Class – and critique – in Bad Marxism, poking fun.
I was looking something up and stumbled upon a quote of me that I did not recognise – that class ‘does not make much sense’. I am pretty…
Tag: books
Book Forum: Reflections on Li Zhang’s Anxious China by Priscilla Song
This book forum brings together eight anthropologists to discuss Li Zhang’s Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (University of California Press 2020). Zhang examine…
Spivak – citizen as agent
If you joined the Handbrick of Marxism book-launch with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak last evening you will have seen her talk on citizens as agents, global Marx, supplementing vanguardism…
Book forum: Julie Livington’s Self-Devouring Growth by Todd Meyers
This book forum brings together seven scholars to discuss Julie Livingston’s Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa (Duke 2019), a story of what grows alongside “…
Thandeka Cochrane takes the page 99 test
In the middle of the page a line jumps out: “Nthanu telling, therefore, encapsulates a moral performance”. Lying at the centre of page 99 this line also lies…
Nobody is normal: "The line between healthy and not healthy is drawn more by culture than by nature”
Who is crazy? Who is normal? Describing somebody as "not normal" has serious implications for this person, can destroy her life. From an anthropological perspective, there is nothing…
FLP: Announcing the upcoming release of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong Vol. IX – Redspark
https://www.redspark.nu/en/theory/flp-announcing-the-upcoming-release-of-the-selected-works-of-mao-zedong-vol-ix/ This is how to do an announcement!. It is well worth reading for both what it says abo…
Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community Recognized with Book Prizes
The annual business meeting of the Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA) was held today and one of its key moments was the bestowal of the annual CMA Book…
Ageless: Reflections on Lawrence Cohen’s No Aging in India by Bharat Jayram Venkat
Two decades ago, Lawrence Cohen’s No Aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things challenged the ways in which we think about aging and senility,…
Conformity and Resistance in Mahabad
Conformity and Resistance in Mahabad Media Consumption, Conformity and Resistance: A Visual Ethnography of Youth in Iranian Kurdistan English Publishing: Mehri Publication, London-UK (2020) F…
Christopher Kelty’s The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories by Talia Dan-Cohen
The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories Christopher M. Kelty University of Chicago Press, 2020. 344 pages. A book about participation? Chris Kelty’s delightful new bo…
Don Miller’s new book! Time and Time Again
via Don Miller’s new book! Time and Time Again Don Miller was the mystical magical master of metaphor at Melbourne Uni in the politics department when it was…
Domesday’s eastern roots.
It seems like that old “goodness gracious me” sketch about the funny uncle that was claiming everything in Britain was ‘Indian’ was, – yup, Indian – accurate after…
Back cover copy for the 25th-anniversary edition of Rumour of Calcutta?
Highly unlikely, but if there were to be a collection of quotes for such an edition, this fine example would do very well as a back cover quote…
Katie Kilroy-Marac’s An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African Clinic by Nana Osei Quarshie
An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African Clinic Katie Kilroy-Marac University of California Press, 2019. 288 pages. Katie Kilroy-Marac …
Vietnam – Brazil
Comparative. Who’d have thought to do this one – but, its done, and there’s an intriguing and generous review – of J. Warren’s Cultures of Development: Vietnam, Brazil,…
Robinsonades: we are all a bit Robbo now.
Several Robinsinades are coming soon. But folks seem a bit confused about which Daniel Defoe to get into right now. As the world splutters towards total collapse, I…
Alison Kenner’s Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change by Susanna Trnka
Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change Alison Kenner University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 236 pages. Asthma is thought to affect an estimated 339 million people…
Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India by Lisa Grabinsky
Sugar and Tension: Diabetes in Modern India Lesley Jo Weaver Rutgers University Press, 2019. 202 pages. Sugar and Tension is a must-read for anyone interested in how social…
Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life by Naomi Zucker
Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Ruha Benjamin, Ed. Duke University Press, 2019. 416 pages. “How might we craft a just…
Book Forum: Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay by Andrés Romero
Introduction Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnograp…
A Year of Trans Childhood by Paula Martin
Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century Tey Meadow University of California Press, 2018. 320 pages. The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) …
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga’s The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production by Rosie Sims
The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga MIT Press, 2018. 412 pages. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga’s latest book, The…
On reproductive work and family, again by Cinzia Greco
Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family Sophie Lewis Verso, 2019. 224 pages. In the first segment of the 1963 Oscar-winning anthology film Ieri, Oggi e Domani, Sophia Loren…