Predator journals target ISSH2021 – be warned.
So, a process warning to those not used to getting chatty friendly emails from parasite journals that will charge you to publish. The ISSH2021 conference gets hit by…
Category: English
Opium and Political Economy in Bengal
On why I think Marx’s writing style is misrepresented by the all-too-dour and serious commentators on Capital – you know, the famous ones published by big presses or…
For those about to be assessed, Harry Cleaver helps cut throught he must…
To those doing assignments, be it single or collective projects, here’s a reminder to resist the stress and do it for your own reasons. This is another condensed…
Caterina Guenzi, “Words of Destiny: Practicing Astrology in North India” (SUNY Press, 2021)
Astrologers play an important role in Indian society, but there are very few studies on their social identity and professional practices. Based on extensive fieldwork carried out in…
Stan BH Tan-Tangbau and Quyền Văn Minh, “Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Văn Minh and Jazz in Hà Nội” (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the…
Five New Year’s Rituals of Renewal
In Auckland, New Zealand, Māori people celebrate the rising of Mataraki, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, as the start of the new year in July. Hannah…
Shaligram Interpretive Practice (Secondary Markings)
One of the most complicated aspects of Shaligram interpretation, and the one that often takes the longest to learn, is reading the various small markings that indicate the…
Ori Schwarz on his book, Sociological Theory for Digital Society
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Sociological+Theory+for+Digital+Society%3A+The+Codes+that+Bind+Us+Together-p-9781509542963 Interview by: Dan M. Kotliar Dan Kotliar: There is something very conv…
Viktoriya Kim et al. “The Politics of International Marriage in Japan” (Rutgers UP, 2021)
Viktoriya Kim, Nelia Balgoa, and Beverley Anne Yamamoto’s book The Politics of International Marriage in Japan (Rutgers UP, 2021) provides an in-depth exploration and analysis of marriages be… Visit New Books…
Happy new year Yamal style
First of all, happy new year to all our readers, followers, and a big thank you to all those who contribute to making this blog a success. This…
Screen Memory, Social Distancing & Speculative Fiction: The Geek Anthropologist 2021 in Review
2021 wasn’t quite the year we anticipated, nor does the conclusion of the year feel like it does justice to the warped sense of time, distance, and stasis…
Africa 2021: Perplexing, horrendous, dramatic and inspiring by Jehron Muhammad
Africa’s year 2021 was perplexing, horrendous, dramatic but also inspirational. It can be summed in the “two-ness” of the sojourn … More
Who Owns the Holy Land?
As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two…
End of the year
It has been 70 years since a life-size Father Christmas doll was burned in Dijon in protest against the “paganization” of Christmas. A year later, Claude Lévi-Strauss published…
2021 round-up and happy new year!
By Danny Miller and Laura Haapio-Kirk 2021, despite its difficulties, has been a key year for the ASSA project. The high point for us was in May with…
The year 2021 on Closer – Salafism, Racism and COVID19
Welcome on my annual overview of the most read posts on Closer. It was another year with COVID19 and lots of discussions on race, security and Salafism. Here…
Alison Hope Alkon, “A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City” (NYU Press, 2020)
A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City (NYU Press, 2020), edited by Alison Hope Alkon, Yuki Kato, and Joshua Sbicca, is a collection of essays examining…
Starting CLEAR, maintaining CLEAR
I get a lot of emails asking how I started the lab, how junior scholars might start labs, and how to transform existing labs. This post outlines how…
The best and raise awareness of Minamata Post Credit
It sometimes happens that you just know…You have a feeling that things are coinciding, and that they operate and work on a number of levels – obviously visual…
Mark Bender and Aku Wuwu, trans., “The Nuosu Book of Origins: A Creation Epic from Southwest China” (U Washington Press, 2019)
The Nuosu people, who were once overlords of vast tracts of farmland and forest in the uplands of southern Sichuan and neighboring provinces, are the largest division of…
Andrew Zitcer, “Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism” (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Have you ever stopped to think about your local grocery cooperative and what makes it different than, say Safeway or Giant or Whole Foods? That is, if you…
Tamar Katriel on her book, Defiant Discourse
Interview by Irit Dekel Irit Dekel: Your recent book Defiant Discourse helps readers understand the relations between speech and action, revisiting important questions concerning the performat…
Infrastructures of inequality: Caring tweets, public health, and COVID-19 in Delhi by Emilija Zabiliūte
One tweet asks for help finding a hospital bed in Delhi, India’s capital. Another asks where to find oxygen. These tweets joined a sea of similar pleas for…
Smitha Radhakrishnan, “Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India” (Duke UP, 2022)
In Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India (Duke UP, 2022), Smitha Radhakrishnan explores India’s microfinance industry, which in the past two decades has come to saturate the everyday ……