Pardue, Derek. 2015. Cape Verde, Let’s Go: Creole Rappers and Citizenship in Portugal. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cape Verde, Let’s Go addresses the postcolonial politics of citizenship in Portugal through the lens of Creole rap. It examines how Creole challenges what it means to be Portuguese and shapes notions of identity and belonging. The […]
Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2016. Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer. Durham: Duke University Press. Alexander Laban Hinton has written a highly engaging and experimental ethnography of international justice that narrates the criminal trial of Kaing Guek Eav (aka “Duch”), a central figure in the “killing fields’ of 1970s Cambodia. Man or […]
Sciama, Lidia D., ed. 2016. Humour, Comedy and Laughter: Obscenities, Paradoxes, Insights and the Renewal of Life. New York: Berghahn. Considering its importance in our everyday existence, humor is an aspect of universal human behavior, that has not yet received the scientific attention it deserves. This alone could be a reason to warmly welcome a […]
Schwartz, Pepper, and Martha Kempner. 2015. 50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Unfounded beliefs about bodies, genders, and sexualities are running rampant in Euroamerican societies. These beliefs are more than mere misgivings or misunderstandings, they have real effects on people’s lives and can support structures of marginalization and oppression. In 50 […]
Fassin, Didier, ed. 2017. If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography. Durham: Duke University Press. Every anthropologist at some point in their career, consciously or not, responds to the particularities of their work of ethnography and its contribution to the space within which the anthropologist is located. Accusations of ‘speaking from an ivory […]
Lind, Michael. 2015. Ancient Zapotec Religion: An Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Perspective. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. Every anthropologist at some point in their career, consciously or not, responds to the particularities of their work of ethnography and its contribution to the space within which the anthropologist is located. Accusations of ‘speaking from an ivory […]
Guano, Emanuela. 2017. Creative Urbanity: An Italian Middle Class in the Shade of Revitalization. 1st edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. There has been an extraordinary amount of public interest and scholarly writing on the dramatic transformation of cities around the world through the powerful forces of global capital and state intervention. Anthropologists have long […]
Gaibazzi, Paolo. 2015. Bush Bound: Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa. New York: Berghahn Books. In the wake of unprecedented global migrations, and heightened concern in the countries which receive increasing numbers of immigrants, Paul Gaibazzi sheds light on what it means to stay in one’s country and not migrate. Immigration research […]
Lovata, Troy, and Elizabeth Olton, eds. 2015. Understanding Graffiti: Multidisciplinary Studies from Prehistory to the Present. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Understanding Graffiti: Multidisciplinary Studies from Prehistory to Present utilizes a variety of case studies to explore the various techniques and meanings behind graffiti and opens up spaces to further explore this phenomenon, in […]
Bates, Lynsey A., John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle, eds. 2016. Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between, co-edited by Lynsey A. Bates, John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle […]
Sunder Rajan, Kaushik. 2017. Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine. Durham: Duke University Press. In Pharmacracy, Thomas Szasz (2001) writes against the appropriation of medicine as a tool of politics. Critical awareness should be fostered against all forms of medicalization and against state control of health. In Pharmocracy, William Faloon (2011) argues that […]
Liisberg, Sune, Esther Oluffa Pedersen, and Anne Line Dalsgard, eds. 2015. Anthropology & Philosophy: Dialogues on Trust and Hope. New York: Berghahn Books. Anthropology & Philosophy: Dialogues on Trust and Hope, edited by Sune Liisberg, Esther Oluffa Pederson, and Anne Line Dalsgard, is the latest in the Anthropology & series, which seeks to put anthropology […]
Durrenberger, E. Paul, and Gísli Pálsson, eds. 2015. Gambling Debt: Iceland’s Rise and Fall in the Global Economy. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Gambling Debt, the product of an interdisciplinary workshop on what the authors term Iceland’s “financial meltdown,” is an arresting place-based portrait of the financial crisis of 2008. Editors E. Paul Durrenberger and […]
Sommer, Barbara W. 2015. Practicing Oral History in Historical Organizations. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, Inc. Barbara Sommer’s (2015) Practicing Oral History in Historical Organizations is a welcome addition to the field of qualitative research methodology. Generally the topics that public historians, ethnographers, and other practitioners of oral history probe are fragmented and lack […]
Kulick, Don, and Jens Rydström. 2015. Loneliness and Its Opposite: Sex, Disability, and the Ethics of Engagement. Durham: Duke University Press. Human sexuality has been considered by a variety of scholars across disciplines that focus on differing time periods and social contexts. These studies have yielded a wealth of information from which we can better […]
Butler, Mary Odell. 2016. Evaluation: A Cultural Systems Approach. London: Routledge. “Throughout my career I have told people that I landed on my feet as an anthropologist when I became an evaluator.” (p. 76) In the phrase that seems to be not only the summary of her life and career, but also the leitmotif of […]
Beck, Robin A., Christopher Bernard Rodning, and David G. Moore, eds. 2016. Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. From 2001 to 2010 excavations were conducted. Ten years of digging, ten years of investigating and understanding, ten years on the Berry […]
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E., ed. 2015. Music and International History in the Twentieth Century. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books. If the idea of interdisciplinarity is increasingly lauded as good scientific practice, the reality is more complicated and interdisciplinary research, in any field, is harder than it seems (Borofsky, 2002). In the present case, Jessica C.E. […]
Briggs, Charles L., and Daniel C. Hallin. 2016. Making Health Public: How News Coverage Is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge. In Making Health Public: How News Coverage is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life, Charles L. Briggs and Daniel C. Hallin engage in a collaborative interdisciplinary […]
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2021. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. New paperback printing. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press. I had just settled in to begin reading The Mushroom at the End of the World when my wife looked up from her perch on the loveseat […]
Graaff, Kristina, and Noa Ha, eds. 2015. Street Vending in the Neoliberal City: A Global Perspective on the Practices and Policies of a Marginalized Economy. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books. In the increasingly urban landscape of the twenty-first century, cities are becoming centers of cultural interaction and settings in which the challenges of future human […]
Logan, William Stewart, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Ullrich Kockel, eds. 2015. A Companion to Heritage Studies. Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. The editors of A Companion to Heritage Studies, the 28th title in the Blackwell Companions to Anthropology series, choose to consider the origins of heritage studies with the Venice charter of 1964 before […]
Keane, Webb. 2016. Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories. Princeton {New Jersey]: Princeton University Press. Webb Keane opens Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories with a fundamental and familiar dilemma for those concerned with the origins of ethical impulses, systems, and worlds: Is a sense of ethics, or, as Keane frames it, “the […]
McAnany, Patricia Ann. 2014. Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Yanomami people of Brazil and Venezuela have been an integral part of anthropological debates, as well as wider conversations, for a long time. Their remote location on the Brazilian-Venezuelan border, as well as an undeserved […]
Houk, Brett A., Marilyn A. Masson, Michael E. Smith, and John Wayne Janusek. 2016. Ancient Maya Cities of the Eastern Lowlands. University Press of Florida Brett Houk’s text is a well-written, easily engaged work that unfortunately tries to do too much at once. From the first chapter, the author informs us that he will attempt […]
Marken, Damien B., and James L. Fitzsimmons, eds. 2015. Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands: Integration, Interaction, Dissolution. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands begins with a discussion of the concept of “polity,” not only as a form of political organization, but as a means to denote […]
Hopkins, Nicholas A., and J. Kathryn Josserand. 2016. Chol (Mayan) folktales: a collection of stories from the modern Maya of Southern Mexico. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. Storytelling has long been a form of entertainment among people, but folktales do more than provide amusement. They convey features of morality, community values, and tradition. Often […]
Penglase, Ben. 2014. Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela: Urban Violence and Daily Life. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. In the early 1900s, Rio de Janeiro had gone through a massive urban transformation that inspired the writer and politician Coelho Neto to coin the term Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvelous City) to describe the […]
