New Books In Anthropology

Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society (U Georgia Press, 2022) asserts that anti-Black racism is not better than it used to be; it is just performed in more-nuanced ways. Barbara Harris Combs argues that racism is dynamic, so new theories are needed to help expose it. The Bodies-out-of-Place (BOP) theory she advances in the book offers such a corrective lens. Interrogating several recent racialized events—the Central Park birding incident, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, sleeping while Black occurrences, and others—Combs demonstrates how the underlying belief that undergirds each encounter is a false presumption that Black bodies in certain contexts are out of place. Within these examples she illustrates how, even amid professions to color-blindness, fixed attitudes about where Black bodies belong, in what positions, at what time, and with whom still predominate. Combs describes a long historical pattern of White pushback against Black advancement and illuminates how each of the various

For as long as humans have existed, we have struggled when a loved one dies. Poets and playwrights have written about the dark cloak of grief, the deep yearning, how devastating heartache feels. But until now, we have had little scientific perspective on this universal experience. In The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss (HarperOne, 2022), neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O’Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm, and guides us through how we encode love and grief. With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future that encompasses their absence. Based on O’Connor’s own trailblazing neuroimaging work, research in t

In this episode, I interview Dr. Christina Civantos (University of Miami, FL, USA) about her open access book Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía (Amherst College Press, 2022). This case study examines a rural town in Spain’s Andalucía in order to shed light on the workings of coexistence. The town of Órgiva’s diverse population includes hippies from across Europe, European converts to Sufi Islam, and immigrants from North Africa. Christina Civantos combines the analysis of written and visual cultural texts with oral narratives from residents. In this book, we see that although written and especially televisual narratives about the town highlight tolerance and multiculturalism, they mask tensions and power differentials. Toleration is an ongoing negotiation and this book shows us how we can identify the points of contact that create robust, respect-based tolerance. Christina Civantos is a professor of Hispanic and Arabic literary and cultural studies at the University of Miami in Florid

Tens of thousands of Palestinians migrated to the Americas in the final decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth. By 1936, an estimated 40,000 Palestinians lived outside geographic Palestine. Transnational Palestine: Migration and the Right of Return Before 1948 (Stanford UP, 2022) is the first book to explore the history of Palestinian immigration to Latin America, the struggles Palestinian migrants faced to secure Palestinian citizenship in the interwar period, and the ways in which these challenges contributed to the formation of a Palestinian diaspora and to the emergence of Palestinian national consciousness. Nadim Bawalsa considers the migrants' strategies for economic success in the diaspora, for preserving their heritage, and for resisting British mandate legislation, including citizenship rejections meted out to thousands of Palestinian migrants. They did this in newspapers, social and cultural clubs and associations, political organizations and committees, and in hundreds

In Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism, gender, and death. Wandering in games can be a theme, a formal mode, an aesthetic metaphor, or a player action. It can mean walking, escaping, traversing, meandering, or returning. Kagen introduces the concept of “wandering games,” exploring the uses of wandering in a variety of game worlds. She shows how the much-derided Walking Simulator—a term that began as an insult, a denigration of games that are less violent, less task-oriented, or less difficult to complete—semi-accidentally tapped into something brilliant: the vast heritage and intellectual history of the concept of walking in fiction, philosophy, pilgrimage, performance, and protest. Kagen examines wandering in a series of games that vary widely in terms of genre, mechanics, themes, player base, studio size, and funding, giving close readings to Return of the Obra Dinn, Eastshade, Ritual of the Moon, 80

Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condition. Dealing with the colonial archive is not merely about stories of the past but also about the history of the present, and how it is interrupted by the past. — Irene Hilden, in conversation with New Books Network. With a firm commitment to postcolonial scholarship, Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive: Dealing with the Berlin Sound Archive's Acoustic Legacies (Leuven University Press, 2022) presents a historical ethnography of a metropolitan institution that participated in the production and preservation of colonial structures of power and knowledge. This book examines sound objects and listening practices that render the coloniality of knowledge fragile and inconsistent, revealing the absent presences of colonial subjects who are given little or no place in established national narratives and collective memories. Based on research at the Berlin Sound Arch

Atheism in Five Minutes, by Professor Teemu Taira, is part of Equinox Publishing’s “Religion in 5 Minutes” series. It offers insights into a number of commonly held questions about the ideas, practices, and attitudes concerning atheism and atheists. The volume highlights approaches based on the study of religion, sociology, history, anthropology, politics, and psychology. It also examines the implications and assumptions in common questions about atheism. Ideal for both classroom use and personal study, some of the questions asked include: Are atheists immoral? Are children born atheist? Do atheists have rituals? How has atheism related to politics? Why do some atheists remain members of religious groups? Is it difficult to be an atheist in Muslim countries? Do atheist parents have atheist children? Why are there so few black atheists? What are the most atheistic societies? And, has the Internet made atheism more popular? Each chapter is based on the latest research written by a leading scholar in the field.

Today I talked to Chris McMorran about his new book Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022). Amid the decline of many of Japan’s rural communities, the hot springs village resort of Kurokawa Onsen is a rare, bright spot. Its two dozen traditional inns, or ryokan, draw nearly a million tourists a year eager to admire its landscape, experience its hospitality, and soak in its hot springs. As a result, these ryokan have enticed village youth to return home to take over successful family businesses and revive the community.  Chris McMorran spent nearly two decades researching ryokan in Kurokawa, including a full year of welcoming guests, carrying luggage, scrubbing baths, cleaning rooms, washing dishes, and talking with co-workers and owners about their jobs, relationships, concerns, and aspirations. He presents the realities of ryokan work—celebrated, messy, ignored, exploitative, and liberating—and introduces the people who keep the inns running by making guests feel at home. McMorr

In The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife (White Crow Books, 2022), historian of religions Gregory Shushan explores the relationships between extraordinary experiences and beliefs in life after death. He first shows how throughout history and around the world, near-death experiences have influenced ideas about the afterlife. Shushan also takes a deep dive into the problem of similarities and differences between NDE accounts. Not only do they vary widely, but so does a culture’s way of responding to them and integrating them into their belief systems. In this book, Shushan also compares NDEs with accounts of shamanic spirit journeys to afterlife realms, intermission states between reincarnations from people who remember past lives, and descriptions of otherworlds by souls of the dead communicating through mediums. Accounts of all these phenomena bear striking similarities to NDEs, though they also have significant differences. Examining them each in relation to the other results in a kind o

Vietnam and Russia share a common socialist history dating back to the Cold War. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Vietnam’s đổi mới reforms, Russia has also become a destination for Vietnamese labour migrants who dream of making their fortune. Working in markets, garment factories, and as small traders – both legally and illegally - they live precarious lives, harassed by police, loan sharks, market bosses, and criminals. While huge profits can be made, these migrants are acutely vulnerable to sudden changes in market conditions and government policy, not to mention the bitter Russian cold. In Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty (Amsterdam UP, 2020), Lan Anh Hoang presents an astonishing account of the struggles of Vietnamese migrants in Russia. The book also raises broader issues: about the global phenomenon of labour migration of unskilled Asian workers; and most poignantly, about how conditions of acute uncertainty and dependence on the market in a foreign

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Henni Alava, postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, on her fascinating new book published by Bloomsbury as part of the New Directions in Anthropology of Christianity book series: Christianity, Politics and the Afterlives of War in Uganda: There is Confusion (Bloomsbury, 2022). Alava's work sheds critical light on the complex and unstable relationship between Christianity and politics, and peace and war. Drawing on long-running ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda's largest religious communities, Henni Alava maps the tensions and ironies found in the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wake of war between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda. The book describes how churches' responses to the war have been enabled by their embeddedness in local communities. Yet it is also in the churches' embeddedness in structures of historical violence that religious faith nurtures peace liable to compound conflict. At the heart of the book is the Acholi conc

Known as highly mobile cattle nomads, the Wodaabe in Niger are today increasingly engaged in a transformation process towards a more diversified livelihood based primarily on agro-pastoralism and urban work migration. Space, Place and Identity: The Wodaabe of Niger in the 21st Century (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Florian Köhler examines recent transformations in spatial patterns among the Wodaabe, notably in the context of urban migration and in processes of sedentarization in rural proto-villages. “Space, Place and Identity” analyses the consequences that these recent changes entail for social group formation and collective identification, and how these also impact the integration of the Wodaabe into wider society among the structures of the modern nation state. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a time of intensified interest in issues of race and racism, the burgeoning influence of corporations like AncestryDNA and 23andMe has sparked debates about the commodification of identity, the antiracist potential of genetic science, and the promises and pitfalls of using DNA as a source of "objective" knowledge about the past.  Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) engages these debates by looking at the ways genomic ancestry testing has been used in Brazil and the United States to address the histories and legacies of slavery, from personal genealogical projects to collective racial politics. Reckoning with the struggles of science versus capitalism, "race-blind" versus "race-positive" public policies, an

Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes have emerged as a vibrant demographic presence, from generations of diasporic movement, migration, and homemaking. In Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Ryan Thomas Skinner uses oral histories, archival research, ethnography, and textual analysis to explore the history and culture of this diverse and growing Afro-European community. Skinner employs the conceptual themes of "remembering" and "renaissance" to illuminate the history and culture of the Afro-Swedish community, drawing on the rich theoretical traditions of the African and Black diaspora. Remembering fosters a sustained meditation on Afro-Swedish social history, while Renaissance indexes a thriving Afro-Swedish public culture. Together, these concepts illuminate significant existential modes of Afro-Swe

This innovative study engages critically with existing conceptualisations of diaspora, arguing that if diaspora is to have analytical purchase, it should illuminate a specific angle of migration or migrancy. To reveal the much-needed transformative potential of the concept, the book looks specifically at how diasporas undertake translation and decolonisation. It offers various conceptual tools for investigating diaspora, with a specific focus on diasporas in the Global North and a detailed empirical study of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The book also considers the backlash diasporas of colour have faced in the Global North. Prof. Ipek Demir teaches at the University of Leeds in the UK.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Hilan Bensusan clarifies the logic and structure of an essentially situated and indexical metaphysics that is paradoxical and can also be regarded as a chapter in the critique of metaphysics. Bensusan articulates a metaphysical view of the other – both human and non-human, in what Meillassoux calls 'the great outdoors' – that can never be totalised into a single or univocal whole. He develops an innovative account of perception, as a matter of our irreducibly situated relationship to this non-totalisable outdoors. In the book's coda, Bensusan underscores the social-political implications of this radical metaphysics in a postcolonial context in a meditation on the sites of Potosi in the Andes and Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Equally at home with analytic and continental philosophy, Bensusan enlists Levinas, Whitehead, Heidegger, Kripke, Deleuze, Derrida, Benso, Harman, Garcia, Cogburn, McDowell and Haraway. He does so in a way

Eugenia Roussou's book Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The 'Evil Eye' in Greece (Bloomsbury, 2021) thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the ‘evil eye’ produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences concerning globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness, and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a m

Haiti is the target of an overwhelming number of internationally funded health projects. While religious institutions sponsor a number of these initiatives, many are implemented within the secular framework of global health. In Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti (Cornell UP, 2022), Pierre Minn illustrates the divergent criteria that actors involved in global health use to evaluate interventions' efficacy through examining the work of Haitian health professionals in humanitarian aid encounters. Haitian physicians, nurses, and administrative staff are hired to carry out these global health programs, distribute or withhold resources, and produce accounts of interventions' outcomes. In their roles as intermediaries, Haitian clinicians are expected not only to embody the humanitarian projects of foreign funders and care for their impoverished patients but also to act as sources of support for their own kin networks, while negotiating their future prospects in a climate

Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell UP, 2022) tells the story of Alexander Laban Hinton's encounter with an accused architect of genocide and, more broadly, Hinton's attempt to navigate the promises and perils of expert testimony. In March 2016, Hinton served as an expert witness at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, an international tribunal established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed during the 1975–79 Cambodian genocide. His testimony culminated in a direct exchange with Pol Pot's notorious right-hand man, Nuon Chea, who was engaged in genocide denial. Anthropological Witness looks at big questions about the ethical imperatives and epistemological assumptions involved in explanation and the role of the public scholar in addressing issues relating to truth, justice, social repair, and genocide. Hinton asks: Can scholars who serve as expert witnesses effectively contribute to international atrocity crimes tribunals where the focus

In Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (Duke UP, 2022), Marquis Bey meditates on the antagonistic relationship between blackness and cisgender. Bey asks, What does it mean to have a gender that “matches” one’s sex---that is, to be cisgender---when decades of feminist theory have destroyed the belief that there is some natural way to be a sex? Moving from the The Powerpuff Girls to the greeting “How ya mama’n’em?” to their own gender identity, Bey finds that cisgender is too flat as a category to hold the myriad ways that people who may or may not have undergone gender-affirmative interventions depart from gender alignment. At the same time, blackness, they contend, strikes at the heart of cisgender’s invariable coding as white: just as transness names a non-cis space, blackness implies a non-cis space. By showing how blackness opens up a way to subvert the hegemonic power of the gender binary, Bey makes a case for an antiracist gender abolition project that rejects cisgender as a regulatory appa