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…
So many of our social questions are now the subject of analysis from economics. In A Richer Life: How Economics can Change the Way We Think and Feel (Penguin, 2015), Phillip…
It quickly sold out in hardback, and then, within a matter of days, sold out in paperback. Available again as a 2nd edition hardback, and soon in the…
Literary practices are often associated with specific social groups in particular social settings. Kate Pahl‘s Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited (Bloomsbury… Visit New Books in…
13,000-years ago, the people of the first identifiable culture in North America were hunting mammoth and mastodon, bison, and anything else they could launch their darts and spears…
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…
The role of financial services in individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives is more important than ever. In Devising Consumption: Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending (R… Visit New…
The book discussed in this interview is Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality (Basic Books, 2013) by Edward Frenkel of the University of California at Berkeley. It’s a toss-up which is…
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…
Who were the Indo-Europeans? Were they all-conquering heroes? Aggressive patriarchal Kurgan horsemen, sweeping aside the peaceful civilizations of Old Europe? Weed-smoking drug dealers rolling across … Visit New…
A recent book review I read began with the line “borderlands are back.” It’s certainly true that more and more historians have used borderland regions as the stage…
Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial…
Todd Meyers‘ The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy (University of Washington Press, 2013) is many things, all of them compelling and fully realized.…
The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body…
Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by…
Cancer pervades American bodies–and also habits of mind. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013) is a sharp, adventurous book by the established legal anthropolog… Visit…
Religious ritual has been a staple of anthropological study. In his latest monograph, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance (Oxford University Press 2014), cultural anthropologist Matt ……
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyon……
Dengue fever is on the rise globally. Since it is transmitted by mosquitoes which reside and reproduce in human environments, eradication efforts involve households and the people who…
One of the most puzzling things about humans is their ability to manipulate symbols and create artifacts. Our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom–apes–have only the rudiments of…
I hope I’m not being species-centric when I say that the emergence of human language is a big deal. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry rate it as…
Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India (Pluto Press, 2014), the excellent new book by Jamie Cross, explores the ways in which dreams of the future shape…
Khat, the fresh leaves of the plant Catha edulis, is a mild psycho-stimulant. It has been consumed in Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia for over one thousand years.…
Liberal Protestants are often dismissed as reflecting nothing more than a therapeutic culture or viewed as a measuring rod for the decline of Christian orthodoxy. Rarely have they…