New Books In Anthropology

Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are displaced within their own countries. In We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Muhammad H. Zaman shares poignant stories across continents to highlight the health care experiences of refugees and forced migrants. For many of these people, health risks unfortunately become part of the fabric of everyday life as they navigate new countries that treat them with varying degrees of care and indifference. Across widely varied local systems, countries of origin, health concerns, and other contexts, Zaman finds that barriers to health care share these key factors: trust, social network, efficiency of the health system, and the regulatory framework of the host environment. A combination of these factors explains difficulties in accessing health care across the geographic and geopolitical spectrum and challenges the existing

How do street-level bureaucrats in Austria’s public service deal with linguistic diversity? In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Dr Clara Holzinger (University of Vienna) about her PhD research investigating how employment officers deal with the day-to-day communication challenges arising when clients have low levels of German language proficiency. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

What good is a good sense of humour especially when the humour may be ethically questionable? Although humour seems a valuable part of a good conversation and indeed a good life, jokes have never seemed more morally problematic than they do now. How can we then evaluate quips, gibes, pranks, teasing, light mockery, sarcasm when they can all too often be mean, deceitful, disrespectful, humiliating, cruel? And how is a moral philosopher to evaluate such dilemmas without taking himself and morality too seriously or too lightly?  In Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press, 2024), David W. Shoemaker considers the interplay between humor and morality. With wit and evident joy, Shoemaker considers how "wisecracks" between family and friends are of ethical value despite how morally suspect they may appear. In arguing for the moral status of a wisecrack or a joke as partly resting on the wisecracker's intentions and motives, Shoemaker goes on to show just how complicated and someti

Tribe-state relations are a foundational element of authoritarian bargains in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf States. However, the structures of governance built upon that foundation exhibit wide differences. What explains this variation in the salience of kinship authority?  Through a case comparison of Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, in Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) Dr. Scott Weiner shows that variation in tribal access to limited resources before state building can account for these differences. Its conclusions are based on seven months of archival research and interviews in Arabic and English, and reveal new details about state formation on the Arabian Peninsula. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more abou

The Burning Forest: India's War Against the Maoists (Verso, 2019) by Nandini Sundar is an empathetic, moving account of what drives indigenous peasants to support armed struggle despite severe state repression, including lives lost, homes and communities destroyed. Over the past decade, the heavily forested,mineral-rich region of Bastar in central India has emerged as one of the most militarized sites in the country. The government calls the Maoist insurgency the “biggest security threat” to India. In 2005, a state-sponsored vigilante movement, the Salwa Judum, burnt hundreds of villages, driving their inhabitants into state-controlled camps, drawing on counterinsurgency techniques developed in Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere. Apart from rapes and killings, hundreds of ‘surrendered’ Maoist sympathisers were conscripted as auxiliaries. The conflict continues to this day, taking a toll on the lives of civilians, security forces and Maoist cadres. In 2007, Sundar and others took the Indian government to the Supr

In the latest edition of Ethnographic Marginalia, we talk with Roxani Krystalli about her new book Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question (Oxford UP, 2024). Roxani describes the dilemmas she faced in her research on encounters between those recognized as victims of the Colombian conflict and the state agencies that attend them. She also explains what makes this a feminist book—not because of a focus on gender, but a feminist sensibility that questions categories like politics and victimhood and how they influence each other. Finally, she ends by describing the books that inspired her and telling us about her new project focused on love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Each of us is endowed with an inheritance--a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights: driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it's failing us. We find ourselves hurtling toward a future of unprecedented political polarization, deadlier war, and irreparable environmental destruction. In Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 2024), renowned anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse offers a sweeping account of how our biases have shaped humanity's past and imperil its future. He argues that three biases--conformism, religiosity, and tribalism--drive human behavior everywhere. Forged by natural selection and harnessed by thousands of years of cultural evolution, these biases catalyzed the greatest transformations in human history, from the birth of agriculture and

An Unholy Rebellion, Killing the Gods: Political Ideology and Insurrection in the Mayan Popul Vuh and the Andean Huarochiri Manuscript (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive comparison of two of the greatest epics of the Indigenous peoples of Latin America: the Popul Vuh of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala and the Huarochiri Manuscript of Peru's lower Andean regions. The rebellious tone of both epics illuminates a heretofore overlooked aspect in Latin American Indigenous colonial writing: the sense of political injustice and spiritual sedition directed equally at European-imposed religious practice and at aspects of Indigenous belief. The link between spirituality and political upheaval in Native colonial writing has not been sufficiently explored until this work. Sharonah Esther Fredrick applies a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes history, literature, archaeology, and anthropology in equal measure to situate the Mayan and Andean narratives within the paradigms of their developing

In 1966 Benedict Anderson published 'The Languages of Indonesian Politics', a seminal paper exploring the development of Indonesian as a new language for talking about national politics. In that paper Anderson underlined the contrast between the formal/official style of Indonesian news reports and the colloquial, playful speech style of ordinary Jakartans as depicted through comics. Nearly six decades on, how do we understand the 'languages' of Indonesian politics? How are figures of politics constituted through language?  Associate Professor in Indonesian Studies at The University of Sydney, Dwi Noverini Djenar, expands on these issues. She has worked on the stylistics of adolescent literature, focusing on the production and circulation of styles and their relationship to sociolinguistic change. Her current research focuses on language and relations among social actors in public spheres, particularly in broadcast settings. Novi is co-author of Style and Intersubjectivity in Youth Interaction (2018) and co-ed

Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care (U Illinois Press, 2023) challenges the stereotype of downtrodden migrant caregivers by showing that care workers have distinct ways of caring for themselves, for each other, and for the larger transnational community of care workers and their families. Ethel Tungohan illuminates how the goals and desires of migrant care worker activists goes beyond political considerations like policy changes and overturning power structures. Dr. Tungohan is the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, and Associate Professor of Politics at York University. She has also been appointed as a Broadbent Institute Fellow. Previously, she was the Grant Notley Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta’s Department of Political Science. She received her doctoral degree in Political Science and Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto. Her research looks at migrant labor, specifically assessing mi

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditions and substance use by considering the intersections between drug markets, sidewalks, households, and prisons in Baltimore. Sanaullah Khan argues that while housing, medicalization, and incarceration fundamentally create the conditions for substance use, individuals are increasingly experiencing the paradoxes of care and punishment by being propelled into a new regime of recovery which creates new pharmaceuticalized identities. By shedding light on how addiction and the impetus for healing moves through families and institutions of the state, Khan provides an account of the different competing forces that shape substance use, recovery, and relapse. Through a combination of archival research and ethnography, the book makes a case for disentangling punishment from recovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomin

What happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity discourses in classical music institutions? The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Kristina Kolbe addresses these concerns by critically examining how diversity work takes shape in a cultural sector so deeply implicated in hierarchies of class, structures of whiteness, and legacies of imperialism. The book draws from ethnographic and interview data to analyse how diversity discourses become constructed in the organisational and creative processes of music production. From rehearsal and performance practices to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector's commitment to change, Dr. Kolbe reveals the institutional constraints and precarious labour relations that form around diversity work in classical music and skillfully considers what these processes can tell us about the remaking

Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton University Press, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other is valuable and worth preserving. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Dr. Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Dr. Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where c

Queer men's cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, safer sex, sexual racism and gay marriage. The introduction of the smartphone in 2008 only intensified these debates whilst also raising a further set of questions which are explored in this open access book. Through interviews with a diverse group of 43 queer men about their smartphone mediated intimacies, Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2024) reveals that queer men use their smartphones, not simply to arrange intimate encounters, but more specifically to gain a sense of control over the parts of their intimate lives that make them feel most vulnerable. For instance, some use messaging apps to gain a sense of control over intimate conversations that they feel too vulnerable to have in person. Others use the 'block' function on dating apps to feel in control of the racism and transphobia they are vulnerable to on these

Dr Laura Smith-Khan speaks with Dr Anthea Vogl about her new book, Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination (Cambridge UP, 2024). The conversation introduces listeners to the procedures involved in seeking asylum in the global north and how language is implicated throughout these processes. Discussing Dr Vogl’s new book and research, the podcast explores the difficult narrative demands these processes place on those seeking asylum, and the sociopolitical context underlying them. It reflects on the contributions scholars across disciplines have made and can make to law and policy reform, informing best practice, and advocating for more just systems. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Follow Laura Smith-Khan on Bluesky and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and the injustices they face.  The analysis focuses on two specific historical eras: 2002-2003 and 2020-2022 and shows that despite recent improvements in employment opportunities and greater mobility for young women, their lives reflect ongoing challenges reminiscent of those faced two decades earlier. While national and global organizations acknowledge the nation's economic and social progress, those on the outskirts of society continue to grapple with enduring poverty. They are excluded from the advantages of economic growth, oppressed by unjust local, national, and global systems, discriminatory laws, and policies. Their struggles go unnoticed as they confront a slew of challenges, including slum evictions, enforced lockdowns, income

Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China (NYU Press, 2023) offers a trenchant and singular analysis of the convergence of digital media, feminist and queer culture, and rights consciousness in China. Jia Tan examines the formation of what she calls “rights feminism,” or the emergence of rights consciousness in Chinese feminist formations, as well as queer activism and rights advocacy. Expanding on feminist and queer theory of masquerade, she develops the notion of “digital masquerade” to theorize the co-constitutive role of digital technology as assemblage and entanglement in the articulation of feminism, queerness, and rights. Drawing from interviews with various feminist and queer media practitioners, participant observation at community events, and detailed analyses of a variety of media forms such as social media, electronic journals, digital filmmaking, film festivals, and dating app videos, Jia Tan captures the feminist, queer, and rights articulations that are simultaneously disrupt

What happens after colonial industries have run their course—after the factory closes and the fields go fallow? Set in the cinchona plantations of India’s Darjeeling Hills, Quinine's Remains: Empire’s Medicine and the Life Thereafter (U California Press, 2024) chronicles the history and aftermaths of quinine. Harvested from cinchona bark, quinine was malaria’s only remedy until the twentieth-century advent of synthetic drugs, and it was vital to the British Empire. Today, the cinchona plantations—and the roughly fifty thousand people who call them home—remain. Their futures, however, are unclear. The Indian government has threatened to privatize or shut down this seemingly obsolete and crumbling industry, but the plantation community, led by strident trade unions, has successfully resisted. Overgrown cinchona fields and shuttered quinine factories may appear the stuff of postcolonial and postindustrial ruination, but quinine’s remains are not dead. Rather, they have become the site of urgent efforts to redefi

Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentialism among some groups, or the idea that our biology ties us to particular ethnic identities. This can boost a sense of cultural pride and prosocial behaviors among communities that are perceived to be similar. In the worst-case scenarios, however, this phenomenon can contribute to deeper social woes like misinformation, anti-science agendas, and even social hatred among those who believe in racial superiority.  Using research from both the social sciences and the genetics literature as support, Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities (Oxford University Press, 2023) establishes realistic expectations about what we can learn from our DNA as a foundation for examining the psychological impact of ancestry testing, including the differences between how this information is perceived versus its reality. With this book, Dr. Kampourakis flexes h

Every hundred years, as the story goes, two angels wonder out loud whether the bees are still swarming. For as long as the bees are swarming, the angels are reassured, the world holds together. Still, the tale suggests, the angels live in anxious anticipation of the End. Local beekeepers in Bosnia and Herzegovina retell the old tale with growing unease, as their honeybees weather the ground effects of climate change. Beekeeping in the End Times (Indiana UP, 2024) relates extreme weather events and quieter disasters that have been altering honey ecologies across Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2014. While world-wide endangerment of pollinators, and bees in particular, has been the subject of much global concern, effects of climate change on the indispensable honeybees, remain understudied. Drawing on a five-year long study, the book suggests that local apiarists' field observations resonate with many climate biologists' concerns and speculations about the future of plant-bee relations on the warming planet. Local