Understated, not overlooked by Anthony Stavrianakis
A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments Talia Dan-Cohen Cornell University Press, 2021. 174 pages. First, take a self-consciously self-aggrandizing area of bioengineering,…
Tag: books
Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies
a book from 2004 – people didn’t get the title that much, but Derrida, Bataille (the best bit is on Bataille – reclaimed for the left). From books4you.…
Introduction to Book Forum on Clara Han’s Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War by Andrew Brandel
Clara Han’s Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War (Fordham University Press, 2021) describes war’s dispersal into everyday life, intimacy and the domestic. Departing from genres of…
Book Forum: Reflections on Dána-Ain Davis’s Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Sameena Mulla
Dána-Ain Davis’s Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press, 2019) is a vividly written ethnography highlighting how medical racism shapes birth outcomes for Black …
Anthony Stavrianakis’s Leaving: A Narrative of Assisted Suicide by Ari Gandsman
Leaving: A Narrative of Assisted Suicide Anthony Stavrianakis University of California Press, 2000. 248 pages. Everyone discovers an academic doppelgänger at some point. We invest ti…
Book Forum: Therapeutic Politics of Care in Asia by Nicholas Bartlett
The six review essays in this collection emerge from a joint launch of five books and one dissertation/ book-in-progress and a panel at the recent annual meeting of…
Alexandra Brewis and Amber Wutich’s Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health by Delaney Glass
Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health Alexandra Brewis and Amber Wutich Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. 288 pages. Background Dr. Alexandra Br…
Pacific Anthropology Book Series on JSTOR Books
JSTOR books is an incredible resource. However, finding your way around can be a bit tricky. Here is a guide to book series which feature Pacific anthropology which…
Abou Farman’s On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience by Purbasha Mazumdar
On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience Abou Farman University of Minnesota Press, 2020. 360 pages. Max More, a trained philosopher and the present Ambassador and…
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…
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 …