United States. The Marshalls were a site of military testing, host a US military base, and many Marshallese migrate to the U...

Larisa Jašarevi?, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarevi? traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-He...

S. Lochlann Jain, “Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us” (U of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cancer pervades American bodies–and also habits of mind. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013) is a sharp, adventurous book by the established legal anthropologist...

Joseph O. Baker, "Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders, and Drifters" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher D. Bader and Joseph O. Baker's book Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders, and Drifters (University of California Press, 2019) examines how individuals and subcultures manage...

Michelle Perro and Vincanne Adams, “What’s Making Our Children Sick?” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pediatrician and integrative medicine practitioner Michelle Perro, MD, has been treating an increasing number of children with complex chronic illnesses that do not fit into our usual diagnostic bo...

Matt Tomlinson, “Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Religious ritual has been a staple of anthropological study. In his latest monograph, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance (Oxford University Press 2014), cultural anthropologist Ma...

Patrick Inglis, "Narrow Fairways: Getting By and Falling Behind in the New India" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Processes of globalization—the liberalization of national markets, the rapid movement of goods, services, and labor across national borders—have had profound impacts on local contexts, perhaps espe...

Susan Greenfield, “You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity” (Notting Hill Editions, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What makes you who you are? What makes you distinct from me? What is identity? In the book You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity (Notting Hill Editions, 2016), Baroness Susan Greenfield scientif...

Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. ...

Eva van Roekel, "Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Eva van Roekel grounds her research in phenomenological anthropology and the anthropology of emotion to o...

Christina Gish Hill, “Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood” (U Oklahoma Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One summer evening discussion on a front porch sparked Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood, Christina Gish Hill’s 2017 book from the University of Oklahoma Press. A friend on th...

Alex Nading, “Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health and the Politics of Entanglement” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dengue fever is on the rise globally. Since it is transmitted by mosquitoes which reside and reproduce in human environments, eradication efforts involve households and the people who keep them cle...

Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

John H. McWhorter, “The Creole Debate” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John H. McWhorter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has written academic books on creole linguistics, including the book we’ll be talking about...

Daniel Cloud, “The Domestication of Language” (Columbia UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the most puzzling things about humans is their ability to manipulate symbols and create artifacts. Our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom–apes–have only the rudiments of these abilities...

Jennifer B. Saunders, "Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances (Oxford University Press, 2019) tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narrati...

Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being reconfigured as a result. But how is this happenin...

Thom Scott-Phillips, “Speaking Our Minds” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I hope I’m not being species-centric when I say that the emergence of human language is a big deal. John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary rate it as one of the “major transitions in evolution”, pla...

matthew heinz, "Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse" (Intellect Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Published by intellect books in 2016, and currently distributed by The University of Chicago Press, Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse is a holistic study of the intersecting...

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, “The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez‘s new book, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2018) traces how globalization, neolibe...

Jamie Cross, “Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India” (Pluto Books, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India (Pluto Press, 2014), the excellent new book by Jamie Cross, explores the ways in which dreams of the future shape the present. Centring...

Orly Clergé, "The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the expansion of the Black American middle class and the increase in the number of Black immigrants among them since the Civil Rights period transformed the cultural landscape of New York C...

Andrew B. Kipnis, “From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have ima...

Lisa L. Gezon, “Drug Effects: Khat in Biocultural and Socioeconomic Perspective” (Left Coast Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Khat, the fresh leaves of the plant Catha edulis, is a mild psycho-stimulant. It has been consumed in Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia for over one thousand years. Khat consumption is an...

Randal Schnoor, "Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (Indiana University Press, 2018), Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor examine the impact of the family on Jewish identity. Through interviewing a sa...

Damien Riggs, “The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities” (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In order to fully grasp the workings of racism, we cannot limit ourselves to examining it within majority cultures. Racism exists in minority cultures, such as the gay community, but the intersecti...

Pamela Klassen, “Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Liberal Protestants are often dismissed as reflecting nothing more than a therapeutic culture or viewed as a measuring rod for the decline of Christian orthodoxy. Rarely have they been the subjects...

Megan Burke, "When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Megan Burke considers the relationship of sexual violence to lived time by reexa...

Michelle Pannor Silver, “Retirements and its Discontents: Why We Don’t Stop Working, Even If We Can” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do different professionals experience retirement? Michelle Pannor Silver’s new book Retirements and its Discontents: Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even If We Can (Columbia University Press, 2018),...

Amrita Pande, “Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India” (Columbia UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amrita Pande‘s Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) is a beautiful and rich ethnography of a surrogacy clinic. The book details the surrogacy...

Christopher J. Shepherd, "Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860-1975" (NIAS Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anyone who tries to understand the history, religion, and especially the “culture” of Southeast Asia, will soon encounter the phenomenon of animism, the belief that landscapes, natural objects, tre...

Steven Gimbel, “Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humor and its varied manifestations—jesting joking around, goofing, lampooning, and so on—pervade the human experience and are plausibly regarded as necessary features of interpersonal interactions...

Marcia Ochoa, “Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marcia Ochoa‘s book Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2014) is a detailed ethnography of Venezuelan modernity an...

Robert Frank, "Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street?our environments a...

Casey Walsh, “Virtuous Waters: Mineral Springs, Bathing, and Infrastructure in Mexico” (U California Press, 2018). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Water politics have long figured prominently in Mexico, and scholars have addressed such critical topics as irrigation, dam and canal building, and resource management, but few have examined how ev...

Amy Evrard, “The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement” (Syracuse University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amy Evrard‘s first book, The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2014), examines women’s attempts to change their patriarchal society via their movement for equality and ri...

Angela Jones, "Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry (NYU Press, 2020), Dr. Angela Jones engages readers in a five-year mixed-methods study she conducted on the erotic webc...

Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well as a free space for the black community. Despit...

Barbara Harriss-White, “Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy” (Three Essays Collective, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy: Three Essays and an Atlas (Three Essay Collective, 2013) is a wonderful new book by Barbara Harriss-White and small team of collaborators – Elisabet...

Matthew Gutmann, "Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (Basic Books, 2019), Matthew Gutmann examines how cultural expectations viewing men as violent and sex driven becomes a self-fulfilling pr...

Katherine A. Bowie, “Of Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the sidelines of the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s biennial conference, where she presented the inaugural keynote address of the Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars, Kat...

Katherine Frank, “Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Katherine Frank‘s book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), is a fascinating look at the taboo of group sex. Her robust research spans...

Charlene Makley, "The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rebgong, in the Northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau (China’s Qinghai Province), is in the midst of a ‘Battle for Fortune.’ That is, a battle to both accumulate as much fortune, but also a batt...

Megan Condis, “Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Battle for Online Culture” (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gaming has increasingly become part of mainstream culture, from the continued rise of console and PC gaming to the emergence of eSports. Gaming culture has also come under more scrutiny to the non-...

Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the modern world. The book uses the example of...

Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, "Why Does Patriarchy Persist?" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their ne...

John O’Brien, “Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do the social worlds of teenage Muslim American boys look like? What issues do they grapple with and how do they think about issues that arise in their everyday lives? In his new book Keeping ...

Shabana Mir, “Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity” (UNC, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses im...

Jonathan A. C. Brown, "Slavery and Islam" (Oneworld Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements ...

Zoltan Pall, “Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zoltan Pall‘s Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a just published ethnographic investigation of the rise of Salafism among Lebanese Sunni Mus...

Alice Conklin, “In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850-1950” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Host Jonathan Judaken and author Alice Conklin discuss the thorny relationship between science, society, and empire at the high water mark of French imperialism and European fascism, as well as thi...

Ivan V. Small, "Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Overseas Vietnamese are estimated to remit 15 billion dollars annually to family that remains in Vietnam. Ivan V. Small moves beyond the numbers to examine how remittances affect sociality and huma...

Joanna Radin, “Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether through the anxiety of mutually assured destruction or the promise of decolonization throughout Asia and Africa, Cold War politics had a peculiar temporality. In Life on Ice: A History of N...

Tine M. Gammeltoft, “Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tine Gammeltoft‘s new book explores the process of reproductive decision making in contemporary Hanoi. Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam (University of Califo...

David Adger, "Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David Adger is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, where he is Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. He has served as President of the Linguistics Associat...

Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central manufacturing node in the world, has acted as a ma...

Kevin Schilbrack, “Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this set of concerns has been left to philo...

SpearIt, “American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam” (First Edition Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research has shown that mass incarceration in A...

Paula Serafini, “Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institute f...

Benjamin Lieberman, “Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new book Remaking Identities:  God, Natio...

Allison Ochs, "Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?" (Amsterdam UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new books, Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?: A Modern Guide to Parenting Digital Teens, Derived from Lessons of the Past (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Allison Ochs combines experie...

Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, which means “comrade” and in more recent decades has ...

William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature of Religion” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What brings us together as scholars in Religious Studies? Are the various social phenomena commonly grouped together as religion really that similar? The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature...

Alexis Elder, "Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks and costs of face-to-face human interaction. But ...

Daisy Deomampo, “Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (NYU Press, 2016), Daisy Deomampo explores relationships between Indian surrogates, their families, aspiring parents ...

Morris B. Hoffman, “The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why do we feel guilty–and sometimes hurt ourselves–when we harm someone? Why do we become angry–and sometimes violent–when we see other people being harmed? Why do we forgive ourselves and others a...

Andrea Boyles, "You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Black lives matter before death.” (p.132) In her powerful new book, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America (University of California Press, 2019...

Adam Kuper, “Anthropology and Anthropologists: The British School in the Twentieth-Century” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adam Kuper‘s Anthropology and Anthropologists: The British School in the Twentieth-Century (Fourth Edition; Routledge, 2014) is an excellent, comprehensive tour through one of the most important an...

Cymene Howe, “Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua (Duke University Press, 2013), Cymene Howe offers an ethnography of activism. Woven into Nicaragua’s politica...

K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...

Rob Sullivan, “The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given” (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How to theorize what goes without saying? In The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Rob Sullivan develops a general theory of every...

Anne Allison, “Precarious Japan” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“[All] I want to eat is a rice ball.” This was the last entry in the diary of a 52-year-old man who starved to death in an apartment he had occupied for 20 years. His is just one of many voices of...

Anna M. Gade, “Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations” (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between Islam and the environment has a long and rich history across various Muslim societies. Anna M. Gade, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, outlines several stra...

Gordon C. C. Douglas, “The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The built environment around us seems almost natural, as in beyond our control to alter or shape. Indeed, we have reached a point in history when cities—the largest and most complex of our settleme...

Denise Brennan, “Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Denise Brennan‘s second book, Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States (Duke University Press, 2014), examines how individuals who were trafficked into forced labor go a...

Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger, "Re-Engineering Humanity" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting human...

Aaron Kuntz, “The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice” (Left Coast Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Aaron M. Kuntz about his book, The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice (Left Coast Press, 2015). This book offers a thorough and much...

Vershawn Young et al., “Other People’s English” (Teacher’s College Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In linguistics, we all happily and glibly affirm that there is no “better” or “worse” among languages (or dialects, or varieties), although we freely admit that people have irrational prejudices ab...

Catherine Besteman, "Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine L. Besteman's book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine (Duke University Press, 2016) is an important contribution to our understanding of the process of remaking one’...

Yasemin Besen-Cassino, “The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap” (Temple UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the rise of the #MeToo movement following dozens of high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault by professional men against women colleagues, gender equality has become a popular topic...

Zareena Grewal, “Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zareena Grewal‘s monograph Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (NYU Press, 2013), seamlessly interweaves ethnographic research with an in-depth historica...

Rachel Chrastil, "How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Jana Byars talks with Rachel Chrastil, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and member of the history department at Xavier University, about her newest book, How to Be Childless: A ...

Patrick Lopez-Aguado, “Stick Together and Come Back Home: Racial Sorting and the Spillover of Carceral Identity” (U California Press) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do systems of incarceration influence racial sorting inside and outside of prisons? And how do the social structures within prisons spill out into neighborhoods? In his new book, Stick Together...

Jon Mooallem, “Wild Ones” (Pengiun, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jon Mooallem‘s book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals In America (Penguin, 2013) is a tour of a few places on the North American ...

Wendy Bottero, "A Sense of Inequality" (Roman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand inequality? In A Sense of Inequality (Roman and Littlefield, 2020), Wendy Bottero, a Reader in Sociology at the University of Manchester offers a detailed and challenging n...

Ji-Yeon O. Jo, “Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration” (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For anyone with an interest in Korean studies, the study of diaspora and globalization, and indeed in broader questions around transnational identities and encounters in East Asia and beyond, Homin...

Leslie Irvine, “My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and their Animals” (Lynne Rienner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Homelessness and stigma go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more apparent than pet ownership among the homeless.  From nasty looks to outright insults  – ” you can’t even take care of yourself, yo...

Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of this military waste when it has served its purpose ...

Michele Zack, “The Lisu: Far from the Ruler” (UP of Colorado, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent years have brought a burgeoning interest in how highland people in mainland Southeast Asia live and communicate along and across the boundaries geographically assigned states whose lowland p...

Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg, eds., “The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religious Studies” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In almost every graduate program in Religious Studies and many undergraduate majors you will find a course on theories and methods in the study of religion. Usually, in these types of courses you w...

Filippo Marsili, "Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s ea...

Ann K. Ferrell, “Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century” (U Press of Kentucky, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ann K. Ferrell is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Folk Studies program at Western Kentucky University, and also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore. Her first book, B...

Marc L. Moskowitz, “Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In contemporary China, the game of Weiqi (also known as Go) represents many things at the same time: the military power of the general, the intellect and control of the Confucian gentleman, the rat...

Kenneth R. Valpey, "Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does cow care in India have to offer modern Western discourse animal ethics? Why are cows treated with such reverence in the Indian context? Join us as we speak to Kenneth R. Valpey about his ...

Sally and Richard Price, “Saamaka Dreaming” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Saamaka Dreaming (Duke University Press, 2017), Sally and Richard Price take readers back to their initial moments of fieldwork and recall their struggles, insights and encounters as they learne...

Thomas H. Guthrie, “Recognizing Heritage: The Politics of Multiculturalism in New Mexico” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New Mexico is a cultural borderland, marked by the interaction of Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American peoples over the past four hundred years. The question of how to commemorate this hist...

Narges Bajoghli, "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press, 2019), Narges Bajoghli takes an inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the deba...

Jessica Calarco, “Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In what ways do middle class students obtain advantages in schools? In her new book, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018), Je...

Afsar Mohammad, “The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India” (Oxford University Press, 2013 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The ...

Gediminas Lankauskas, "The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania" (U Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gediminas Lankauskas’ new book The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania (University of Toronto Press, 2015) is “an ethnography concerned with the ambiguities,...

Erik Mueggler, “Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text, and World in Southwest China” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of writing. The Han man was wealthy, purchased paper, and wrote o...

Eduardo Kohn, “How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When you open Eduardo Kohn‘s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human (University of California Press, 2013), you are entering a forest of dreams: the dreams of dogs and men, drea...

Neil McArthur, "Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications" (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sexbots are coming. Given the pace of technological advances, it is inevitable that realistic robots specifically designed for people's sexual gratification will be developed in the not-too-distant...

Michael Ramirez, “Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The pursuit of a musical career crosses the mind of most children. But, for most, a vocation is nothing more than a farfetched fantasy that will never come true. Music is often considered more appr...

Karen G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community” (Northeastern UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus...

Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, "Aerial Imagination in Cuba: Stories from Above the Rooftops" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Aerial Imagination in Cuba: Stories from Above the Rooftops (Routledge, 2019), Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier looks up at the sky, and from there she begins her stories about wifi,...

Gregory Snyder, “Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboarding” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Gregory Snyder, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and author of Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboa...

David N. Livingstone, “Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His provid...

Robert Rozehnal, "Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience" (OneWorld, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when the digital world meets Sufism? This is the question raised in the exciting new book Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (OneWorld Academic, 2019) b...

Holly Gayley, “Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Often when people think of Tibetan Buddhism they have a limited vision of that social reality, perhaps one that imagines monks sitting in meditation or focused on the Dalai Lama. Rarely is the hist...

Brent Nongbri, “Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept” (Yale University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all know that religion is a universal feature of human history, right? Well, maybe not. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale University Press, 2013), Brent Nongbri, Post Docto...

H. Appel, S. Whitley, C. Kline, "The Power of Debt: Identity and Collective Action in the Age of Finance" (Institute on Inequality and Democracy, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the upcoming 2020 U.S. election finally brings questions of economic justice center stage, this episode discusses the powerful short open-source book The Power of Debt: Identity and Collective A...

Joseph Sciorra, “Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in NYC” (U Tennessee Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Folklore scholar Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in Queens College which is part of the City University of New Y...

Erica Cusi Wortham, “Indigenous Media in Mexico: Culture, Community, and the State” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Videography is a powerful tool for recording and representing aspects of human society and culture, and anthropologists have long used – and debated the use of – video as a tool to study indigenous...

Maria Veri and Rita Liberti, "Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate" (U Arkansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Maria Veri, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University, and Rita Liberti, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, East Bay. Togethe...

Dan Bendarz, “East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View” (Palgrave, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View (Palgrave 2017), Dan Bednarz, Assistant Professor at Bristol Community College, examines the impact o...

Michael J. Hathaway, “Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Globalization is locally specific: global connectivity looks different from place to place. Given that, how are global connections made? And why do they happen so differently in different places? I...

Joyce Dalsheim, "Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self Determination as Self Elimination" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self Determination as Self Elimination (Oxford University Press, 2019), Joyce Dalsheim considers some of the surprising outcomes of the great Israeli experiment of r...

Mark Liechty, “Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal” (U of Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did Nepal become synonymous, in the minds of many Westerners, with the idea of a mystical paradise and a place to find enlightenment? How did Kathmandu become the subject of songs by countercul...

Jennie Burnet, “Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory and Silence in Rwanda” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our fast-paced world, it is easy to move from one crisis to another. Conflicts loom in rapid succession, problems demand solutions (or at least analysis) and impending disasters require a respon...

John Danaher, "Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The future is a constant focus of anxiety, and we are all familiar with the pressures that come distinctively from automation – the transformation by which tasks formerly assigned to humans come to...

Erica Lehrer, “Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometime in the very early 1990s, while I was in grad school, I got a call from a student at Grinnell College, where I myself had graduated asking me about studying Poland. It was an engaging chat ...

Pedro Oliveira, “People-Centered Innovation: Becoming a Practitioner in Innovation Research” (Biblio Publishing, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pedro Oliveira provides a fascinating glimpse into his transition from academia into consultancy, with a guide for those like minded to boot. People-Centered Innovation: Becoming a Practitioner in ...

Ajantha Subramanian, "The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is merit? How is it claimed? In her much-awaited book The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), Ajantha Subramanian addresses the pertinent question ...

Guillaume Rozenberg, “The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma” (U Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “...

David Novak, “Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thinking about “Noise” in the history and practice of music means thinking in opposites. Noise is both a musical genre, and is not. It both produces a global circulation and emerges from it. It has...

Jennifer Utrata, "Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia" (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jennifer Utrata in her book, Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia (Cornell University Press, 2015), investigates what she calls a “quiet revolution” in the Russian ...

Michal Kravel-Tovi, “When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel (Columbia University Press, 2017), Michal Kravel Tovi, associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at...

Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott, eds., “Addiction Trajectories” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Addiction has recently emerged as an object of anthropological inquiry. In a wonderful, focused volume of ethnographies of addiction in a wide range of contexts, Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott...

Sandra Fahy, "Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The things that are happening to North Korea are happening to all of us…they are part of the human community. To say that this is just a problem for North Korea is to say that North Koreans are no...

John Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and I...

Kim TallBear, “Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is genetic testing a new national obsession? From reality TV shows to the wild proliferation of home testing kits, there’s ample evidence it might just be. And among the most popular tests of all i...

Sidharthan Maunaguru, "Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War" (U Washington Press 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sidharthan Maunaguru’s Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War (University of Washington Press 2019) is an unusual ethnography of the ‘in-betweenness’ a...

Jenny Reardon, “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Knowledge and Justice after the Genome” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we create meaning after the genome? Such a profound question is at the center of the recently published book by Jenny Reardon, The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Knowledge and Justice after ...

Ken MacLeish, “Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ken MacLeish offers an ethnographic look at daily lives and the true costs borne by soldiers, their families, and communities, in his new book Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Mil...

William Westermeyer, "Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement" (U Nebraska 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With his new book Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement (University of Nebraska, 2019), Professor William Westermeyer explores the once-powerful Tea Party Movemen...

Alexandra Cox, “Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the juvenile justice system impact the lives of the young people that go through it? In her new book, Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People (Rutgers Universit...

Sienna R. Craig, “Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is efficacy determined, and what is at stake in those ...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in eac...

Japonica Brown-Saracino, “How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of us move to a new place at some point in our lives for a variety of reasons: for a job, to be with a partner, to attend school, for a change of scenery, to retire. When we have a choice, we ...

Joanne Benham Rennick, “Religion in the Ranks: Belief and Religious Experience in the Canadian Forces” (University of Toronto Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of religion in the military? What are the roles of religious chaplains in the military? How are important issues such as post-traumatic stress, religious and ethnic diversity, and ...

Miriam Driessen, "Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia" (Hong Kong UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I met Dr Miriam Driessen at Oxford University where she works at the China Centre. We spoke about her wonderful new book Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia (Hong...

Debarati Sen, “Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling” (SUNY Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling (SUNY Press, 2017), Debarati Sen analyzes the paradoxes and promises of Fair Trade-organic tea production i...

Rachel Prentice, “Bodies in Formation: An Ethnography of Anatomy and Surgery Education” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rachel Prentice‘s new book blends methodological approaches from science studies and anthropology to produce a riveting account of anatomical and surgical education in twenty-first century North Am...

Thomas Yarrow, "Architects: Portraits of a Practice" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal qu...

Mara Buchbinder, “All in Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain” (U California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As physicians, we cannot image or measure it, we can only try to locate within the lives and (sometimes) bodies of our patients. In All in Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain (University of C...

Christine Yano, “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Li...

Maziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a fascinating, n...

Timothy Neale, “Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia” (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Tim Neale examines the controversy over the 2005 Wild Rivers Act in the Cape York P...

Pauline Turner Strong, “American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries” (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pauline Turner Strong‘s new book American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) traces the representations of Native Americans...

William D. Lopez, "Separated: Family & Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens to families and communities after immigration raids? William D. Lopez answers this question and more in his new book Separated: Family & Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Ra...

Gloria Origgi, “Reputation: What it is and Why it Matters” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all put a great deal of care into protecting, managing, and monitoring our reputation. But the precise nature of a reputation is obscure. In one sense, reputation is merely hearsay, a popular pe...

John Osburg, “Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Osburg‘s new book explores the rise of elite networks of newly-rich entrepreneurs, managers of state enterprises, and government officials in Chengdu. Based on extensive fieldwork that include...

Deborah Lupton, "The Quantified Self" (Polity, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to p...

Hanna Engelmeier, “Man, the Ape: Anthropology and the Reception of Darwin in Germany, 1850-1900” (Bohlau, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between humans and apes has been discussed for centuries. That discussion took a new turn with the publication and reception of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natura...

Frans De Waal, “The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among Primates” (Norton, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humans are quite a bit like chimpanzees, genetically speaking. Of course humans are quite a bit like fruit flies, genetically speaking. But when it comes to behavior, humans are much more like chim...

Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The production and removal of garbage, as a key element of the daily infrastructure of urban life, is deeply embedded in social, moral, and political contexts. In her book Garbage Citizenship: Vita...

Natalia Roudakova, “Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Natalia Roudakova’s book Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores changes in the world of journalism in Russia in the last fifty years. D...

Martha C. Howell, “Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that meant. If it meant they traded property for money,...

Victoria Reyes, "Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Increasing levels of globalization have led to the proliferation of spaces of international exchange. In her new book, Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (S...

George Paul Meiu, “Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money and Belonging in Kenya” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor George Paul Meiu‘s debut anthropological book, Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2017), dives into the commodification of cult...

Nancy Segal, “Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Identical twins, separated at birth, raised in different families, and reunited in adulthood. In 1979, psychology researchers in Minnesota found some twins who had been reunited after a lifetime of...

Stephen Le, "100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today" (Picador, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are few areas of modern life that are burdened by as much information and advice, often contradictory, as our diet and health: eat a lot of meat, eat no meat; whole-grains are healthy, whole-...

Dorothy Noyes, “Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life” (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016) is an anthology of essays from Dorothy Noyes, professor of English and Comparative Studies at the Ohio State Universi...

Dominic Pettman, “Human Error” (UMinnesota, 2011)/”Look at the Bunny” (Zero Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The humans are dead.” Whether or not you recognize the epigram from Flight of the Conchords (and if not, there are worse ways to spend a few minutes than by looking here, and I recommend sticking...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...

Fareen Parvez, “Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford University Press, 2017) by Fareen Parvez is a rich ethnographic analysis of Islamic Revival movements in France (Lyon) and India ...

Helen Longino, “Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What explains human behavior? It is standard to consider answers from the perspective of a dichotomy between nature and nurture, with most researchers today in agreement that it is both. For Helen ...

Emanuela Grama, "Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, Emanuela Grama's new book Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania (Indiana University Press, 2019) explores the socialist state's attemp...

Karina O. Alvarado et al, “U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance” (U of Arizona Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (University of Arizona Press, 2017) editors Karina O. Alvarado, Alicia Ivonne Estrada, and Ester E. Hern...

Jared Diamond, “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?” (Viking, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s pretty common–and has long been–for people to think that the “way it used to be” is better than the way it is. This tendency to idealize an (imagined) past is particularly strong today among c...

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, "Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato's Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) is a book about home and not-home, eloquently told about the hopes and dreams...

Claudio Sopranzetti, “Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility and Politics in Bangkok” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When the army brutally dispersed Red Shirts protestors in Bangkok’s busy commercial district in May 2010, motorcycle taxi drivers emerged as a key force, capable of playing cat-and-mouse with secur...

Marlene Zuk, “Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live” (Norton, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Hebrews called it “Eden.” The Greeks and Romans called it the “Golden Age.” The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the “State of Nature.” Marx and Engels called it “Primitive Communism....

Mila Dragojevi?, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojevi? develops the concept of amoral c...

Kathryn Woolard, “Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in Twenty-First Century Catalonia” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathryn Woolard is Professor Emerita and Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She has authored seminal works on language ideology and the sociolinguistic s...

Barbara R. Ambros, “Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It opens with a parakeet named Homer, and it closes with a dog named Hachiko. In the intervening pages, Barbara Ambros explores the deaths, afterlives, and necrogeographies of pets in contemporary...

Angela Rudert, "Shakti's New Voice: Guru Devotion in a Women-Led Spiritual Movement" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Angela Rudert's Shakti's New Voice: Guru Devotion in a Women-Led Spiritual Movement (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) is the first academic study of the popular contemporary North Indian female guru A...

Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday, “Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday spent ten years interviewing criminal defense attorneys throughout China in order to compile the evidence on the professional lives of criminal defense attorneys in...

Signe Rousseau, “Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet” (AltaMira Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The other day I found myself in a cooking situation that’s fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered red pepper, a bunch of half-wilted parsley–and needed...

Adeline Masquelier, "Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger (University of Chicago Press 2019) is a study of the kinds of experimentation and creative engagements that young men in the urban public spaces of Niger undert...

Thomas Mira y Lopez, “The Book of Resting Places: A Personal History of Where We Lay the Dead” (Counterpoint Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all participated in the rituals of the dead at some time or another in our lives, going to funerals and wakes, visiting loved ones in cemeteries. Some of us may even have a plan for when we p...

Michael David Kaulana Ing, “The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early C...

Mark Alizart, "Dogs" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Man’s best friend, domesticated since prehistoric times, a travelling companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy curled up by the fire and bounding through the great o...

Christopher J. Lee, “Jet Lag” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

My father has this personality quirk that drives me crazy. Whenever and wherever he travels, no matter how far, he refuses to reset his watch to the local time. For him, it’s always whatever time i...

John S. Allen, “The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship to Food” (Harvard University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Did Proust have it right? Does food, whether it’s a madeleine from an aristocratic childhood or the Velveeta mac-and-cheese my mom used to make, have a special significance for our memory, perhaps ...

Wendy Wickwire, "At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging" (UBC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The history of anthropology remembers James Teit as a field assistant and man-on-the spot for Franz Boas. But in At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging (University of British Co...

Lucinda Carspecken, “Love in the Time of Ethnography” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Love in the Time of Ethnography: Essays on Connection as a Focus and Basis for Research (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) is edited by Lucinda Carspecken, anthropologist and lecturer in the School of ...

Morgan Liu, “Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Morgan Liu‘s book, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) brings to light the life of ethnic Uzbeks living in the city of Osh, located in...

Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, a...

Rachel Sherman, “Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For her new book Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence (Princeton University Press, 2017), Rachel Sherman conducted in-depth interviews with fifty wealthy New Yorkers—including hedge fund finan...

Karen Ruffle, “Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi’ism” (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does a wedding in Karbala in the year 680 have to do with South Asian Muslims today? As it turns out, this event informs contemporary ideas of personal piety and social understanding of gender...

Quassim Cassam, "Conspiracy Theories" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

9/11 was an inside job. The Holocaust is a myth promoted to serve Jewish interests. The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were a false flag operation. Climate change is a hoax perpetrated b...

Jerry Flores, “Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wrap-Around Incarceration” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the lives of young incarcerated Latinas like? And what were their lives like before and after their incarceration? In his new book, Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wrap-Around Incarcer...

Giusi Tamburello, “Concepts and Categories of Emotion in East Asia” (Carocci editore, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between language and the emotions? Where ought we look for evidence of emotion in historical and literary texts? Is it possible to talk about the emotional states of entire...

Han F. Vermeulen, "Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment" (U Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Winner of the 2017 International Convention of Asia Schol...

Ammara Maqsood, “The New Pakistani Middle Class” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between class and religious piety represents a theme less explored in the study of modern Islam in general, and in the study of South Asian Islam in particular. In her incredibly n...

Sandra Chait, “Seeking Salaam: Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis in the Pacific Northwest” (University of Washington Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the Pacific Northwest, immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia coexist, making a life for themselves and their family in a new country. In the book Seeking Salaam : Ethiopians, Eritreans a...

Serin D. Houston, "Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), the geographer Serin Houston complicates Seattle’s liberal and progressive reputation through a close e...

C. Grant and H. Schippers, “Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2016), a multi-authored volume co-edited by Catherine Grant and Huib Schippers, examines a range of music...

Helene Mialet, “Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject” (University of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“By error or by chance, I think I have discovered an angel.”  First things first: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (University of Chicago Press, 201...

Jonathan Rosa, "Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathan Rosa's new book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the emergence of linguistic...

Claire Schmidt, “If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claire Schmidt is not a prison worker, rather she is a folklorist and an Assistant Professor at Missouri Valley College. However, many members of her extended family in her home state of Wisconsin ...

Franck Salameh, “Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon” (Lexington Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Franck Salameh achieves his goal of revealing “another” version of the Middle East with his book. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon (Lexington Books, 2010). Th...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...

Peter Hempenstall, “Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman and the War over Cultural Anthropology” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The debate over Margaret Mead’s and Derek Freeman’s conflicting ethnographic reports has gone on for decades. While no longer a hot topic, Mead-Freeman stands as a testament to the power and, somet...

Sherine Hamdy, “Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the best things about co-hosting New Books in STS is the opportunity to discover books like this one. Sherine Hamdy has given us something special in Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transpla...

Lynne Pettinger, "What’s Wrong with Work?" (Policy Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand work? In What’s Wrong with Work? (Policy Press, 2019), Lynn Pettinger, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, explores how work is organised, interc...

Zoe Wool, “After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zoe Wool‘s ethnography of rehabilitation After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed (Duke University Press, 2015) describes how soldiers injured in the war on terror are pulled towards a normal a...

Merry White, “Coffee Life in Japan” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted blue in an underground coffeehouse, and closes wi...

Perla Guerrero, "Nuevo South: Asians, Latinas/os, and the Remaking of Place" (U Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Perla Guerrero is the author of Nuevo South: Asians, Latinas/os, and the Remaking of Place (University of Texas Press, 2017). Nuevo South explores the history of an ever diversifying U.S. South by ...

Alison Gerber, “The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is making art a job? This question is central to The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (Stanford University Press, 2017), the new book by Alison Gerber, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department...

Laurence Monnais, C. Michele Thompson, and Ayo Wahlberg, “Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) gives me hope for the future of edited volumes. Not only is it a fascinating and coher...

Gary J. Adler, Jr., "Empathy Beyond US Borders: The Challenges of Transnational Civic Engagement" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do immersion trips really transform those who participate and how so? In his new book Empathy Beyond US Borders: The Challenges of Transnational Civic Engagement (Cambridge University Press, 2019),...

Leo Coleman, “A Moral Technology: Electrification as Political Ritual in New Delhi” (Cornell UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We take electricity for granted. But the material grids and wires that bring light to homes and connect places are also objects of moral concern, political freedoms and national advancement, sugges...

Mark Rowe, “Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Rowe‘s new book Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism (University of Chicago Press, 2011) is a fascinating study of the life of Buddhism ...

Andreas Bernard, "Theory of the Hashtag" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his short book, Theory of the Hashtag (Polity, 2019), Andreas Bernard traces the origins and career of the hashtag. Following the history of the # sign through its origins in the Middle Ages and...

Ray Cashman, “Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border” (U Wisconsin Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do individuals on national or societal peripheries make use of tradition and to what ends? How can narratives discursively construct a complex worldview? These are some of the questions Ray Cas...

Robert Lane Greene, “You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Politics of Identity” (Delacorte Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Isn’t it odd how the golden age of correct language always seems to be around the time that its speaker was in high school, and that language has been going to the dogs ever since? Such is the angu...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...

Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in My...

Noboru Ishikawa, “Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a South East Asian Borderland” (NUS Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Borneo is an island where three very different nation-states meet: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The Indonesian province of Kalimantan occupies most of the island; of the rest, all except one pe...

Francesco Duina, "Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country (Stanford University Press 2018), Professor Francesco Duina asks why impoverished Americans espouse such great and abidin...

April Mayes, “The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race and Dominican National Identity” (U. Press of Florida, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a perceptive challenge to longstanding assumptions about Dominican anti-Haitianism, April J. Mayes finds fresh ways to think about the production of race in late 19th and 20th century Dominican ...

Douglas Rogers, “The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals” (Cornell UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are ethics? What are morals? How are they constituted, practiced, and regulated? How do they change over time? My own research is informed by these question; so is Douglas Rogers‘. So it was o...

Erik Harms, "Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon" (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when market-oriented policy reforms butt heads with a single-party state’s strictly maintained limits on political freedoms? That question sets the terms for Luxury and Rubble: Civilit...

Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west and east Africa. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti empl...

Ann Fabian, “The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead” (University of Chicago, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What should we study? The eighteenth-century luminary and poet Alexander Pope had this to say on the subject: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man ” (An E...

jimi adams, "Gathering Social Network Data" (Sage, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is social network data and what are the issues associated with collecting it? In his new book Gathering Social Network Data (Sage, 2019), jimi adams focuses on the principles necessary for gat...

Owen Flanagan, “The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is it to be moral, to lead an ethically good life? From a naturalistic perspective, any answer to this question begins from an understanding of what humans are like that is deeply informed by ...

Azar Gat, “War in Human Civilization” (Oxford UP, 2006) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians don’t generally like the idea of “human nature.” We tend to believe that people are intrinsically malleable, that they have no innate “drives,” “instincts,” or “motivations.” The reason ...

Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a “frontier” is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an associate professor of anthropology at University of Cal...

Zek Valkyrie, “Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Offline” (Praeger, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zek Valkyrie teaches at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. His new book, Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Offline (Praeger, 2017), takes readers into the w...

P. Bingham and J. Souza, “Death From a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe” (BookSurge, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Long ago, historians more or less gave up on “theories of history.” They determined that human nature was too unpredictable, cultures too various, and developmental patterns too evanescent for any ...

Rita Kesselring, "Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa" (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rita Kesselring’s important book Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Stanford University Press, 2017) seeks to understand the embodied and everyday effect...

Sarah D. Phillips, “Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine” (Indiana UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine (Indiana University Press, 2010), Sarah D. Phillips offers a compelling investigation of disability policies and movements in Ukraine a...

Gregory Cochran, “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” (Basic, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

First, the conventional wisdom. Because Homo sapiens are a young species and haven’t had time to genetically differentiate, we modern humans are all basically genetically identical. Because Homo sa...

Ather Zia, "Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ather Zia’s Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism (University of Washington Press, 2019) is a brilliant, bold, and urgent ethnography centered on Kashmiri women of the A...

Sareeta Amrute, “Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Associate professor of anthropology at the University of Washington Sareeta Amrute has written Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin (Duke University Press, 2016), a study of c...

Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, "No Path Home: Humanitarian Camps and the Grief of Displacement" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In No Path Home: Humanitarian Camps and the Grief of Displacement (Cornell University Press, 2018), Elizabeth Cullen Dunn describes in a very on point and straight forward way how displacement has ...

Rafia Zakaria, “Veil” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslim women are often the focus of debate when it comes to public conversations about Islam. Much of this centers on feelings and assumptions surrounding an object, the veil. Rafia Zakaria, journa...

Southeast Asian Performance, Ethnic Identity and China’s Soft Power: A Discussion with Dr Josh Stenberg from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From glove puppets of Chinese origin and Hakka religious processions, to wartime political theatre and contemporary choirs and dance groups, the diverse performance practices of ethnic Chinese comm...

Don Kulick, "A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea" (Algonquin Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Called "perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature" by the Wall Street Journal, A Death in the Rainfor...

Luisa Del Giudice, ed. “On Second Thought: Learned Women Reflect on Profession, Community, and Purpose” (U. Utah Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On Second Thought: Learned Women Reflect on Profession, Community, and Purpose (University of Utah Press, 2017) is a collection of thirteen essays by women, all in the second half of their lives, i...

Jill Massino, "Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania" (Berghahn, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, we meet Dr. Jill Massino, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina who is fascinated researching everyday life under dictatorships. We discuss her firs...

James F. Brooks, “Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat’ovi Massacre” (W.W. Norton and Co., 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James F. Brooks, UC Santa Barbara Professor of History and Anthropology and the William S. Vaughn Visiting Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, offers a s...

Kelly Underman, "Feeling Medicine: How the Pelvic Exam Shapes Medical Training" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The pelvic exam is considered a fundamental procedure for medical students to learn; it is also often the one of the first times where medical students are required to touch a real human being in a...

Erika Milam, "Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primatologists in the years after World War II. Milam ...

Bryan D. Lowe, “Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. Lowe examines eighth-century Japanese practices ...

James Staples, "Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bovine politics exposes fault lines within contemporary Indian society, where eating beef is simultaneously a violation of sacred taboos, an expression of marginalized identities, and a route to co...

Grégoire Mallard, "Gift Exchange: The Transnational History of a Political Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since Marcel Mauss published his foundational essay "The Gift" in 1925, many anthropologists and specialists of international relations have seen in the exchange of gifts, debts, loans, concessions...

Carolyn Sufrin, “Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women behind Bars” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1976, the landmark supreme court case Estelle v. Gamble, established that under the Eighth Amendment “deliberate indifference” to the health needs of incarcerated individuals was tantamount to c...

Caroline Starkey, "Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection, Community" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Based on detailed ethnographic research, this book explores the varied experiences of women who have converted to Buddhism in contemporary Britain and analyses the implications of their experiences...

Rachel Werczberger, "Jews In The Age Of Authenticity: Jewish Spiritual Renewal In Israel" (Peter Lang, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Perhaps there’s something in the air in the Middle East, something that elevates spirituality. The Middle East, particularly Israel, is the legendary home of spiritual searching, of prophecy and re...

Andreas Gehrlach, “Thieves: Stealing in Literature, Philosophy, and Myth” (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Thieves: Stealing in Literature, Philosophy, and Myth (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2016)—in German: Diebe: Die heimliche Aneignung als Ursprungserzahlung in Literatur, Philosophie und Myth...

Zainab Saleh, "Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqis abroad, hoping to return one day to a better Iraq, became uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (Stanford UP, 2020) tells ...

Geoffrey Barstow, "Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tibetan Buddhism teaches compassion toward all beings, a category that explicitly includes animals. Slaughtering animals is morally problematic at best and, at worst, completely incompatible with a...

Neda Maghbouleh, “The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does a group become defined as white? And does that group define themselves that way as well? Neda Maghbouleh‘s new book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of...

Steven M. Ortiz, "The Sport Marriage: Women Who Make It Work" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steven M. Ortiz’ new book The Sport Marriage: Women Who Make It Work (University of Illinois Press, 2020) offers an in-depth analysis of and perceive insight into what is means to be an athlete’s w...

Benjamin Tausig, "Bangkok is Ringing: Sound, Protest, and Constraint" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The political protests of the “Red Shirts” movement in Thailand in April-May 2010 ended in tragedy, with the security forces killing over 90 people and injuring thousands more. Thailand’s political...

Ian Brodie, “A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy” (UP of Mississippi, 2014). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy (The University Press of Mississippi, 2014), Ian Brodie, an associate professor of folklore at Cape Breton University, brings a folkloristic appro...

Hugh Raffles, "The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time" (Pantheon Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At once an examination of geology, a biography of monuments, and a meditation on the connection between personal loss and massive loss, Hugh Raffles’ The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Los...

Tim Frandy, "Inari Sami Folklore: Stories from Aanaar" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) is rich multivoiced anthology of folktales, legends, joik songs, proverbs, riddles, and other verbal art, this is the ...

Kathryn Lofton, “Consuming Religion” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies and history at Yale University. Her book Consuming Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2017) offers a collection of eleven essays of cultural c...

Silvie Jacobi, "Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is an art school? In Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Dr Silvie Jacobi, a researcher and head of education at London School...

Dolly Kikon, "Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India(University of Washington Press, 2019), anthropologist Dolly Kikon offers a rich account of life in the midst of ...

Jeffrey H. Cohen, “Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World” (U. Texas Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeffrey H. Cohen, a professor at The Ohio State University, has managed a rare feat: placing anthropology classics like Argonauts of the Western Pacific in the context of eating grasshoppers. His i...

Kathryn A. Mariner, "Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States (University of California Press, 2019) offers an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner ...

Ashanté M. Reese, "Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C." (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), by Ashanté M. Reese, examines the ways in which residents of the Deanwoo...

Daromir Rudnyckyj and Filippo Osella, eds., “Religion and the Morality of the Market: Anthropological Perspectives” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there has been a widespread affirmation of economic ideologies that conceive the market as an autonomous sphere of human practice. In the wake of the 2008 fin...

Micha Rahder, "An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love, and Technoscience in Guatemalan Forest Conservation" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are joined today by Dr. Micha Rahder, writer, editor, and independent scholar based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We will be talking about her new book, An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love,...

Alex Rosenblat, "Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work" (California UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does uber tell us about work, labor management, and mobility in the post-financial crisis world? Uber’s success has been tied to its cultural resonance and on its ability to tell convincing st...

Alessandro Duranti, “The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alessandro Duranti is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, where he served as Dean of Social Sciences from 2009-2016. In his book The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of ...

Suma Ikeuchi, "Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1990, the Japanese government introduced the Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa and since then it has attracted more than 190,000 Nikkei Brazilian nationals to Japan. In Jesus Loves Japan: Re...

Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer, "Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is the third of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene.  Also listen to my individual interviews with Howe and Boyer abou...

Jamie Woodcock, “Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers” (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the working conditions and what are the possibilities for change in the contemporary economy? In Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers (Pluto Press, 2017), Jamie Wood...

Andrea Chiovenda, "Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Against the backdrop of four decades of continuous conflict in Afghanistan, the Pashtun male protagonists of this book carry out their daily effort to internally negotiate, adjust (if at all), and ...

Mubbashir A. Rizvi, "The Ethics of Staying: Social Movements and Land Rights Politics in Pakistan" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The military coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power as Pakistan's tenth president resulted in the abolition of a century-old sharecropping system that was rife with corruption. In its ...

Nicholas C. Kawa, “Amazonia in the Anthropocene: People, Soils, Plants, and Forests” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Widespread human alteration of the planet has led many scholars to claim that we have entered a new epoch in geological time: the Anthropocene, an age dominated by humanity. This ethnography is the...

M. Newhart and W. Dolphin, "The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Medical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates dilemmas for patients who participate in state ...

Charles King, "Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century" (Doubleday, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American anthropologists consider Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead to be foundational figures, but outside the academy few people know the details of their ideas. In this new volume, Ch...

Carwyn Jones, “New Treaty, New Tradition: Reconciling New Zealand and Maori Law” (U. British Columbia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In New Treaty, New Tradition: Reconciling New Zealand and Maori Law (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), Carwyn Jones, Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Victoria University of Wellin...

Minjeong Kim, "Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and "Multiculturalism" in Rural South Korea" (U Hawai’i Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Studies on marriage migration often portray marriage migrants as victims of globalization and patriarchy. Although there are intersecting oppressions among female migrant workers, the tendency to c...

Dominic Boyer, "Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is the second of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene.  Also listen to my interview with Howe about her volume, Ecologi...

Patricia Sloane-White, “Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between religion and economic activity has attracted generations of scholars working in myriad settings. In recent years, many have turned to questions of how Islamic ideas are gen...

Sara Luna, "Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 2008 and 2009, a tim...

Alma Jefti?, "Social Aspects of Memory: Stories of Victims and Perpetrators from Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Social Aspects of Memory: Stories of Victims and Perpetrators from Bosnia-Herzegovina (Routledge, 2019). Alma Jefti? presents the compelling results of an empirical psychological s...

Mengia Hong Tschalaer, “Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles ...

Gregory Forth, "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gregory Forth, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has studied the Nage people of the eastern Indonesian island of Flores for ...

Cymene Howe, "Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is the first of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press, 2019).  Also listen to my interview with B...

Gareth M. Thomas, “Down’s Syndrome Screening and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing on an ethnography of Down’s syndrome screening in two UK clinics, Gareth M. Thomas‘ Down’s Syndrome and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic (Routledge...

Li Zhang, "Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound...

Suzanne Scott, "Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Suzanne Scott’s new book Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry (NYU Press, 2019) provides an overview of the convergence culture industry and the world of fandom whi...

Kristina Musholt, “Thinking About Oneself: From Nonconceptual Content to the Concept of a Self” (MIT Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When Descartes famously concluded “I think, therefore I am”, he took for granted his ability to use the first person pronoun to refer to himself. But how do we come to have this capacity for self-c...

Teren Sevea, "Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press), Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracl...

Evgeny Finkel, "Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust" (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can there be a political science of the Holocaust? Evgeny Finkel, in his new book Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust(Princeton University Press, 2017), answers Charles King's q...

Ilana Gershon, “Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Labor markets are not what they used to be, as Ilana Gershon argues in Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Job seekers a...

Alexey Golubev, "The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia (Cornell UP, 2020) is a social and cultural history of material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. It traces the biographies of ...

William Elison, "The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and the Visible at the Margins of Mumbai" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

William Elison's The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and the Visible at the Margins of Mumbai(University of Chicago Press, 2018) explores how slum residents, tribal people, and members of other ma...

Bruce O’Neill, “The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order” (Duke University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order (Duke University Press, 2017) Bruce O’Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downwar...

Kristina M. Lyons, "Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Colombia, decades of social and armed conflict and the US-led war on drugs have created a seemingly untenable situation for scientists and rural communities as they attempt to care for forests a...

Nancy Lough and Andrea N. Geurin, "Routledge Handbook of the Business of Women's Sport" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shortly after the conclusion of the Women's World Cup earlier this summer, a friend suggested to me that it signaled the long-awaited arrival of soccer as a mainstream sport in the U.S. I thought a...

Adriana Helbig, “Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration” (Indiana UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2004, during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Adriana Helbig saw African musicians rapping in Ukrainian and wearing embroidered Ukrainian ethnic costumes. Her curiosity about how these musician...

Tahseen Shams, "Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Tahseen Shams (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toront...

Belinda Stillion Southard, "How to Belong: Women’s Agency in a Transnational World" (Penn State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Dr. Belinda Stillion Southard (she/hers)...

Sophie Egan, “Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are” (William Morrow, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey thr...

Ahalya Satkunaratnam, "Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practicing Bharatanatyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka" (Wesleyan UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“How can dance be sustained by its practitioners in the unstable political and geographical landscape of war?” Satkunaratnam asks this through her text, Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practici...

Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow, "Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes" (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This episode is the first in a new series, New Books in Interpretive Social Science, which will feature works on interpretive research design and practice alongside recently published exemplary int...

Nader Hashimi and Danny Postel, eds. “Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The term ‘sectarianism’ has dominated much of the discourse on the Middle East and dictates that much of the unrest in the region is due to religious and cultural differences stemming back centurie...

Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely, "Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2018), Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely make a case for why interpretivism is the most philosophically cogent appro...

Lindsey Green-Simms, "Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cars promise freedom, autonomy, and above all, movement but leave whole cities stuck in traffic, breathing polluted air, exposed of deadly crashes, and dependent on vast the vast infrastructures of...

Pooyan Tamimi Arab, “Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In mid-March, Europeans observed the Dutch national elections with intense interest. Onlookers believed that a victory of the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders will influence the results of co...

Joseph E. David, "Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why are we so concerned with belonging? In what ways does our belonging constitute our identity? Is belonging a universal concept or a culturally dependent value? How does belonging situate and mot...

Julia Cassaniti, "Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you understand mindfulness? Is your understanding limited by your own culture’s definition of what mindfulness is? These are some of the questions you will ask yourself while reading Remembe...

Jon Dean, “Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction” (Policy Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction (Policy Press, 2017) by Jon Dean, a senior lecturer in politics and sociology at Sheffield Hallam University, explores and explains reflexivity as one of the esse...

Fernando Domínguez Rubio, "Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you keep the cracks in Starry Night from spreading? How do you prevent artworks made of hugs or candies from disappearing? How do you render a fading photograph eternal—or should you attempt...

Juan Javier Rivera Andía, "Non-Humans in Amerindian South America" (Berghahn, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Non-Humans in Amerindian South America: Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals, and Songs (Berghahn, 2018), eleven researchers bring new ethnographies to bear on anthropological debate...

Michael Youngblood, “Cultivating Community: Interest, Identity, and Ambiguity in an Indian Social Mobilization” (South Asian Studies Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cultivating Community: Interest, Identity, and Ambiguity in an Indian Social Mobilization by Michael Youngblood, a cultural anthropologist based in San Francisco, was published in November, 2016 by...

Adam Auerbach, "Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Good Provision in India’s Urban Slums" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

India’s urban slums exhibit dramatic variation in their access to basic public goods and services—paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, and streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communit...

Nazia Kazi, "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nazia Kazi’s Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is a brilliant and powerful meditation on the intersection and interaction of Islamophobia, racism, and U.S. imperi...

Sverre Molland, “The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong” (U. Hawaii Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Now and then we feature a book on New Books in Southeast Asian Studies whose author we ought to have had on the show some time ago. The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade Along th...

John W. Traphagan, "Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan" (Cambria Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John W. Traphagan’s Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan (Cambria Press, 2020) presents a series of deeply contextualized ethnographies of small...

Philip Grant, "Chains of Finance: How Investment Management is Shaped" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The authors of Chains of Finance: How Investment Management is Shaped (Oxford University Press, 2017) make points that professionals already know and that end-investors ought to know: that there ar...

Susanna Forrest, “The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393