Anthropology Books

Book SynopsisForbidden Narratives: Critical Autobiography as Social Science explores overlapping layers of voices and stories that convey the social relations of psychiatric survivor participation within a community mental health service system. It is written from the perspective of a woman who, in the course of working with the survivor movement, had a physical and emotional breakdown. Ironically, the author found herself personally confronted with issues she typically dealt with only from a distance: as a mental health professional, a researcher, and an activist.The author of this volume writes herself into her work as a major character. Narratives such as this have traditionally been forbidden as outside proper professional standards. Now they are claiming and receiving attention. Forbidden Narratives has the power to speak to a broad audience not only of mental health professionals but also policy makers, sociologists and feminists. It is about the breaking up of professional discourse. It demonstrates and signals profound changes in the social sciences.

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Book SynopsisThis book presents the multidisciplinary field of forensic archaeology as complementary but distinct from forensic anthropology. By looking beyond basic excavation methods and skeletal analyses, this book presents the theoretical foundations of forensic archaeology, novel contexts and applications, and demonstrative case studies from practitioners active in the field. Many of the chapters present new approaches and methods not previously covered in other forensic archaeology books, some of which may be of direct use to those conducting criminal investigations.Trade Review“This book is of interest particularly to forensic pathologists, as well as to other professionals involved in the investigational process, such as forensic anthropologists and police investigators. ... The book aims to familiarize the audience with this new forensic discipline and to extend the knowledge of the experts interested in this particular field. … Careful reading of this book will provide the reader with the clear definition of forensic archeology and its distinction from forensic anthropology.” (Vedrana Petrovečki, Croatian Medical Journal, Vol. 60 (3), June, 2019)Table of ContentsPart 1 - Theoretical Frameworks.- Different but equal: the philosophical foundations of forensic archaeology.- Four-Field Forensic Archaeology.- Professionalism in Forensic Archaeology: Transitioning from ‘Cowboy of science’ to ‘officer of the court’.- Forensic Archaeologist or Crime Scene Investigator?.- The Human Side of Forensic Archaeology.- Part 2 - Forensic Archaeological Contexts.- The Language of Forensic Archaeology: Discourses in Field and in Court.- Convincing LEO: Successful interaction between the archaeologist and law enforcement officials in crime scene investigations.- The Use of Forensic Archaeology in Missing Person Cases.- Landfill Searches for Human Remains.- The Application of archaeological techniques to forensic fire scenes.- An Evolving Problem for Forensic Archaeology: The Involvement of Armed Users of Controlled Substances in Archaeological Crime.- Part 3 – Multi-disciplinary Techniques & Methods.- The Role of Palynology in Forensic Archaeology.- Chemistry & Forensic Archaeology – A Marriage Made in Heaven.- The Use of 3D Laser Scanning in Forensic Archaeology to Document Unauthorized Archaeological Damage.- Forensic Archaeology and the Question of Using Geographic Profiling Methods such as “Winthropping”.- Part 4 - Case Studies.- The Benefits of a Cooperative Approach: Case Studies from Lancaster County, Nebraska.- Digging, Defacement, Damage, and Dealing: Case Studies of the Role of Forensic Archaeology in Archaeology.- Looking Back: 10 Years after “The Station” Nightclub Fire, West Warwick, Rhode Island.- Acquisition and Disposition Problems and Experiences Policing the Online Marketplace for Human Remains.- Take Them to the Woods: Melding Forensic Education with Real Case Experience.

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Book SynopsisThe Managed Body productively complicates ‘menstrual hygiene management’ (MHM)—a growing social movement to support menstruating girls in the Global South. Bobel offers an invested critique of the complicated discourses of MHM including its conceptual and practical links with the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) development sector, human rights and ‘the girling of development.’ Drawing on analysis of in-depth interviews, participant observations and the digital materials of NGOs and social businesses, Bobel shows how MHM frames problems and solutions to capture attention and direct resources to this highly-tabooed topic. She asserts that MHM organizations often inadvertently rely upon weak evidence and spectacularized representations to make the claim of a ‘hygienic crisis’ that authorizes rescue. And, she argues, the largely product-based solutions that follow fail to challenge the social construction of the menstrual body as dirty and in need of concealment. While cast as fundamental to preserving girls’ dignity, MHM prioritizes ‘technological fixes’ that teach girls to discipline their developing bodies vis a vis consumer culture, a move that actually accommodates more than it resists the core problem of menstrual stigma.Trade Review“The author effortlessly links postcolonial feminist thinking to MHM, which is commendable for a book that hails from the global north.” (Aysha Farhana Chakkampully, Gender and Research, Vol. 22 (2), 2021)“The Managed Body would be a valuable addition to courses on gender and health, embodiment, critical development studies, medical anthropology, and reproductive health and rights. This book’s accessible style also makes it appropriate for a much wider audience, and The Managed Body belongs on the reading lists of development professionals, feminist activists and anyone else interested in gender, health, and development.” (Leigh Senderowicz, Gender & Society, Vol. 20 (10), 2020)“This book will not only appeal to those interested in the topic but also to those who research race, globalization, transnationalism, rhetoric, feminism, public health, gender, activism, or economics.” (Berkley Conner, Affilia, December 6, 2019)“The book is a timely, important and provides a fascinating read about contemporary feminism, activism and capitalism.” (Camilla Mørk Røstvik, Social History of Medicine, Vol. 32 (4), November, 2019)Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction: What a Girl Needs….- Part I: Context.- Chapter 2: The Girling of Development.- Chapter 3: Making Menstruation Matter in the Global South: Mapping a Critical History of the Menstrual Hygiene Management Movement.- Part II: Framing the Problem: Stories of Risk, Risk of Stories.- Chapter 4: “Can You Imagine?” Making the Case for a Bloody Crisis.- Chapter 5: The Spectacle of the ‘Third World Girl’ and the Politics of Rescue.- Part III.Framing the Solution: Developing the ‘Good Body’.- Chapter 6: “Dignity Can’t Wait”: Building a Bridge to Human Rights.- Chapter 7: Disciplining Girls through the Technological Fix: Modernity, Markets, Materials.- Chapter 8: Beyond the Managed Body: Putting Menstrual Literacy at the Center.- Appendix A: Methods.- Appendix B: Notes on Language.

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Book SynopsisBringing together a range of illustrative case studies coupled with fresh theoretical insights, this volume is one of the first to address the complexities and contradictions in the relationship between migration, time, and capitalism. While temporal reckoning has long fascinated anthropologists, few studies have sought to confront how capitalism fetishizes time in the production of global inequalities—historically and in the contemporary world. As it explores how the agendas of capitalism condition migration in Europe, North America, and Oceania, this collection also examines temporality as a feature of migrants’ experiences to ultimately provide a theoretically robust and ethnographically informed investigation of migration and temporality within a framework defined by the political economy of capitalism. Table of Contents1. Temporalities and Migration: Introduction2. Chronotopes of Migration Scholarship: The Challenges of Radical Contemporaneity3. The Timescape of Post-WWII Caribbean Migration to Britain: Non contemporaneity as Challenge and Opportunity4. Time at Sea: Temporal Horizons of Rescue and Its Avoidance in the Central Mediterranean5. Flexible Kinship and Discrepant Temporalities in Chinese Transpacific Migration 6. ’Lost Time’ – The Experience of Waiting for a Future among Young Somali Migrants en route7. Labour and Population: Migration Pathways to Rural Manitoba Past and Present8. Badocari Temporalities: Perspectives on Time, Bottles, and Economies for Romanian Roma Bottle Collectors in Copenhagen9. Migration and Temporal Dissonance in Canada Philippine Migration10. Temporality, Migration, Reproduction: Cycles, Alignments, and Misalignments in Late Capitalism

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Book SynopsisIn a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences. Gee argues that our schools, institutions, legal systems, and societies are designed for creatures that do not exist, thus resulting in multiple, interacting crises, such as climate change, failing institutions, and the rise of nationalist nationalism. As Gee constructs an understanding of the human that takes into account our social, collective, and historical nature, as established by recent research, he inspires readers to reflect for themselves on the very question of who we are—a key consideration for anyone interested in society, government, schools, health, activism, culture and diversity, or even just survival.Table of ContentsChapter 1: IntroductionPart 1Chapter 2: TermanChapter 3: HumansChapter 4: More than Animals?Chapter 5: Human-Made MonstersChapter 6: Conclusion to Part 1Part 2Chapter 7: FetishesChapter 8: Examples of FetishesChapter 9: Doubling FetishesChapter 10: The ImaginariumChapter 11: The Conscious BrainChapter 12: The Gang of SixChapter 13: LanguageChapter 14: Stress and the StateChapter 15. Another Attempt to Answer Our QuestionChapter 16: Conclusion to Part 2 Part 3Chapter 17: Inter-Human ArtefactsChapter 18: Embodied MeaningChapter 19: Specific UniversalsChapter 20: MoralityChapter 21: The Examined LifeChapter 22: Conclusion to Part 3Part 4Chapter 23: Plug-And-PlayChapter 24: Morality AgainChapter 25: AffinityChapter 26: Conclusions to Part 4Chapter 27: Conclusion to Book

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Book SynopsisThis open access book uses an interdisciplinary approach that not only focuses on social organization but also analyzes how societies and ecological settings were interwoven. How did early modern indigenous Sami inhabitants in interior northwest Fennoscandia build institutions for governance of natural resources? The book answers this question by exploring how they made decisions regarding natural resource management, mainly with regard to wild game, fish, and grazing land and illuminate how Sami users, in a changing economy, altered the long-term rules for use of land and water in a self-governance context. The early modern period was a transforming phase of property rights due to fundamental changes in Sami economy: from an economy based on fishing and hunting to an economy where reindeer pastoralism became the main occupation for many Sami. The book gives a new portrayal of how proficiently and systematically indigenous inhabitants organized and governed natural assets and how capable they were in building highly functioning institutions for governance.Trade Review“The book by Jesper Larsson and Eva-Lotta Päiviö Sjaunja is really fascinating and a definite must-read for anyone interested in the history of reindeer pastoralism and, may be, pastoralism in general.” (Kirill V. Istomin, Pastoralism, June 8, 2022)Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction, Framework, Methods and Starting Points.- Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Linking long-term changes in socioecological systems with the development of property rights.- Chapter 3: Methods and staring points.- Chapter 4: Important variables.- Part II: Land Use, Livelihood and Ecological Settings.- Chapter 5: Fishing.- Chapter 6: Hunting.- Chapter 7: Reindeer husbandry.- Chapter 8: Other.- Part III: Synthesis.- Chapter 9: From private to common – coevolution of land-use practices and property rights.- Chapter 10: Early modern self-governance and colonial structures – the current state of affairs.

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Book SynopsisThe COVID-19 pandemic is not only a threat to our health and economy, but also has strong implications for defence and security. Indeed, defence leaders have highlighted a second fight surrounding the spread of COVID-19, namely disinformation and preparing to face adversaries willing to exploit the public health crisis for nefarious purposes. The current pandemic is a breeding ground for the propagation of disinformation, as it represents the first major global health event in which large social media platforms have become the main distributor of information. This multi-national edited volume consists of contributions from Defence Science, academia and industry, including NATO Headquarters, United States, Netherlands, Singapore, United Kingdom and Norway. The content is aimed at a diverse audience, including NATO members, researchers from defence and security organizations, academics, and militaries including analysts and practitioners, as well as policy makers. This volume focuses on various aspects of COVID-19 disinformation, including identifying global dominant disinformation narratives and the methods used to spread disinformation, examining COVID-19 disinformation within the broader context of the cognitive domain, examining the psychological effects of COVID-19 disinformation and COVID-19 disinformation on instant messaging platforms, along with examining various countermeasures to disinformation.Table of Contents1. A Political Disinfodemic.- 2. Cognitive Warefare: NATO, COVID-19 and the Impact of Emergingand Disruptive Technologies.- 3. Developing Approaches to Detect and Mitigate COVID-19Misinfodemic in Social Networks for Proactive Policymaking.- 4. COVID-19 Disinformation, Misinformation and Malinformation During the Pandemic Infodemic: A View from the United Kingdom.- 5. Web of Lies: Mapping the Narratives, Effects and Amplifiers of Russian COVID-19 Disinformation.- 6. The Asian COVID-19 Infodemic on Instant Messaging Platforms.- 7. How to Defence Against COVID Related Disinformation.- 8. Are You Seeing What I am Seeing? Ensuring Data Relevance for Online Information Environment Assessments.

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Book SynopsisReindeer have been an integral part of the lives of people in Northern Fennoscandia in prehistoric and historic times. Today, reindeer herding practices are changing fast due to climate change, land use pressures and new technologies. This book outlines recent advances in the archaeology of reindeer domestication and development of reindeer herding among the Sámi of Northern Fennoscandia, focusing especially on the identification and understanding of various reindeer herding tasks and practices through archaeological evidence and traditional knowledge of reindeer herders. Covering more than a thousand years of history of reindeer herding, the book explores how reindeer herding practices have always been dynamic and adapted to the changing social, economic and environmental pressures. While reindeer herding practices have changed, they have also retained memory and tradition. The continuity and adaptation of reindeer herding testifies of the resilience of reindeer herders and their animals, and the importance of their relationship in the changing Arctic. This book will be of interest to scholars interested in archaeology, anthropology, and history of the Arctic, as well as local communities and reindeer herders.Table of ContentsPart I: The history and biology of reindeer domestication.- Chapter 1. Introduction: Perspectives on the history and ethnoarchaeology of reindeer domestication and herding.- Chapter 2. Impact of human selection on the genetics and morphology of the reindeer.- Part II: Domestication and herding strategies.- Chapter 3. Castration as part of reindeer herd management.- Chapter 4. Working reindeer in past and present reindeer herding.- Chapter 5. Human-reindeer relationships and reindeer feeding: Perspectives from archaeology and reindeer herders’ knowledge.- Part III: Human-reindeer landscapes.- Chapter 6. Habitation sites and herding landscapes.- Chapter 7. Mobility in early reindeer herding.- Part IV: Social and cultural entanglements.- Chapter 8. Effects of reindeer domestication on society and religion.- Chapter 9. Conclusions: Past and present reindeer herding in dialogue.

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Book SynopsisPart I: Museum Exhibits.- Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Texas Museums.- Chapter 3: The National Museum of Natural History.- Chapter 4: The American Museum of Natural History.- Chapter 5:  The Great Lakes Region: Chicago and Cleveland.- Chapter 6: The West Coast: California.- Chapter 7: In the Center: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science.- Chapter 8: The Outgroup: London's Natural History Museum.- Part II: Interviews.- Chapter 9: Content and Change.- Chapter 10: Fantasy and Reality.- Chapter 11: Self-Assessment.- Chapter 12: Education and Edutainment.- Chapter 13: Religion.- Chapter 14: Politics.- Chapter 15:  Race and History.- Chapter 16: Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1. Humans Make Earth History New Earth and New Anthropology.- Chapter 2. Cultural Resonance Loss of Orientation, Fears, and Hope.- Chapter 3. End-Time Stories Mostly Dramatic Framings.- Chapter 4. Critique Strengths and Weaknesses of Anthropocene Thinking.- Chapter 5. Anthropocene Anthropology Contributions and Opportunities.- Chapter 6. Conditio Humana the Geologization of Culture.-Chapter 7. Human Niche Construction Building Blocks for Synthesis.- Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1. Introduction: For a History of Anthropology in the Plural.- Chapter 2. People and Ideas from Elsewhere: Notes on Social Anthropology in the UK.- Chapter 3. French Anthropology, Ethnology of France and the Contemporary Turn.- Chapter 4. From Herder to Strecker: Birth and Developments of the Anthropological Notion of Culture in Germany.- Chapter 5. Cultural Anthropology in Italy in the Twentieth Century.- Chapter 6. Chronology of a Discipline: Social and Cultural Anthropology in Spain.- Chapter 7. From the Regime Ethnologists to the Democratic Generation: Histories of Portuguese Anthropology.- Chapter 8. Anthropology in Russia: From Nineteenth-Century Ethnography to the New Post-Soviet Anthropology.- Chapter 9. Indigenous Ethnologists, National Anthropologists, Post-colonial Intellectuals: The Trajectory of Anthropology in French-Speaking West and Equatorial Africa.- Chapter 10. 10 A Nerve Centre of the Discipline on the Periphery of the Empire: South Africa and Anthropology in the Twentieth CenturyStefano Allovio.- Chapter 11. American Anthropology: Some Distinctive Features.- Chapter 12. From Hegemony to Fragmentation: North American Cultural Anthropology Over the Past Fifty Years.- Chapter 13. Trajectories and Subjects of Brazilian Anthropology.- Chapter 14. From the Study of Indigenous Cultures to the Critics of Modernity: On Anthropologym ade in Colombia.- Chapter 15. History of Anthropology in Mexico: From Nation Building to the Recognition of Diversity.- Chapter 16. Social Anthropology in India: Studying the Self in the Other.- Chapter 17. The Diverse Accounts of Anthropology in Viet Nam.- Chapter 18. Australian Anthropology in Its Colonial Context.- Chapter. 19 Five Paths for a History of the Pacific Islands.- Chapter 20. Chinese Perspectives on Anthropology and Ethnology.- Chapter 21. The Birth and Development of Anthropology in Arab Countries: A still Controversial and Marginalised Knowledge?.

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Book SynopsisIntroduction.- Chapter 1. The landscape and scenery of the field.- Chapter 2. Mutual-strucutralization of Chinese Local Secular life and Supernature.- Chapter 3. Qi in the daily practice.- Chapter 4. The forms of Qi in faith.- Chapter 5. Qi in Festival Ceremonies.- Chapter 6. Qi: The holistic significance for the local scope.- References.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1. Introduction : Second-hand Cultures and Economies of Reuse, Repair, Sharing and Care.- Chapter 2. Reuse and ReUse: Informal and Institutional Transfer of Used Goods.- Chapter 3. Social Capital in Secondhand Markets.- Chapter 4. Greening Farmers Markets: How Communities Come Together to Keep Items and Waste Out of the Landfill.- Chapter 5. “These System Will Provide their Own Lessons”: University Reuse Programs as Sites of Material Care and Educational Praxis.- Chapter 6. Fixing Coffeemakers and Giving Away Couches: Urban Economies of Reuse, Repair, Sharing, and Care in Germany.- Chapter 7. Ready to Repair: Teleologies of Secondhand Electronics Market and Repairing in Tanzania.- Chapter 8. “This is really genbrug!” International Mothers’ Consumption of Second-hand Children’s Good in Copenhagen, Denmark.- Chapter 9. Frictional Infrastructures: Navigating the Socio-Spatial Landscape of Second-Hand and Waste Tires in Mega-City Lagos.- Chapter 10. The Immense Possibilities of Six Yards of Cloth: Saris, Recycling, and Power in Indian Households.- Chapter 11. Reclaimed wood in a reclaimed city? Or, the story of Joe’s new table.- Chapter 12. Second-hand for the “Third World”: Charitable Gift Giving during Religious Volunteer-Tourism in the Dominican Republic.- Chapter 13. Secondhand Sacred: Christian Material Culture and Reseller Ethics.

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Book SynopsisBuilding from a range of essays representing multiple fields of expertise and traversing multiple religious traditions, this important text provides analytic rigor to a question now pressing the academic study of religion: what is the relationship between the material and the digital?Its chapters address a range of processes of mediation between the digital and the material from a variety of perspectives and sub-disciplines within the field of religion in order to theorize the implications of these two turns in scholarship, offer case studies in methodology, and reflect on various tools and processes. Authors attend to religious practices and the internet, digital archives of religion, decolonization, embodiment, digitization of religious artefacts and objects, and the ways in which varied relationships between the digital and the material shape religious life.Collectively, the volume demonstrates opportunities and challenges at the intersection of digital humanities and material religion. Rather than defining the bounds of a new field of inquiry, the essays make a compelling case, collectively and on their own, for the interpretive scrutiny required of the humanities in the digital age.

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Book SynopsisThis volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.

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Book SynopsisThis book paints an image of sociality in duress, describing how new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) bring possible changes in political engagement and civic-ness. The political branch of the field of ICT-for-Development (ICT4D) is firmly convinced that this translates in civic engagement and democratisation. This book questions this conception, by showing that mistrust greatly increases through new ICT in a society where mistrust has been internalised. These processes are examined in the society encountered in Sokodé, the capital of the Central Region of Togo, in the period between 2015 and 2020, when the mobile phone became widespread among young people. This ethnographic research provides a snapshot of the changes brought about by new ICT in the social fabrics and the lives of these young people. The place and period are highly relevant for getting a better understanding of the forms that civic engagement can take, and the roles that new ICT can play in settings of political repression. Togo has been ruled by the same family for over half a century, and Sokodé is one of the rare places of fierce political opposition. However, young people do not persevere in massive street protests like in other countries, even though they appear to have every reason to do so. How can the circumstances and social processes be understood that are leading to this ‘political silence’, and how do frustration and anger find their way? The link between new ICT and civic engagement has more often been made, but mostly quantitative and volatile, lacking empirical grounding. This book demonstrates that there is indeed a connection between new ICT and social change. Through their phones, young people inform themselves in different ways, and they react differently to social and political changes. Their reflection on politics has also altered, minimal as it may seem. By closely regarding the context and mechanisms by which the trustworthiness of information is valued, this book contributes to the nascent research field of communication and political anthropology.

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings together renowned scholars and early career-researchers in mapping the ways in which European cinema —whether arthouse or mainstream, fictional or documentary, working with traditional or new media— engages with phenomena of precarity, poverty, and social exclusion. It compares how the filmic traditions of different countries reflect the socioeconomic conditions associated with precarity, and illuminates similarities in the iconography of precarious lives across cultures. While some of the contributions deal with the representations of marginalized minorities, others focus on work-related precarity or the depictions of downward mobility. Among other topics, the volume looks at how films grapple with gender inequality, intersectional struggle, discriminatory housing policies, and the specific problems of precarious youth. With its comparative approach to filmic representations of European precarity, this volume makes a major contribution to scholarship on precarity and the representation of social class in contemporary visual culture. Watch our book talk with the editors Elisa Cuter, Guido Kirsten and Hanna Prenzel here: https://youtu.be/lKpD1NFAx2o

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