Volume 5
2019

Looking Back: 2019 Year in Review In our first ever letter from the editors we wish to return briefly to what we have published during the past year and to look ahead to what is to come. As a journal that exclusively publishes book reviews, we have the privilege of staying abreast of the newest […]

Killias, Olivia. 2018. Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia. Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press. Keywords: labor migration; Southeast Asia; domestic workers; indentured labor; migration regime. In her recently published ethnography, Follow the Maid, Olivia Killias takes the title literally: the reader gets to follow the migratory pathways of young women from the […]

Directed by Rian Brown and Geoff Pingree, 2018. The Foreigner’s Home. The Video Project The Foreigner’s Home is a compelling and poetic film that explores two central concepts in Toni Morrison’s work; the foreigner and the home. The film starts with footage from 2006 when Ms. Morrison was invited by the Louvre in Paris to […]

Reinhard, Andrew. 2018. Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games. New York: Berghahn Books. Keywords: Archaeology; Gaming Studies; Digital Culture; Video Games; Virtual Spaces Scholars are becoming increasingly aware that video games are growing ever more entwined in every aspect of culture in the West and many parts of Asia, from work […]

Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel, eds. 2018. The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham: Duke University Press. The Promise of Infrastructure is a stellar collection of essays by anthropologists and social scientists who explore roads, buildings, bridges, water meters, pipelines, power stations, and other structures which we encounter on a daily basis but whose contribution to […]

Dalsgard, Anne Line, ed. 2014. Ethnographies of Youth and Temporality: Time Objectified. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. This collection of ethnographic essays outlines the anthropological possibilities of engaging time as an object of study. In proposing a reconsideration of time beyond a commonly assumed abstract linear progression, the contributors to this volume explore the intricacies arising […]

Low, Setha M., ed. 2020. Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City. First issued in paperback. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. There has been a growing recognition within anthropology over the past two decades about the need to more seriously engage with topics and issues that are of more direct relevance to […]

Dickens, Ky. 2017, Zero Weeks, Working Films Ky Dickens is the director and the producer of the documentary Zero Weeks which aims to inform and raise awareness about paid family leave in the United States. Zero Weeks presents speeches by activists, economists, policymakers, researchers, a doctor, small and large business owners, in addition to personal stories […]

Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. 2018. Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Keywords: Sovereignty; Sexuality; Indigeneity; Colonialism; Land Rights. In Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty, author J. Kehaulani Kauanui unearths one historical period, the early- to mid-nineteenth century, to explore transformations wrought by Christianity and the introduction of […]

Brumann, Christoph, and David Berliner, eds. 2016. World Heritage on the Ground: Ethnographic Perspectives. New York: Berghahn Books. Keywords:Heritage, UNESCO, archaeology, ethnography “World Heritage on the Ground,” a collection of ethnographic essays edited by Christoph Brumann and David Berliner, examines a wide range of the ways that places have come into relation with heritage regimes by being turned […]

Ahmad, Attiya. 2017. Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait. Durham: Duke University Press. In recent decades, the Arab Gulf has emerged as a site of spectacle, marked by the extravagant architecture and capitalist development projects financed by the region’s oil wealth. Attiya Ahmad’s ethnography “Everyday Conversions,” however, beckons readers […]

Lemelson, Robert, and Annie Tucker. 2017. Afflictions: Steps toward a Visual Psychological Anthropology. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Robert Lemelson is an American psychological anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. His research work has essentially been focused in Southeast Asia, in Bali and Java. Annie Tucker acquired her PhD from UCLA’s Department of […]

Chong, Kimberly. 2018. Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China. Durham: Duke University Press. Keywords: financialization, ethics, consulting, economic anthropology, China. What do business consultants actually do? In her book on the daily workings of one of the most powerful forces of (apparent) change in the economic world Chong sets out […]

Melinda Janko, 2016, 100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice. The Video Project. On June 10, 1996, Eloise Cobell did what very few people had attempted or imagined: she sued two agencies of the United States federal government (the Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury) for the mismanagement of Indian trust […]

Heywood, Paolo. 2018. After Difference: Queer Activism in Italy and Anthropological Theory. New York: Berghahn Books. Keywords: Italy, LGBTQ, activism, recursive turn, ethnographic theory What is the relationship between ethnography and anthropology? In this exceptional book, Heywood argues that in recent years anthropology has given way to what he and Matei dub ‘ethnographic foundationalism.’ Exemplified […]

Aly, Ramy M. K. 2015. Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity. London: Pluto Press. Key words: Arab, London, autoethnography, performativity, ethnonormativity In an era of migration and anxiety, if not hysteria, about terrorism, it is useful to examine how Arab people in the West understand and construct their identity. Ramy Aly […]

Manzanilla, Linda, ed. 2017. Multiethnicity and Migration at Teopancazco: Investigations of a Teotihuacan Neighborhood Center. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Key words: interdisciplinary research, paleodiet, migration, pathologies, isotopes Multiethnicity and Migration at Teopancazco provides its readers with a glimpse into the socioeconomic fabric of Classic period (CE 200–550) Teopancazco, a residential compound situated in the southeast […]

Gonzalez, Pablo. 2023. Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation. S.l.: University Press of Florida. Keywords: Cuba, socialism, heritage, museums, narratives In the much-anticipated Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation, author Pablo Alonso González (2018) combines material culture, cultural heritage, history, and comparative politics in an appealing and […]

Lamb, Sarah, ed. 2017. Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession, edited by Sarah Lamb, is a timely, thought-provoking collection of sociological and anthropological studies that critically tackles the neoliberal, Global North paradigm of healthy-active-successful aging. The authors are reputable scholars in […]

Stein, Arlene, Jessie Daniels, and Corey Fields. 2017. Going Public: A Guide for Social Scientists. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. A decade ago, Samuel Kernel shook the field of political science by reporting on structural changes in presidential politics. He showed that in order to advance their legislative agenda, American presidents had started rallying […]

Gardner, Katy, and David Lewis, eds. 2015. Anthropology and Development: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century. London: Pluto Press. In light of two decades of changes within and outside the practice and study of development, Katy Gardner and David Lewis build off their earlier edition of this same book, Anthropology and Development, by adding a clear […]

Mannik, Lynda, ed. 2016. Migration by Boat: Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival. New York: Berghahn Books. Images of drowned children, of African men and women in bright orange life vests, of newly arrived Syrian refugees on Greek islands—all these snapshots continue to shock and, in turn, numb European publics to the daily realities of […]

Fredette, Jennifer. 2014. Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, Public Identity, and the Politics of Citizenship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Key words: France, French Muslim, Modern State, Republicanism, identity, immigrants, refugee Jennifer Fredette analyzes the construction of Muslim citizenship in France by examining the discourses surrounding Muslim identity – primarily by elites and by Muslims themselves. […]