Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017)
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…
Author: Carla Nappi
Sophia Roosth, “Synthetic: How Life Got Made” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
Sophia Roosth‘s wonderful new book follows researchers clustered around MIT beginning in 2003 who named themselves synthetic biologists. A historically informed anthropological analysis based on… Visit New Books…
Lisa Messeri, “Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds” (Duke UP, 2016)
What kind of object is a planet? Lisa Messeri‘s new book asks and addressed this question in a fascinating ethnography that explores how scientific practices transform planets into…
Carrie Jenkins, “What Love is: And What it Could Be” (Basic Books, 2017)
Carrie Jenkins‘ new book is a model for what public philosophy can be. Beautifully written, thoughtful, and compellingly and carefully argued, What Love Is: And What it Could…
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
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…
Morgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2016)
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……
Paul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)
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…
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
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…
Phaedra Daipha, “Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
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…
Kirk A. Denton, “Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2014)
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…
Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016)
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…
David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015)
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…
Christopher Bondy, “Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2015)
“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…
Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, “The Han: China’s Diverse Majority” (U of Washington Press, 2015)
Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi’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…
Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter”
Natasha Myers View on Amazon 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…
Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter” (Duke UP, 2015)
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 ethnogr……
Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black, and Dagmar Schafer, “Rice: Global Networks and New Histories”
View on Amazon The new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of rice, rooted in specific local cases,…
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015)
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… Visit New Books in Anthropology for the podcast. There is something wrong…
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins”
Anna L. Tsing View on Amazon 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-Enga… Visit New Books in Anthropology for…
John Durham Peters, “The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media”
John Durham Peters View on Amazon [Cross-posted from the NBN Seminar] John Durham Peters‘ wonderful new book is a brilliant and beautifully-written consideration of natural environments as subjects for … Visit New…
Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria”
Kristin Peterson View on Amazon Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade links West…
Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria” (Duke UP, 2015)
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…
Stefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India”
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…
Paul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo”
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…