Social and cultural anthropology Books
University of Texas Press Viva George
Book SynopsisFor 120 years, residents of the cross-border community of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo have celebrated George Washington's birthday together, and this account reveals the essential political work of a time-honored civic tradition.Trade ReviewA much-needed academic analysis of the history and meaning of the binational celebration of George Washington's birthday…Are the cross-border cooperation strategies inspired by Washington's birthday celebrations a solution to immigration restrictions or are they a sophisticated articulation of a longer history of exclusion on the border? This book provokes these and other important questions. * Southwestern Historical Quarterly *Informative and concise...The book is composed from archival sources in both the United States and Mexico, making it a model of transnational research. Moreover, Peña’s years of field work in Los dos Laredos as an observer in the celebration give the book a street-level view that makes the book engaging. * Pacific Historical Review *"[Peña] brings an admirable measure of ritual and performance theory to bear on what she calls 'border enactments and 'scaffolding'—symbolic and practical actions—fostered by the [George Washington's Birthday Celebration] and oriented toward Mexico, especially events enacted at the International Bridge." * Journal of American Ethnic History *[¡Viva George!] demonstrates that cross-cultural events observed in borderland geographies provide opportunities to define—or redefine—performative expressions of identity, nationalism, and spatial control....¡Viva George! is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students who wish to explore themes related to borderlands history, performance, race, identity, and foreign relations. The book is well researched with great attention to detail and includes many different examples and creative analysis. * Western Historical Quarterly *[¡Viva George!] presents a strong case for an interdisciplinary approach in folkloristics—one that also debunks artificial genre borders as well...¡Viva George! demonstrates how the study of festivals and celebrations in the field of folklore studies has gone beyond the merely descriptive to serious analysis and theorizing...I would highly recommend the book for use in classes on ritual or popular cultural festivals, especially at the graduate level. * Journal of American Folklore *Elaine Peña writes a masterful study of the material economy of religion in the borderlands . . .She suggests that border actors engage with place and space in all sorts of ways—refusing to accept lines between nation-states as static or permanent. Play is key here, and it is at once world-building and world-shattering. * Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: From Border Capricho to Border Scaffolding Part 1. Playing for Power Chapter 1. Playing Indian, Playing Colonial Chapter 2. Playing Mexican Part 2. Playing under Duress Chapter 3. Hurricane Alice and the International Bridge Closure Crisis Chapter 4. Paso Libre Chapter 5. Us, Them, and Festive Security Conclusion: Why Study Border Enactments? Notes Bibliography Index
£22.79
University of Texas Press Frontier Intimacies
Book SynopsisSet in a Mennonite colony of Paraguay's remote Chaco region, this book tracks the lives and contested practices of indigenous Ayoreo women who commodify their sexuality, exposing the fractured workings of frontier capitalism.Trade Review[A] highly engaging and original work...Paola Canova offers significant new insights in her beautifully detailed account of situated lives and transgressive, racialized desires in one of the continent’s most remote and legendary regions. We come away with admiration for the profound ways in which indigenous peoples, and specifically women, are negotiating the brute force of capitalist commodification of bodies and things in this complex, masculine liminal space of the South American Chaco. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *Pleasant to read...Frontier Intimacies is an excellent ethnography relevant not only for those specialized in Ayoreo or the Chaco but also for those interested in frontier dynamics, with its intertwinement of violence and agency, exploitation and conspicuous consumption, affective bonds and racialized desires. * Journal of Anthropological Research *This is undoubtedly an ethnography of great significance and impact, both for the field data collected and for the author’s analysis, which allow us to explore one of the many ways in which indigenous modernities are constructed in a context of sharp economic and sociocultural change. Above all, Canova’s book helps to place current indigenous women, with their practices, their experiences, and their discontents, on the center of the stage. * Journal de la Société des américanistes *This book is an invaluable contribution to knowledge of how extremely marginalised communities develop strategies to function in spaces in which, despite the power of the dominant culture, they develop and perform their own ways to understand gender, labour and sexual intimacy challenging the moral assumptions and economic rules of the dominant society. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *Table of Contents Preface Introduction: An Economy of Intimate Transformations Chapter 1. Drawing Boundaries Chapter 2. Liminal Masculinities Chapter 3. Labor Exclusion Chapter 4. Commodifying Sex Chapter 5. Consuming Desire Chapter 6. Negotiating Inclusion Conclusion: Toward an Intimate Frontier Acknowledgments Notes References Index
£62.90
University of Texas Press Frontier Intimacies
Book SynopsisSet in a Mennonite colony of Paraguay's remote Chaco region, this book tracks the lives and contested practices of indigenous Ayoreo women who commodify their sexuality, exposing the fractured workings of frontier capitalism.Trade Review[A] highly engaging and original work...Paola Canova offers significant new insights in her beautifully detailed account of situated lives and transgressive, racialized desires in one of the continent’s most remote and legendary regions. We come away with admiration for the profound ways in which indigenous peoples, and specifically women, are negotiating the brute force of capitalist commodification of bodies and things in this complex, masculine liminal space of the South American Chaco. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *Pleasant to read...Frontier Intimacies is an excellent ethnography relevant not only for those specialized in Ayoreo or the Chaco but also for those interested in frontier dynamics, with its intertwinement of violence and agency, exploitation and conspicuous consumption, affective bonds and racialized desires. * Journal of Anthropological Research *This is undoubtedly an ethnography of great significance and impact, both for the field data collected and for the author’s analysis, which allow us to explore one of the many ways in which indigenous modernities are constructed in a context of sharp economic and sociocultural change. Above all, Canova’s book helps to place current indigenous women, with their practices, their experiences, and their discontents, on the center of the stage. * Journal de la Société des américanistes *This book is an invaluable contribution to knowledge of how extremely marginalised communities develop strategies to function in spaces in which, despite the power of the dominant culture, they develop and perform their own ways to understand gender, labour and sexual intimacy challenging the moral assumptions and economic rules of the dominant society. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *Table of Contents Preface Introduction: An Economy of Intimate Transformations Chapter 1. Drawing Boundaries Chapter 2. Liminal Masculinities Chapter 3. Labor Exclusion Chapter 4. Commodifying Sex Chapter 5. Consuming Desire Chapter 6. Negotiating Inclusion Conclusion: Toward an Intimate Frontier Acknowledgments Notes References Index
£999.99
University of Texas Press Downtown Juárez
Book SynopsisAn intimate look at the normalization of violence in the lives of sex workers, drug dealers, barflies, and drug addicts in downtown Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.Trade Review[Campbell] constructs a detailed and personal account of how violence is produced in Juárez specifically and Mexico as a whole...The author's writing style transports us to the detailed accounts and experiences he went through in Juárez and brings light to those who have been pushed to the shadows...This book is a valuable contribution to the literature as it provides scholars, social workers, and law enforcement officials with a complex understanding of violence in Juárez and the processes of naturalization of violence that continue to perpetuate violence in Mexico. * Small Wars Journal *This is a masterpiece of urban anthropology and one of the most significant studies of life in Ciudad Juárez in recent memory. It is a formidable work of scholarship that resonates far beyond academe. * El Paso Matters *An extraordinary book...By telling the tragic tales of people who live in very dire conditions—and perform activities that are not ideal—in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Campbell seeks to offer a general explanation of the intense violence that takes place every day in the central part of this very complex border city...This text and its stories are the result of brave, humane, and exemplary ethnographic work that depicts the 'underworlds of violence and abuse.' * NACLA Report *Through his detailed narratives...Campbell successfully details the complexities of Ciudad Juárez that lead some people to barely survive and others to certain destruction…Recommended. * CHOICE *Campbell provides the reader with a gritty but very human account of the limited choices that those living in the Juárez underworld face, and shows how these limited choices become 'normal'...Downtown Juárez is a very compelling read...Readers will come away with an understanding of the everyday lives of the members of the Juárez underworld, and how violence has become a normal part of their daily experience. * The Sociological Review *Campbell’s vivid and captivating ethnography of Downtown Juárez is not only accessible, well written, and engaging, but also makes notable theoretical and methodological contributions...Campbell’s ethnography neither romanticizes nor pathologizes everyday life in Downtown Juárez. Instead, he masterfully centers the lived realities of his informants and provides greater insights into their subjectivities and humanity...A must-read for scholars interested in violence, the borderlands, and ethnographic methodologies. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *By understanding how individuals frequently fall into both [victim and victimizer], and indeed, how being a victimizer often leads someone to become a victim and vice versa, Campbell offers a nuanced reading of violence in the region, drawing attention to often underanalyzed dynamics...[Campbell's] narratives are vibrant and often nuanced. They are a pleasure to read. * Latin American Politics and Society *This [book] is an honest effort to approach the complex problems of this border city…it revels in the rigor of an academic book, but is also accessible to non-specialized readers.[Este libro es] un esfuerzo honesto por aproximarse a la compleja problematica de esta urbe fronteriza . . . Goza de rigor académico, pero también es accesible a los lectores no especializados. * Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos *Table of Contents Introduction: Borders of the Mind—Violence in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico 1. Synergistic Violence and the Normalization of Abuse in a Border Context 2. The Bridge: Concentrations of Power, Economic Exchange, and Transnational Humanity 3. The Historical Roots of Violence, Crime, and Abuse in Downtown Juárez and Colonia Bellavista 4. Colonia Bellavista Today 5. Avenida Juárez Today 6. Prostitution and Sex Workers in the Downtown Street Scene 7. Contemporary Gay Pick-Up Scenes and Danger in Downtown Juárez 8. Border Bar Life: An Introduction 9. A Place without Limits: Inebriation and Dehumanization at The Club 10. Conviviality, Drug Deals, Sexual Abuse, and a Juárez-Based Philosophy of Masculine Nihilism 11. Bars as Sites and Languid Staging Areas for Petty Crimes: Hanging Out in the 69 Lounge, Waiting for Something Bad to Happen 12. Downtown Bars as Locations of both Pleasure and Victimization: Sex, Drugs, and Extortion at El Antro 13. Bars and Criminality: Human Smugglers and Cross-Border Drug Smugglers in Central Juárez 14. Everyday Drug Dealers in Downtown Juárez 15. Human Perseverance amidst Recurring “Drug Wars” 16. The Naturalization of “Drug Violence”: Hit Men and Drug Killings 17. Paloma Makes a Life in the Downtown Bars: Survival amidst Crime, Violence, Drugs, and Sexual Abuse Conclusion: Synergistic Violence and the Cycle of Victimization on the Border Notes Bibliography Index
£78.30
University of Texas Press Downtown Juarez
Book SynopsisAt least 200,000 people have died in Mexico's so-called drug war, and the worst suffering has been in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. How did it get so bad? After three decades studying that question, Howard Campbell doesn't believe there is any one answer. Misguided policies, corruption, criminality, and the borderland economy are all factors. But none of these reasons explain how violence in downtown Juárez has become heartbreakingly normal.A rigorous yet moving account, Downtown Juárez is informed by the sex workers, addicts, hustlers, bar owners, human smugglers, migrants, and down-and-out workers struggling to survive in an underworld where horrifying abuses have come to seem like the natural way of things. Even as Juárez's elite northeast section thrives on the profits of multinational corporations, and law-abiding citizens across the city mobilize against crime and official malfeasance, downtown's cantinas, barrios, and brothels are tyrannized by misery. Trade Review[Campbell] constructs a detailed and personal account of how violence is produced in Juárez specifically and Mexico as a whole...The author's writing style transports us to the detailed accounts and experiences he went through in Juárez and brings light to those who have been pushed to the shadows...This book is a valuable contribution to the literature as it provides scholars, social workers, and law enforcement officials with a complex understanding of violence in Juárez and the processes of naturalization of violence that continue to perpetuate violence in Mexico. * Small Wars Journal *This is a masterpiece of urban anthropology and one of the most significant studies of life in Ciudad Juárez in recent memory. It is a formidable work of scholarship that resonates far beyond academe. * El Paso Matters *An extraordinary book...By telling the tragic tales of people who live in very dire conditions—and perform activities that are not ideal—in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Campbell seeks to offer a general explanation of the intense violence that takes place every day in the central part of this very complex border city...This text and its stories are the result of brave, humane, and exemplary ethnographic work that depicts the 'underworlds of violence and abuse.' * NACLA Report *Through his detailed narratives...Campbell successfully details the complexities of Ciudad Juárez that lead some people to barely survive and others to certain destruction…Recommended. * CHOICE *Campbell provides the reader with a gritty but very human account of the limited choices that those living in the Juárez underworld face, and shows how these limited choices become 'normal'...Downtown Juárez is a very compelling read...Readers will come away with an understanding of the everyday lives of the members of the Juárez underworld, and how violence has become a normal part of their daily experience. * The Sociological Review *Campbell’s vivid and captivating ethnography of Downtown Juárez is not only accessible, well written, and engaging, but also makes notable theoretical and methodological contributions...Campbell’s ethnography neither romanticizes nor pathologizes everyday life in Downtown Juárez. Instead, he masterfully centers the lived realities of his informants and provides greater insights into their subjectivities and humanity...A must-read for scholars interested in violence, the borderlands, and ethnographic methodologies. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *By understanding how individuals frequently fall into both [victim and victimizer], and indeed, how being a victimizer often leads someone to become a victim and vice versa, Campbell offers a nuanced reading of violence in the region, drawing attention to often underanalyzed dynamics...[Campbell's] narratives are vibrant and often nuanced. They are a pleasure to read. * Latin American Politics and Society *This [book] is an honest effort to approach the complex problems of this border city…it revels in the rigor of an academic book, but is also accessible to non-specialized readers.[Este libro es] un esfuerzo honesto por aproximarse a la compleja problematica de esta urbe fronteriza . . . Goza de rigor académico, pero también es accesible a los lectores no especializados. * Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos *Table of Contents Introduction: Borders of the Mind—Violence in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico 1. Synergistic Violence and the Normalization of Abuse in a Border Context 2. The Bridge: Concentrations of Power, Economic Exchange, and Transnational Humanity 3. The Historical Roots of Violence, Crime, and Abuse in Downtown Juárez and Colonia Bellavista 4. Colonia Bellavista Today 5. Avenida Juárez Today 6. Prostitution and Sex Workers in the Downtown Street Scene 7. Contemporary Gay Pick-Up Scenes and Danger in Downtown Juárez 8. Border Bar Life: An Introduction 9. A Place without Limits: Inebriation and Dehumanization at The Club 10. Conviviality, Drug Deals, Sexual Abuse, and a Juárez-Based Philosophy of Masculine Nihilism 11. Bars as Sites and Languid Staging Areas for Petty Crimes: Hanging Out in the 69 Lounge, Waiting for Something Bad to Happen 12. Downtown Bars as Locations of both Pleasure and Victimization: Sex, Drugs, and Extortion at El Antro 13. Bars and Criminality: Human Smugglers and Cross-Border Drug Smugglers in Central Juárez 14. Everyday Drug Dealers in Downtown Juárez 15. Human Perseverance amidst Recurring “Drug Wars” 16. The Naturalization of “Drug Violence”: Hit Men and Drug Killings 17. Paloma Makes a Life in the Downtown Bars: Survival amidst Crime, Violence, Drugs, and Sexual Abuse Conclusion: Synergistic Violence and the Cycle of Victimization on the Border Notes Bibliography Index
£23.39
University of Texas Press Abecedario de Juarez
Book SynopsisIllustrated with evocative drawings by artist Alice Leora Briggs, this glossary uses the vocabulary created by the violence in Juárez, Mexico, to tell the stories of the people who live there.Trade ReviewAn unconventional and fully illustrated, alphabetical account of an era in which border citizens in conflict zones used words, shortcuts, and stories to process relentless waves of violence…Working together, [Cardona and Briggs] created a moving melange of observations and illustrations of life and death on the border that make the experience of reading Abecedario something like visiting an important exhibit at an art museum...This is not a book to be read in a single sitting. It’s at once a history book, a reference book, and an indictment of the militarization of the border by the Mexican government and of the government’s continuing failure to end enduring violence...This book is often hard to read. And yet there’s magic here too: In some ways, Cardona returns to life on these richly illustrated pages. * Texas Observer *Abecedario de Juárez is a multifaceted work that readers can enter into variously. It might be referenced as a glossary, read as a collection of narratives, or mused on as an art book, but it is the interaction of all these dimensions that enhances its poignancy...Abecedario de Juárez preserves the voices and images of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Almost 25 years after the publication of Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future, and two years after the passing of Cardona, Briggs and Cardona’s final collaboration is the indispensable culmination of an urgent call to witness the heavy human cost of free trade, and to stop pretending no hay nada que ver. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
£25.19
University of Texas Press Oaxaca in Motion
Book SynopsisAn expansive survey of the cultural fluctuations experienced by Oaxacan migrants both inside and outside of Mexico.Trade ReviewCogent portraits of the individuals and families [Sandoval-Cervantes] followed in both the home community and their migrant settings in Mexico and the US…Recommended. * CHOICE *[A] readable and insightful book…[Oaxaca in Motion] is an excellent introduction to the gender analysis of migration studies. * American Ethnologist *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Noticing Internal and Transnational Migrations Chapter 1. Research in Zegache: Multiple Histories Chapter 2. Leaving Zegache: Internal and Transnational Women Migrants Chapter 3. Labor Corridors I: Peasants and Soldiers Chapter 4. Labor Corridors II: Transnational Migration and Masculinity Chapter 5. The Masculine Familiarity of Work; or, How Cooking Became Masculine Chapter 6. Migration and Femininity: Beyond the Tutelage of the Mothers-in-Law Conclusion Notes References Index
£62.90
University of Texas Press Oaxaca in Motion
Book SynopsisAn expansive survey of the cultural fluctuations experienced by Oaxacan migrants both inside and outside of Mexico.Trade ReviewCogent portraits of the individuals and families [Sandoval-Cervantes] followed in both the home community and their migrant settings in Mexico and the US…Recommended. * CHOICE *[A] readable and insightful book…[Oaxaca in Motion] is an excellent introduction to the gender analysis of migration studies. * American Ethnologist *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Noticing Internal and Transnational Migrations Chapter 1. Research in Zegache: Multiple Histories Chapter 2. Leaving Zegache: Internal and Transnational Women Migrants Chapter 3. Labor Corridors I: Peasants and Soldiers Chapter 4. Labor Corridors II: Transnational Migration and Masculinity Chapter 5. The Masculine Familiarity of Work; or, How Cooking Became Masculine Chapter 6. Migration and Femininity: Beyond the Tutelage of the Mothers-in-Law Conclusion Notes References Index
£19.79
University of Texas Press Undocumented Motherhood Conversations on Love
Book SynopsisClaudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her toddler and the incredible challenges she faced advocating for her daughter's health in the United States. When she arrived in Texas, Claudia discovered that being undocumented would mean more than just an immigration status--it would be a way of living, of mothering, and of being discarded by even those institutions we count on to care. Elizabeth Farfan-Santos spent five years with Claudia. As she listened to Claudia's experiences, she recalled her own mother's story, another life molded by migration, the US-Mexico border, and the quest for a healthy future on either side. Witnessing Claudia's struggles with doctors and teachers, we see how the education and medical systems enforce undocumented status and perpetuate disability. At one point, in the midst of advocating for her daughter, Claudia suddenly f
£62.90
University of Texas Press Undocumented Motherhood
Book SynopsisAn intimate portrayal of the hardships faced by an undocumented family navigating the medical and educational systems in the United States.Trade ReviewA beautiful gift of intimate, vulnerable, and compassionate ethnography where women's voices leap from the page, speaking truth to power boldly and deeply. -- Ruth Behar, author of The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your HeartFarfan-Santos is a beautiful storyteller who weaves together two dynamic transborder migration stories to reveal how undocumented mothers navigate unjust state systems. Fear and sacrifice shape the maternal experience highlighted in this book but so do love, commitment, comadrazgo, and radical aguante. An important book for all readers to understand how immigration policy deeply impacts the everyday existence and mobility of families on either side of the US/Mexico border. -- Michelle Téllez, University of Arizona, author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio RojasA compassionate study...Farfán-Santos movingly describes how the Latinx community comes together to help their own and makes a powerful case that the traumas of migration manifest themselves in the bodies of immigrants. This is a stirring portrait of pain and perseverance. * Publishers Weekly *Through a polyphonic chorus of testimonios, a fluid dance between Spanish and English, and an expressive collection of contour portraits, Farfán-Santos relays the story of Claudia Garcia, an undocumented mother from Mexico, who fights tooth and nail to advocate for her daughter...One of the defining features of Undocumented Motherhood is how lovingly it's assembled...the care and respect [Farfán-Santos] has for the women she interviews shines through like warm light from a busy kitchen. * Sightlines *Farfán-Santos gives readers an intimate view of life as an undocumented immigrant mother of young children in the US. At the same time, the book illuminates the often unseen breadth of maternal labor. The book celebrates maternal strength, focusing on one dauntless mother named Claudia, while also asking about the cost of that strength, the price mothers pay for their resilience. * Literary Mama *Undocumented Motherhood is a piercing ethnography about the struggles and strength of undocumented mothers from Mexico in the United States…Farfán-Santos’s unorthodox approach, vivid writing, and strong voice are what make this ethnography truly extraordinary, salient, and palpable. * American Ethnologist *Ultimately Farfán-Santos’s work serves as a challenge to the anthropological discipline as it is more methodologically whole than most human investigations. Her work aims to tackle the ways in which the geopolitical border between the US and Mexico hinders motherhood and children for generations. Her work demands a forceful reexamination of undocumented motherhood—an often overlooked, hyper-criticized and judged, and ultimately politicized experience that she states is the experience of millions of women in the US and is largely missing from the literature on parenting. * E3W *Table of Contents Author’s Notes Undocumented Moments 1. Becoming an Undocumented Mother 2. Falsas Esperanzas 3. What Sickness? 4. Comadres 5. Natalia Undocumented Stories Afterword: La Última Rifa Acknowledgments Notes Selected Sources
£17.99
University of Texas Press Unraveling Time Thirty Years of Ethnography in
Book SynopsisAnn Miles has been chronicling life in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca for more than thirty years. In that time, she has witnessed change after change. A large regional capital where modern trains whisk residents past historic plazas, Cuenca has invited in the world and watched as its own citizens risk undocumented migration abroad. Families have arrived from rural towns only to then be displaced from the gentrifying city center. Over time, children have been educated, streetlights have made neighborhoods safer, and remittances from overseas have helped build new homes and sometimes torn people apart. Roads now connect people who once were far away, and talking or texting on cell phones has replaced hanging out at the corner store. Unraveling Time traces the enduring consequences of political and social movements, transnational migration, and economic development in Cuenca. Miles reckons with details that often escape less committed observers, suggesting that we learn a good deal more
£62.90
University of Texas Press Nested Ecologies A Multilayered Ethnography of
Book SynopsisHow functional medicine leverages systems biology and epigenetic science to treat the microbiome and reverse chronic disease. Each body is a system within a system--an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of epigenetics, whereby structural inequalities are literally encoded in our genes. But our ecological embeddedness extends beyond DNA, for each body also teems with trillions of bacteria, yeast, and fungi, all of them imprints of our individual milieus. Nested Ecologies asks what it would mean to take seriously our microbial being, given that our internal ecologies are shaped by inequalities embedded in our physical and social environments. Further, Rosalynn Vega argues that health practices focused on patients' unique biology inadvertently reiterate systemic inequities. In particular, functional medicine--which attempts to heal chronic disease by leveraging epigenetic science and treating
£78.30
University of Texas Press Nested Ecologies
Book SynopsisHow functional medicine leverages systems biology and epigenetic science to treat the microbiome and reverse chronic disease.Trade ReviewNested Ecologies is an important read for functional medicine practitioners and advocates, along with other medical practitioners who are interested in learning more about functional medicine, structural competency, and the social and structural determinants of health. Additionally, medical anthropologists interested in alternative medicine, postgenomics, chronic illness, and the politics of access will find rich material here, as will food studies scholars interested in clinical approaches to food systems, nutrition, and health. * H-Net Reviews (H-Sci-Med-Tech) *Table of Contents Prelude: Anthropology of and for Healing Introduction Interlude: The Birth of an Anthropologist Chapter 1: Paradigm Shifts Interlude: Stuck in a Web of Chronic Disease Chapter 2: Systems Biology Interlude: Genetic Fate? Chapter 3: (Epi)genetics and Its Multiple Implications Interlude: A “Vampire” No More Chapter 4: The Political Ecology of “Human” Microbiology Chapter 5: The Social Microbiome Interlude: Toxicity Conclusion: Food Justice Postlude: Health Is a Process Acknowledgments Appendix: Persons Described in This Book Notes Works Cited Index
£25.19
University of Texas Press Reckoning with Harm
Book SynopsisAn ethnography of the Ecuadorian Amazon that demonstrates the need for a relational, place-based, contingent understanding of harm and toxicity.Trade ReviewReckoning with Harm paints a vivid and distressing picture of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the entwining of oil and life has left an enduring impact on both the environment and the people who call this place home . . . The lessons within this book are immeasurable. * Latina Republic *Reckoning with Harm is an exceptional study of the production of socioecological suffering arising from predatory oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon...[Fiske] skillfully weaves scholarship across disciplines, presenting a novel exploration of how such forms are being attended to, verified, and contested...[Reckoning with Harm] poses crucial questions about responsibility and the long shadows of resource extraction while offering nuanced analysis of the complexities. A must-read for students and scholars of Latin American history and environmental injustice in contexts of resource extraction. * CHOICE *In sum, Amelia Fiske’s historic and ethnographic study includes oil harms to local indigenous forest residents but clearly introduces and details many colonists’ poorly-known lives…many with critical local and long-term health suffering, amidst defensive corporate explanations. As with the broad human rights demands now linked to forested Amazonian Indigenous groups, many poor and recent colonists deserve similar international support. * ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations A Note on Transcriptions Oil: A Visual Glossary Introduction. Encountering Harm Chapter 1. Building a Life on the Aguarico Chapter 2. Evidence Chapter 3. Bounding Harm Chapter 4. Toxic Exposures Chapter 5. Touring Toxic Places Conclusion. Relations of the Aguarico-4 Well Epilogue: Una Masa Dura Notes Works Cited Index
£78.30
University of Texas Press Reckoning with Harm
Book SynopsisAn ethnography of the Ecuadorian Amazon that demonstrates the need for a relational, place-based, contingent understanding of harm and toxicity.Trade ReviewReckoning with Harm paints a vivid and distressing picture of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the entwining of oil and life has left an enduring impact on both the environment and the people who call this place home . . . The lessons within this book are immeasurable. * Latina Republic *Reckoning with Harm is an exceptional study of the production of socioecological suffering arising from predatory oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon...[Fiske] skillfully weaves scholarship across disciplines, presenting a novel exploration of how such forms are being attended to, verified, and contested...[Reckoning with Harm] poses crucial questions about responsibility and the long shadows of resource extraction while offering nuanced analysis of the complexities. A must-read for students and scholars of Latin American history and environmental injustice in contexts of resource extraction. * CHOICE *In sum, Amelia Fiske’s historic and ethnographic study includes oil harms to local indigenous forest residents but clearly introduces and details many colonists’ poorly-known lives…many with critical local and long-term health suffering, amidst defensive corporate explanations. As with the broad human rights demands now linked to forested Amazonian Indigenous groups, many poor and recent colonists deserve similar international support. * ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations A Note on Transcriptions Oil: A Visual Glossary Introduction. Encountering Harm Chapter 1. Building a Life on the Aguarico Chapter 2. Evidence Chapter 3. Bounding Harm Chapter 4. Toxic Exposures Chapter 5. Touring Toxic Places Conclusion. Relations of the Aguarico-4 Well Epilogue: Una Masa Dura Notes Works Cited Index
£25.19
University of Texas Press Pink Gold
Book SynopsisA rich, long-term ethnography of women seafood traders in Mexico.Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Amber Sunsets and Pink Gold Chapter 1. Contested Grounds: Women Shrimp Traders and Street Economies Chapter 2. On Becoming Changueras: Gendered Livelihoods and Contested Identities Chapter 3. The Street of the Women Shrimp Traders: Learning the Tricks of the Trade in Space and Place Chapter 4. Here We Are Like a Family: The Complexity of Social Relations Chapter 5. The Culture and Economy of Pink Gold: The Meanings, Processes, and Values of Shrimp Chapter 6. Sometimes We Work Just to Pay Our Debts: Informal Credit and Savings Systems Chapter 7. From Outcasts to Icons: Women Shrimp Traders and Expressive Culture Conclusion: Feminist Political Ecology, Ethnography, and Uncovering Lived Realities References Index
£73.95
University of Texas Press Undoing Modernity
Book SynopsisAn ethnography of the decolonization of Maya-ness.
£73.95
University of Texas Press Fugitive Anthropology
£75.60
Duke University Press The Promise of Infrastructure
Book SynopsisAttending to the everyday lives of infrastructure across four continents, the contributors to The Promise of Infrastructure demonstrate how infrastructure such as roads, power lines, and water pipes offer a productive site for generating new ways to theorize time, politics, and promise.Trade Review"The Promise of Infrastructure offers a provocative reflection on the current academic, social, and political moment that we find ourselves in. . . . While The Promise of Infrastructure as a whole offers a surprisingly comprehensive condemnation of the 'radically human-centered thinking' that has produced the Anthropocene challenge that we now face, it also suggests the tools we will need to map out possible futures. Appropriately, these are not prescriptions promising a better future. Rather they are openings for possibility, for action, and for wonder." -- Tim Oakes * Technology and Culture *"The volume offers a highly valuable contribution to the study of human/non-human relations. Taking up Brian Larkin’s call against a premature separation of the material from the discursive, the editors argue that infrastructural matter becomes political only in relation to human ideologies, aesthetics or histories." -- Laura Kemmer * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *"The Promise of Infrastructure is a timely and compelling account of the myriad ways in which infrastructures can be theorized and the limits and potentials of the same." -- Siddharth Menon * AAG Review of Books *"The Promise of Infrastructure is a stellar collection of essays by anthropologists and social scientists who explore roads, buildings, bridges, water meters, pipelines, power stations, and other structures which we encounter on a daily basis but whose contribution to the production of difference we frequently overlook." -- Natalia Kovalyova * Anthropology Book Forum *"This book presents a combination of insightful theorisations and an engaging ethnography." -- Sudha Vasan * Economic & Political Weekly *"The Promise of Infrastructure is essential reading for scholars and students who wish to more fully understand the ethical and social role of the 'Ideal Infrastructure,' its history, its criticisms and its (uncertain) future destiny." -- Marco Spada * Environment and History *“The edited collection by Anand, Gupta, and Appel highlights infrastructures as a promising site for ethnographic research.... [It] reveal[s] the potential of infrastructural ethnography to make visible power inequalities and exclusionary practices and expose infrastructures as powerful sites for redefining governance and belonging.” -- Daivi Rodima-Taylor * American Anthropologist *“The Promise of Infrastructure teaches the reader how large state-run infrastructures can possibly induce and solidify regimes in pursuing their political promises. . . . Insights stemming out of The Promise of Infrastructure—especially the concept of ‘ruination’—enable researchers to acquire a ‘fuller’ account of the lifecycle of an infrastructure.” -- Alex Christian * Journal of Cultural Economy *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure / Hannah Appel, Nikhil Anand, and Akhil Gupta 1 Part I. Time 1. Infrastructural Time / Hannah Appel 41 2. The Future in Ruins: Thoughts on the Temporality of Infrastructure / Akhil Gupta 62 3. Infrastructures in and out of Time: The Promise of Roads in Contemporary Peru / Penny Harvey 80 4. The Current Never Stops: Intimacies of Energy Infrastructure in Vietnam / Christina Schwenkel 102 Part II. Politics 5. Infrastructure, Apartheid Technopolitics, and Temporalities of "Transition" / Antina von Schnitzler 133 6. A Public Matter: Water, Hydraulics, Biopolitics / Nikhil Anand 155 Part III. 7. Promising Forms: The Political Aesthetics of Infrastructure / Brian Larkin 175 8. Sustainable Knowledge Infrastructures / Geoffrey C. Bowker 203 9. Infrastructure, Potential Energy, Revolution / Dominic Boyer 223 Contributors 245 Index 249
£72.25
Duke University Press Passages and Afterworlds
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and mortuary rituals across the Caribbean, showing how racial, cultural and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.Trade Review"Passages and Afterworlds embraces a range of religious traditions that includes Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and a variety of Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- R. Berleant-Schiller * Choice *"In Passages and Afterworlds, editors Yanique Hume and Maarit Forde have assembled a compelling set of essays on Caribbean deathways—mortuary ritual, memorialization, and the colonial and postcolonial management of beings alive and dead in the Greater Caribbean world. Across diverse contexts, the chapters do an excellent job of examining the ways in which communities use separations between those dead and alive to come closer together, making new life from death (including living well with the dead)." -- Alexander Rocklin * Reading Religion *"Passages and Afterworlds deftly examines death, dying, and afterworlds in the Caribbean region. Chapters—written in accessible language and in vivid detail—evidence a deep appreciation of the region's history, a history characterized by violent encounters and exploitation. This is an extraordinary book." -- Stephen D. Glazier * Religion *“Passages and Afterworlds is a hugely important volume to the study of life and death in the circum-Caribbean.... This volume brings together groups from the Caribbean that are rarely placed in the same collection, which provides an innovative approach to Caribbean studies....” -- Alejandro Escalante * Anthropology Book Forum *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction / Maarit Forde 1 I. Relations 1. "The Dead Don't Come Back Like the Migrant Comes Back": Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü / Paul Christopher Johnson 31 2. Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities / George Mentore 54 3. The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society / Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen 80 4. Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle / Yanique Hume 109 5. Mortuary Rights and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti / Karen Richman 139 II. Transformations 6. From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology / Donald Cosentino 159 7. Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde 176 8. Death and the Problem of Orthopraxy in Caribbean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual / Keith E. McNeal 199 9. Chasing Death's Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Caribbean / Richard Price 225 Afterword. Life and Postlife in Caribbean Religious Traditions / Aisha Khan 243 References 261 Contributors 283 Index 287
£25.19
Duke University Press Fabricating Transnational Capitalism
Book SynopsisThis collaborative ethnography of Italian-Chinese fashion ventures offers a new methodology for understanding transnational capitalism in a global era.Trade Review"Grounded in an innovative, collaborative multi-sited ethnography, this book makes a major contribution to existing literature by capturing the nature and power dynamics of transnational capitalism. . . . [Fabricating Transnational Capitalism] will be welcomed by a wide array of scholars interested in transnational capitalism, labor, kinship, fashion, China, Italy, and beyond." -- Tiantian Zheng * H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews *"This dense and fascinating book proves the relevance of the ethnographic method to analyses of the changing dynamics of transnational capitalism in recent decades." -- Véronique Pouillard * Business History Review *"This book breaths fresh air into the study of global and transnational capitalism. It represents a fine example of collaborative research and an innovative approach to multi-sited ethnography. It offers important insights into how transnational capitalism happens on the ground. This is a must-read for students and scholars of anthropological political economy." -- Jianhua Zhao * Asian Anthropology *"[This] book is much deeper and more nuanced than most comparative or multi-sited studies. The analysis is lucid, innovative, and book reviews thought provoking. The insights are vividly illustrated by interview materials that are carefully qualified and corroborated. This is book that should and will be widely read and discussed in years to come in the fields of globalization, migration, labor, economic sociology and anthropology." -- Biao Xiang * Journal of Chinese Overseas *"This book skilfully explains the dynamic nature of global capitalism and illustrates how the Chinese-Italian transnational market and resource exchanges have expanded industrial capacity. . . . I would recommend this book to a broad readership interested in these topics as well as in Chinese studies, area studies, and kinship." -- Shih-Ying Lin * China Information *"Fabricating Transnational Capitalism is remarkable not only for its convincing argument but also for its form: the book is a collaborative ethnography about capitalist transnational collaborations." -- Gerda Kuiper * Anthropology Book Forum *“Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako have provided a creative ethnography of Italian-Chinese ventures in the global fashion industry, making a unique contribution, both conceptually and methodologically.” -- Xiaogang Wu * American Journal of Sociology *"[Rofel and Yanagisako] give detailed and nuanced insights into the processes of transnational capitalism, including privatization, the negotiation of the value of labor, and kinship." -- Hazel Clark * Journal of Asian Studies *“Drawing on the legacy of feminist critiques of public–private spheres, the authors expose how assumptions about such divisions in capitalism play out in globalized contexts. As such, they disrupt ‘an ideal type model’ and bring an understanding of capitalism as a diverse set of arrangements even in highly transnational contexts. Their comparison illuminates the role of states and private entities in structuring enterprises and reveals dynamics that shape value and accumulation as well as kinship and inequality…. The book holds particular value for scholars in globalization studies, political economy, economic sociology, and anthropology, as well as business and organization studies.” -- Elizabeth L. Krause * American Anthropologist *"Fabricating Transnational Capitalism's key contributions are substantive, theoretical and methodological.… The book is a refreshingly unique approach to anthropological studies of contemporary transnationalism.… It would be an excellent text to teach in courses in anthropology, geography, gender, women and sexuality studies, and political economy." -- Priti Ramamurthy * Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *Table of ContentsForeword / Robert J. Foster vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 I. The Negotiation of Value 35 1. Negotiating Managerial Labor Power and Value / Lisa Rofel and Sylvia J. Yanagisako 43 II. Historical Legacies and Revisionist Histories 109 2. The (Re-)Emergence of Entrepreneurialism in Postsocialist China / Lisa Rofel 119 3. Italian Legacies of Capital and Labor / Sylvia Yanagisako 161 4. One Fashion, Two Nations: Italian-Chinese Collaborations / Simona Segre Reinach 190 III. Kinship and Transnational Capitalism 217 5. On Generation / Sylvia Yanagisako 227 6. The Reappearance and Elusiveness of Chinese Family Firms / Lisa Rofel 264 Conclusion 303 Appendix: Four Types of Collaboration between Chinese and Italian Firms 313 Notes 319 References 345 Index 363
£112.20
Duke University Press Passages and Afterworlds
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and mortuary rituals across the Caribbean, showing how racial, cultural and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.Trade Review"Passages and Afterworlds embraces a range of religious traditions that includes Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and a variety of Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- R. Berleant-Schiller * Choice *"In Passages and Afterworlds, editors Yanique Hume and Maarit Forde have assembled a compelling set of essays on Caribbean deathways—mortuary ritual, memorialization, and the colonial and postcolonial management of beings alive and dead in the Greater Caribbean world. Across diverse contexts, the chapters do an excellent job of examining the ways in which communities use separations between those dead and alive to come closer together, making new life from death (including living well with the dead)." -- Alexander Rocklin * Reading Religion *"Passages and Afterworlds deftly examines death, dying, and afterworlds in the Caribbean region. Chapters—written in accessible language and in vivid detail—evidence a deep appreciation of the region's history, a history characterized by violent encounters and exploitation. This is an extraordinary book." -- Stephen D. Glazier * Religion *“Passages and Afterworlds is a hugely important volume to the study of life and death in the circum-Caribbean.... This volume brings together groups from the Caribbean that are rarely placed in the same collection, which provides an innovative approach to Caribbean studies....” -- Alejandro Escalante * Anthropology Book Forum *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction / Maarit Forde 1 I. Relations 1. "The Dead Don't Come Back Like the Migrant Comes Back": Many Returns in the Garifuna Dügü / Paul Christopher Johnson 31 2. Of Vital Spirit and Precarious Bodies in Amerindian Socialities / George Mentore 54 3. The Making of Ancestors in a Surinamese Maroon Society / Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering and Bonno (H. U. E.) Thoden van Velzen 80 4. Death and the Construction of Social Space: Land, Kinship, and Identity in the Jamaican Mortuary Cycle / Yanique Hume 109 5. Mortuary Rights and Social Dramas in Léogâne, Haiti / Karen Richman 139 II. Transformations 6. From Zonbi to Samdi: Late Transformations in Haitian Eschatology / Donald Cosentino 159 7. Governing Death in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde 176 8. Death and the Problem of Orthopraxy in Caribbean Hinduism: Reconsidering the Politics and Poetics of Indo-Trinidadian Mortuary Ritual / Keith E. McNeal 199 9. Chasing Death's Left Hand: Personal Encounters with Death and Its Rituals in the Caribbean / Richard Price 225 Afterword. Life and Postlife in Caribbean Religious Traditions / Aisha Khan 243 References 261 Contributors 283 Index 287
£98.60
Duke University Press Remapping Sound Studies
Book SynopsisExploring a wide range of sonic practices, from birdsong in the Marshall Islands to Zulu ululation, the contributors reorient the field of sound studies toward the global South in order to rethink and decolonize modes of understanding and listening to sound.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Remapping Sound Studies in the Global South / Gavin Steingo and Jim Sykes 1 Part I. The Technology Problematic 1. Another Resonance: Africa and the Sound of Study / Gavin Steingo 39 2. Ululation / Louise Meintjes 61 3. How the Sea Is Sounded: Remapping Indigenous Soundings in the Marshallese Diaspora / Jessica A. Schwartz 77 Part II. Multiple Liminologies 4. Antenatal Aurality in Pacific Afro-Colombia Midwifery / Jairo Moreno 109 5. Loudness, Excess, Power: A Political Liminology of a Global City of the South / Michael Birenbaum Quintero 135 6. The Spoiled and the Salvaged: Modulations of Auditory Value in Bangalore and Bangkok / Michele Friedner and Benjamin Tausig 156 7. Remapping the Voice through Transgender-Hijra Performance / Jeff Roy 173 Part III. The Politics of Sound 8. Banlieue Sounds, or, The Right to Exist / Hervé Tchumkam 185 9. Sound Studies, Difference, and Global Concept History / Jim Sykes 203 10. "Faking It": Moans and Groans of Loving and Living in Govindpuri Slums / Tripta Chandola 228 11. Disorienting Sounds: A Sensory Ethnography of Syrian Dance Music / Shayna Silverstein 241 12. Afterword. Sonic Cartographies / Ana María Ochoa Gautier 261 Contributors 275 Index 277
£98.60
Duke University Press Fabricating Transnational Capitalism
Book SynopsisIn this innovative collaborative ethnography of Italian-Chinese ventures in the fashion industry, Lisa Rofel and Sylvia J. Yanagisako offer a new methodology for studying transnational capitalism. Drawing on their respective linguistic and regional areas of expertise, Rofel and Yanagisako show how different historical legacies of capital, labor, nation, and kinship are crucial in the formation of global capitalism. Focusing on how Italian fashion is manufactured, distributed, and marketed by Italian-Chinese ventures and how their relationships have been complicated by China''s emergence as a market for luxury goods, the authors illuminate the often-overlooked processes that produce transnational capitalism—including privatization, negotiation of labor value, rearrangement of accumulation, reconfiguration of kinship, and outsourcing of inequality. In so doing, Fabricating Transnational Capitalism reveals the crucial role of the state and the shifting power relations beTrade Review"Grounded in an innovative, collaborative multi-sited ethnography, this book makes a major contribution to existing literature by capturing the nature and power dynamics of transnational capitalism. . . . [Fabricating Transnational Capitalism] will be welcomed by a wide array of scholars interested in transnational capitalism, labor, kinship, fashion, China, Italy, and beyond." -- Tiantian Zheng * H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews *"This dense and fascinating book proves the relevance of the ethnographic method to analyses of the changing dynamics of transnational capitalism in recent decades." -- Véronique Pouillard * Business History Review *"This book breaths fresh air into the study of global and transnational capitalism. It represents a fine example of collaborative research and an innovative approach to multi-sited ethnography. It offers important insights into how transnational capitalism happens on the ground. This is a must-read for students and scholars of anthropological political economy." -- Jianhua Zhao * Asian Anthropology *"[This] book is much deeper and more nuanced than most comparative or multi-sited studies. The analysis is lucid, innovative, and book reviews thought provoking. The insights are vividly illustrated by interview materials that are carefully qualified and corroborated. This is book that should and will be widely read and discussed in years to come in the fields of globalization, migration, labor, economic sociology and anthropology." -- Biao Xiang * Journal of Chinese Overseas *"This book skilfully explains the dynamic nature of global capitalism and illustrates how the Chinese-Italian transnational market and resource exchanges have expanded industrial capacity. . . . I would recommend this book to a broad readership interested in these topics as well as in Chinese studies, area studies, and kinship." -- Shih-Ying Lin * China Information *"Fabricating Transnational Capitalism is remarkable not only for its convincing argument but also for its form: the book is a collaborative ethnography about capitalist transnational collaborations." -- Gerda Kuiper * Anthropology Book Forum *“Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako have provided a creative ethnography of Italian-Chinese ventures in the global fashion industry, making a unique contribution, both conceptually and methodologically.” -- Xiaogang Wu * American Journal of Sociology *"[Rofel and Yanagisako] give detailed and nuanced insights into the processes of transnational capitalism, including privatization, the negotiation of the value of labor, and kinship." -- Hazel Clark * Journal of Asian Studies *“Drawing on the legacy of feminist critiques of public–private spheres, the authors expose how assumptions about such divisions in capitalism play out in globalized contexts. As such, they disrupt ‘an ideal type model’ and bring an understanding of capitalism as a diverse set of arrangements even in highly transnational contexts. Their comparison illuminates the role of states and private entities in structuring enterprises and reveals dynamics that shape value and accumulation as well as kinship and inequality…. The book holds particular value for scholars in globalization studies, political economy, economic sociology, and anthropology, as well as business and organization studies.” -- Elizabeth L. Krause * American Anthropologist *"Fabricating Transnational Capitalism's key contributions are substantive, theoretical and methodological.… The book is a refreshingly unique approach to anthropological studies of contemporary transnationalism.… It would be an excellent text to teach in courses in anthropology, geography, gender, women and sexuality studies, and political economy." -- Priti Ramamurthy * Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *Table of ContentsForeword / Robert J. Foster vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 I. The Negotiation of Value 35 1. Negotiating Managerial Labor Power and Value / Lisa Rofel and Sylvia J. Yanagisako 43 II. Historical Legacies and Revisionist Histories 109 2. The (Re-)Emergence of Entrepreneurialism in Postsocialist China / Lisa Rofel 119 3. Italian Legacies of Capital and Labor / Sylvia Yanagisako 161 4. One Fashion, Two Nations: Italian-Chinese Collaborations / Simona Segre Reinach 190 III. Kinship and Transnational Capitalism 217 5. On Generation / Sylvia Yanagisako 227 6. The Reappearance and Elusiveness of Chinese Family Firms / Lisa Rofel 264 Conclusion 303 Appendix: Four Types of Collaboration between Chinese and Italian Firms 313 Notes 319 References 345 Index 363
£27.90
Duke University Press Remapping Sound Studies
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Remapping Sound Studies intervene in current trends and practices in sound studies by reorienting the field toward the global South. Attending to disparate aspects of sound in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Micronesia, and a Southern outpost in the global North, this volume broadens the scope of sound studies and challenges some of the field''s central presuppositions. The contributors show how approaches to and uses of technology across the global South complicate narratives of technological modernity and how sound-making and listening in diverse global settings unsettle familiar binaries of sacred/secular, private/public, human/nonhuman, male/female, and nature/culture. Exploring a wide range of sonic phenomena and practices, from birdsong in the Marshall Islands to Zulu ululation, the contributors offer diverse ways to remap and decolonize modes of thinking about and listening to sound. ContributorsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Remapping Sound Studies in the Global South / Gavin Steingo and Jim Sykes 1 Part I. The Technology Problematic 1. Another Resonance: Africa and the Sound of Study / Gavin Steingo 39 2. Ululation / Louise Meintjes 61 3. How the Sea Is Sounded: Remapping Indigenous Soundings in the Marshallese Diaspora / Jessica A. Schwartz 77 Part II. Multiple Liminologies 4. Antenatal Aurality in Pacific Afro-Colombia Midwifery / Jairo Moreno 109 5. Loudness, Excess, Power: A Political Liminology of a Global City of the South / Michael Birenbaum Quintero 135 6. The Spoiled and the Salvaged: Modulations of Auditory Value in Bangalore and Bangkok / Michele Friedner and Benjamin Tausig 156 7. Remapping the Voice through Transgender-Hijra Performance / Jeff Roy 173 Part III. The Politics of Sound 8. Banlieue Sounds, or, The Right to Exist / Hervé Tchumkam 185 9. Sound Studies, Difference, and Global Concept History / Jim Sykes 203 10. "Faking It": Moans and Groans of Loving and Living in Govindpuri Slums / Tripta Chandola 228 11. Disorienting Sounds: A Sensory Ethnography of Syrian Dance Music / Shayna Silverstein 241 12. Afterword. Sonic Cartographies / Ana María Ochoa Gautier 261 Contributors 275 Index 277
£25.19
Duke University Press After Ethnos
Book SynopsisTobias Rees proposes an understanding of anthropology as a philosophically and poetically oriented and fieldwork-based investigation into the human and human thought rather than a study of culture or society in which anthropology is synonymous with ethnography and fieldwork.Table of Contentswhat if . . . ix acknowledgments xi introduction. all of it 1 1. on anthropology (free from ethnos) 7 anthropology and philosophy (differently) 17 philosophy/Philosophy 25 thought/abstract, thought/concrete (the problem with modernism) 28 escaping (the already thought and known) 32 2. "of" the human (after "the human") 34 cataloguing 45 antihumanism 49 a disregard for theory 52 no ontology 55 3. on fieldwork (itself) 70 assemblages (or how to study difference in time?) 84 not history 93 epochal (no more) 95 4. on the actual (rather than the emergent) 97 the new/different (of movement/in terms of movement) 108 why and to what end ends (philosophy, politics, poetry) 110 5. coda (a dictionary of anthropological common places) 113 one last question 118 notes 121 bibliography 151 index 169
£86.70
Duke University Press Desire Work
Book SynopsisMelissa Hackman traces the experiences of Pentecostal ex-gay men in Cape Town, South Africa, as they attempted to cure their homosexuality, forge a heterosexual masculinity, and enter into heterosexual marriage through various forms emotional, bodily, and religious work.Trade Review"Truly unique and fascinating ... Desire Work sheds new light on Africa. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals." -- W. Arens * Choice *"Desire Work is a remarkably rich, detailed, and passionate ethnography. . . . As gender studies in Africa continues to grow as a field, this book provides a needed contribution to understanding homosexuality and masculinity among . . . men in the first country in the world whose constitution outlawed homophobic discrimination: South Africa." -- Dianna Bell * Journal of Religion in Africa *"Desire Work is a rich and fascinating ethnographic study worth reading by anyone with an academic interest in gender, sexuality, and self-making in evangelical and Pentecostal Christian circles." -- Adriaan van Klinken * H-Africa, H-Net Reviews *"There is no doubt that Desire Work is an important book, offering the reader glimpses into the wider body of work on the subject. It is written in an accessible, engaging, and compassionate style, and makes a contribution to the field of gender and sexuality studies as well as opening up new avenues for theological exploration." -- Beverley Haddad * Anthropological Forum *"The book presents an honest and refreshing account of the methodological challenges of conducting such research. ... [It] will be useful specifically to those wanting to understand the ex-gay movement and Pentecostalism as well as to those interested in the intersection of sexuality, gender, and nationality." -- Alex Toft * American Journal of Sociology *“Desire Work emerges as a genuine and serious description of the challenges and struggles of South African men who must navigate the overlapping layers of societal, cultural, and religious demands as they seek a pathway that allows for faithful, authentic expression of masculinity and sexuality…. Desire Work is strongly recommended to mental health professionals, pastoral theologians, pastor caregivers and other ministry practitioners as a cautionary tale and guidepost, calling for careful consideration and reflection when engaging in the sacred task of transforming and changing lives.” -- Eddie L. Journey * Pneuma *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Adrian's Desire Work 1 1. Cultural Convergences 39 2. Building Godly Emotional Intimacy 63 3. Becoming Spiritual Warriors: Learning How to Fight Demonic Sexual Desires 87 4. Mastering Romance and Sexual Feelings 115 5. "I Didn't Fall, I'm Free": Leaving Healing Revelation Ministries 139 Afterword 165 Notes 171 References 177 Index 197
£74.70
Duke University Press Best Practice
Book SynopsisKimberly Chong offers a rich ethnographic account of how a global management consultantcy translates and implements the logic of financialization in contemporary China.Trade Review"In this well-written book, the author underscores for her readers how consultancy unfolds as a very crucial site for the consideration of the transformation, in China, of corporations as well as business ethics, employee performance and labor in general in the context of financialization." -- Augustine Adu Frimpong and Noah Kankam Kwarteng * African and Asian Studies *"Best Practice is an engaging ethnography based on immersive, multisited fieldwork, and is worth reading for anthropologists specializing in work, business, and capitalism, both inside and outside of China." -- Xinyan Peng * Anthropology of Work Review *"Based on rich, immersive fieldwork, this book allows for understanding the complex social processes whereby 'financialization' takes place, as a combination of multiple repertoires such as shareholder value, modernization, nationalism, culturalism, state capitalism and the teleologies of globalization they facilitate." -- Horacio Ortiz * Asian Anthropology *"Kimberly Chong’s Best Practice offers a thought-provoking ethnography. . . . This book is an important addition to the rapidly expanding field of business anthropology." -- Tomoko Hamada * Anthropological Forum *“The book should make for vital reading in graduate and undergraduate courses focusing on the anthropology of finance, cultural theories of value, ethical subject-making, and labor in post-Mao China.” -- Michael M. Prentice * PoLAR *“Best Practice speaks to many of the themes that interest scholars of cultural economy…. Chong is an anthropologist skilled in being both close to, and critically distant, from the field. But this should not underestimate the emotional and intellectual effort that has gone into this powerful book, which is a treasure trove of insights for scholars of cultural economy.” -- Michael Power * Journal of Cultural Economy *“In short, this ethnography is of groundbreaking value…. Any reader interested in the knowledge economy in contemporary China or anthropology of financialization in 21st century China is strongly encouraged to have a look at this book.” -- Jiangnan Li * Journal of International & Global Studies *“As anthropology looks more deeply into contemporary institutions, including businesses, NGOs, and public entities, contributions such as Chong’s Best Practice are going to become increasingly important to the discipline.... Best Practice illuminates new issues and possibilities in the increasingly global regime.” -- Allen W. Batteau * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. High Performers: The Making of Financialized Subjects 35 2. Evaluating Humans: Financial Rationality and Practices of Performance-Related Pay 64 3. Reducing Costs: Shared Service Centers, Labor, and the Outsourcing Rationale 91 4. Training Value: The Moral and Political Project of Selling Consultancy 110 5. Client Sites: Liminality, Modernity, and Performances of Expertise 131 6. Building a Paradise: Post-Mao Visions of Transformation 151 7. Conspicuous Ethicizing: Corporate Culture, CSR, and Corporate Subjectivity 172 Conclusion 193 Notes 203 References 221 Index 241
£98.60
Duke University Press The Fetish Revisited
Book SynopsisJ. Lorand Matory casts an Afro-Atlantic eye on European social theory to show how Marx's and Freud's conceptions of the fetish illuminate and misrepresent the nature of Africa's gods while demonstrating that Afro-Atlantic gods have their own social logic that is no less rational than European social theories.Trade Review"J. L. Matory provides a critical and provocative account of how the concept of the fetish has been appropriated and used as a key concept in the writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The work is especially strong in demonstrating the fantastical appropriations of the idea of the fetish, plucked from the complex and rich contexts of meaning and agency in transatlantic black religion. . . . . A fascinating, readable, and wandering book. . . . Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- G. E. Marcus * Choice *"Matory’s The Fetish Revisited is a masterful work, stunning in its erudition, ambitious argument, and prodigious ethnographic detail." -- Laura S. Grillo * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"The Fetish Revisited is an important book and a pleasure to read." -- Steven Engler * Studies in Religion *"... [Matory] offers important insights into the Afro-Atlantic origins and makings of fetishes and into the unequal relations they comprise. One of the great merits of this book is that it takes Afro-Atlantic things, practices, and voices as theory and not merely as something to be described and analyzed." -- Benedikt Pontzen * Anthropos *"Matory's The Fetish Revisited is a well-researched and provocative work that combines academic research with a deep intellectual reflection in a work mainly directed to the disciples of Freud and Marx, but amazingly insightful into the fields of religious studies, anthropology, ethnology and meta-theory." -- Cyril-Mary Pius Olatunji and Fracis Kayode Fabidun * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *Table of ContentsA Note on Orthography ix Preface xi Introduction 1 Part I. The Factory, the Coat, the Piano, and the "Negro Slave": On the Afro-Atlantic Sources of Marx's Fetish 41 1. The Afro-Atlantic Context of Historical Materialism 45 2. The "Negro-Slave" in Marx's Labor Theory of Value 60 3. Marx's Fetishization of People and Things 78 Conclusion to Part I 91 Part II. The Acropolis, the Couch, the Fur Hat, and the "Savage": On Freud's Ambivalent Fetish 97 4. The Fetishes That Assimilated Jewish Men Make 103 5. The Fetish as an Architecture of Solidarity and Conflict 117 6. The Castrator and the Castrated in the Fetishes of Psychoanalysis 145 Conclusion to Part II 165 Part III. Pots, Packets, Beads, and Foreigners: The Making and the Meaning of the Real-Life "Fetish" 171 7. The Contrary Ontologies of Two Revolutions 175 8. Commodities and Gods 191 9. The Madeness of Gods and Other People 249 Conclusion to Part III 285 Conclusion. Eshu's Hat, or An Afro-Atlantic Theory of Theory 289 Acknowledgments 325 Notes 331 References 339 Index 349
£80.75
Duke University Press After Ethnos
Book SynopsisTobias Rees proposes an understanding of anthropology as a philosophically and poetically oriented and fieldwork-based investigation into the human and human thought rather than a study of culture or society in which anthropology is synonymous with ethnography and fieldwork.Table of Contentswhat if . . . ix acknowledgments xi introduction. all of it 1 1. on anthropology (free from ethnos) 7 anthropology and philosophy (differently) 17 philosophy/Philosophy 25 thought/abstract, thought/concrete (the problem with modernism) 28 escaping (the already thought and known) 32 2. "of" the human (after "the human") 34 cataloguing 45 antihumanism 49 a disregard for theory 52 no ontology 55 3. on fieldwork (itself) 70 assemblages (or how to study difference in time?) 84 not history 93 epochal (no more) 95 4. on the actual (rather than the emergent) 97 the new/different (of movement/in terms of movement) 108 why and to what end ends (philosophy, politics, poetry) 110 5. coda (a dictionary of anthropological common places) 113 one last question 118 notes 121 bibliography 151 index 169
£22.79
Duke University Press Desire Work
Book SynopsisMelissa Hackman traces the experiences of Pentecostal ex-gay men in Cape Town, South Africa, as they attempted to cure their homosexuality, forge a heterosexual masculinity, and enter into heterosexual marriage through various forms emotional, bodily, and religious work.Trade Review"Truly unique and fascinating ... Desire Work sheds new light on Africa. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals." -- W. Arens * Choice *"Desire Work is a remarkably rich, detailed, and passionate ethnography. . . . As gender studies in Africa continues to grow as a field, this book provides a needed contribution to understanding homosexuality and masculinity among . . . men in the first country in the world whose constitution outlawed homophobic discrimination: South Africa." -- Dianna Bell * Journal of Religion in Africa *"Desire Work is a rich and fascinating ethnographic study worth reading by anyone with an academic interest in gender, sexuality, and self-making in evangelical and Pentecostal Christian circles." -- Adriaan van Klinken * H-Africa, H-Net Reviews *"There is no doubt that Desire Work is an important book, offering the reader glimpses into the wider body of work on the subject. It is written in an accessible, engaging, and compassionate style, and makes a contribution to the field of gender and sexuality studies as well as opening up new avenues for theological exploration." -- Beverley Haddad * Anthropological Forum *"The book presents an honest and refreshing account of the methodological challenges of conducting such research. ... [It] will be useful specifically to those wanting to understand the ex-gay movement and Pentecostalism as well as to those interested in the intersection of sexuality, gender, and nationality." -- Alex Toft * American Journal of Sociology *“Desire Work emerges as a genuine and serious description of the challenges and struggles of South African men who must navigate the overlapping layers of societal, cultural, and religious demands as they seek a pathway that allows for faithful, authentic expression of masculinity and sexuality…. Desire Work is strongly recommended to mental health professionals, pastoral theologians, pastor caregivers and other ministry practitioners as a cautionary tale and guidepost, calling for careful consideration and reflection when engaging in the sacred task of transforming and changing lives.” -- Eddie L. Journey * Pneuma *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Adrian's Desire Work 1 1. Cultural Convergences 39 2. Building Godly Emotional Intimacy 63 3. Becoming Spiritual Warriors: Learning How to Fight Demonic Sexual Desires 87 4. Mastering Romance and Sexual Feelings 115 5. "I Didn't Fall, I'm Free": Leaving Healing Revelation Ministries 139 Afterword 165 Notes 171 References 177 Index 197
£22.79
Duke University Press Best Practice
Book SynopsisKimberly Chong offers a rich ethnographic account of how a global management consultantcy translates and implements the logic of financialization in contemporary China.Trade Review"In this well-written book, the author underscores for her readers how consultancy unfolds as a very crucial site for the consideration of the transformation, in China, of corporations as well as business ethics, employee performance and labor in general in the context of financialization." -- Augustine Adu Frimpong and Noah Kankam Kwarteng * African and Asian Studies *"Best Practice is an engaging ethnography based on immersive, multisited fieldwork, and is worth reading for anthropologists specializing in work, business, and capitalism, both inside and outside of China." -- Xinyan Peng * Anthropology of Work Review *"Based on rich, immersive fieldwork, this book allows for understanding the complex social processes whereby 'financialization' takes place, as a combination of multiple repertoires such as shareholder value, modernization, nationalism, culturalism, state capitalism and the teleologies of globalization they facilitate." -- Horacio Ortiz * Asian Anthropology *"Kimberly Chong’s Best Practice offers a thought-provoking ethnography. . . . This book is an important addition to the rapidly expanding field of business anthropology." -- Tomoko Hamada * Anthropological Forum *“The book should make for vital reading in graduate and undergraduate courses focusing on the anthropology of finance, cultural theories of value, ethical subject-making, and labor in post-Mao China.” -- Michael M. Prentice * PoLAR *“Best Practice speaks to many of the themes that interest scholars of cultural economy…. Chong is an anthropologist skilled in being both close to, and critically distant, from the field. But this should not underestimate the emotional and intellectual effort that has gone into this powerful book, which is a treasure trove of insights for scholars of cultural economy.” -- Michael Power * Journal of Cultural Economy *“In short, this ethnography is of groundbreaking value…. Any reader interested in the knowledge economy in contemporary China or anthropology of financialization in 21st century China is strongly encouraged to have a look at this book.” -- Jiangnan Li * Journal of International & Global Studies *“As anthropology looks more deeply into contemporary institutions, including businesses, NGOs, and public entities, contributions such as Chong’s Best Practice are going to become increasingly important to the discipline.... Best Practice illuminates new issues and possibilities in the increasingly global regime.” -- Allen W. Batteau * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. High Performers: The Making of Financialized Subjects 35 2. Evaluating Humans: Financial Rationality and Practices of Performance-Related Pay 64 3. Reducing Costs: Shared Service Centers, Labor, and the Outsourcing Rationale 91 4. Training Value: The Moral and Political Project of Selling Consultancy 110 5. Client Sites: Liminality, Modernity, and Performances of Expertise 131 6. Building a Paradise: Post-Mao Visions of Transformation 151 7. Conspicuous Ethicizing: Corporate Culture, CSR, and Corporate Subjectivity 172 Conclusion 193 Notes 203 References 221 Index 241
£25.19
Duke University Press Channeling the State
Book SynopsisVenezuela''s most prominent community television station, Catia TVe, was launched in 2000 by activists from the barrios of Caracas. Run on the principle that state resources should serve as a weapon of the poor to advance revolutionary social change, the station covered everything from Hugo Chávez’s speeches to barrio residents'' complaints about bureaucratic mismanagement. In Channeling the State, Naomi Schiller explores how and why Catia TVe''s founders embraced alliances with Venezuelan state officials and institutions. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research among the station''s participants, Schiller shows how community television production created unique openings for Caracas''s urban poor to embrace the state as a collective process with transformative potential. Rather than an unchangeable entity built for the exercise of elite power, the state emerges in Schiller''s analysis as an uneven, variable process and a contentious terrain where institutionsTrade Review"This is a rich, timely and compelling piece of work that contributes significantly to debates about the state, press freedom, community media, class, gender and urban social movements. It will be of great value both to those interested specifically in Venezuela and those concerned with these themes in broader terms." -- Matt Wilde * ERLACS *"In this engaging book . . . Schiller is able to buttress critiques of top-down approaches to state power and state-building, showing readers how most interactions and relationships on the ground cannot be neatly categorized as either from above or from below." -- Anna Fournier * PoLAR *"Schiller’s book is a thorough description of how class and gender affect active citizenship and how these factors create constant conflict in everyday practices of meaning making." -- Virpi Salojärvi * Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly *"This text is important because it so carefully recorded the explanatory principles of Catia TVe and the impact of media technology in the hands of the community desperate to affect state process and policy. . . . This study is quite timely, considering the events that took place in Venezuela in March 2019. It will help future researchers to see whether the theory of community TV and its ethos had a long-lasting impact on the people those stations were designed to serve." -- Albert Tedesco * Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media *"This book joins a significant body of anthropological and theoretical work on the state and society in Venezuela. . . . This book is a highly useful aid to that project." -- Daniel Hellinger * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Schiller’s book boldly unthinks commonsensical categories in the liberal episteme, namely 'the state' and 'society.' Doing so casts the popular classes not as victims of Western imperialism or of Chavista hegemony, but as activated agents who debated in what kind of state would be made. It is an important entry in the emergent field of Chavismo media studies." -- Noah Zweig * International Journal of Communication *"We must read Naomi Schiller's Channeling the State, a compelling study of community media in Venezuela, with a sense of urgency.… The book offers a deep understanding of complex political and social processes occurring within social movements that established alliances with the state. What makes it so unique is the engrossing narrative that, benefiting from ethnographic detail, presents a tangible approach to difficult conceptual debates on state formation, populism, and subalternity." -- Luis Duno-Gottberg * NACLA Report on the Americas *"While Schiller considers statecraft and the role of poor people rather than the medium of media per se, I'd encourage anyone thinking about media as a channel for social justice to take up Channeling the State. I further recommend this book to anyone considering the relations between the marginalized and the state and the specifics of Venezuelan politics at a particular moment in time." -- Amanda Daniela Cortez * American Ethnologist *"A fascinating behind-the-scenes account that draws on months of ethnographic fieldwork. . . . The book’s framing of CatiaTVe as a legacy of New Latin American Cinema makes it an essential reference for researchers of film and participatory film-making." -- Rebecca Jarman * Modern Language Review *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. State-Media Relations and the Rise of Catia TVe 23 2. Community Media as Everyday State Formation 62 3. Class Acts 89 4. Channeling Chávez 128 5. Mediating Women 164 6. Reckoning with Press Freedom 196 Conclusion 227 Notes 241 References 251 Index 269
£98.60
Duke University Press Colonial Transactions
Book SynopsisIn Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in the Gabonese imaginary, and the use ofhuman organs for fetishes. Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as 'transactions.' Together they also shared an awareness of how the colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in present-day Gabon.Trade Review". . .This should be a key text for African studies and certainly for any collection centered on West and Central Africa." -- J. R. Kenyon * Choice *"Bernault's ability to trace . . . imaginaries throughout centuries of thought and praxis in both France and Gabon make this book a valuable addition to the historiography of west Africa." -- Amanda Ford * International Social Science Review *"Bernault’s book fills a void in many ways, providing an English-speaking audience with one among the very few in-depth studies out there on a nation and its people that certainly merit more attention." -- Cheryl Toman * Postcolonial Text *“A well-documented scholarly work enriched with an elegant style…. With this new book, Florence Bernault makes an invaluable contribution to African cultural anthropology by proposing an innovative approach to witchcraft that transcends the nativist paradigm and explores the intersecting third space of mutual influences (colonized/colonizers) from which arose the creolized spiritual landscape of postcolonial Gabon.” -- Marc Mvé Bekale * African Studies Review *“Florence Bernault offers an original and refreshing history of European-African colonial encounters in Gabon, Equatorial Africa. She does so by using a wealth of sources.... [Colonial Transactions] will appeal to scholars of colonialism in Africa and beyond, and to anyone interested in African spirituality and modernity.” -- Ndubueze L. Mbah * Journal of African History *“Bernault’s conception of colonialism as a transaction . . . does much to reconfigure understandings of power under colonialism. . . . [Colonial Transactions] should be read widely not just by scholars of history and gender but also by anthropologists and others interested in African studies or colonialism, more broadly.” -- Avenel Rolfsen * Gender & History *“Colonial Transactions expands our knowledge and refines our understanding of the two themes that stand at its center – witchcraft and colonialism. . . . No future research about witchcraft or about colonial relations will be able to ignore this fascinating and eye-opening book.” -- Ruth Ginio * Middle Ground Journal *Table of ContentsPreface ix Introduction 1 1. A Siren, an Empty Shrine, and a Photograph 27 2. The Double Life of Charms 69 3. Carnal Fetishism 96 4. The Value of People 118 5. Cannibal Mirrors 138 6. Eating 168 Conclusion 194 Notes 205 Bibliography 293 Index 321
£98.60
Duke University Press Channeling the State
Book SynopsisVenezuela''s most prominent community television station, Catia TVe, was launched in 2000 by activists from the barrios of Caracas. Run on the principle that state resources should serve as a weapon of the poor to advance revolutionary social change, the station covered everything from Hugo Chávez’s speeches to barrio residents'' complaints about bureaucratic mismanagement. In Channeling the State, Naomi Schiller explores how and why Catia TVe''s founders embraced alliances with Venezuelan state officials and institutions. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research among the station''s participants, Schiller shows how community television production created unique openings for Caracas''s urban poor to embrace the state as a collective process with transformative potential. Rather than an unchangeable entity built for the exercise of elite power, the state emerges in Schiller''s analysis as an uneven, variable process and a contentious terrain where institutionsTrade Review"This is a rich, timely and compelling piece of work that contributes significantly to debates about the state, press freedom, community media, class, gender and urban social movements. It will be of great value both to those interested specifically in Venezuela and those concerned with these themes in broader terms." -- Matt Wilde * ERLACS *"In this engaging book . . . Schiller is able to buttress critiques of top-down approaches to state power and state-building, showing readers how most interactions and relationships on the ground cannot be neatly categorized as either from above or from below." -- Anna Fournier * PoLAR *"Schiller’s book is a thorough description of how class and gender affect active citizenship and how these factors create constant conflict in everyday practices of meaning making." -- Virpi Salojärvi * Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly *"This text is important because it so carefully recorded the explanatory principles of Catia TVe and the impact of media technology in the hands of the community desperate to affect state process and policy. . . . This study is quite timely, considering the events that took place in Venezuela in March 2019. It will help future researchers to see whether the theory of community TV and its ethos had a long-lasting impact on the people those stations were designed to serve." -- Albert Tedesco * Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media *"This book joins a significant body of anthropological and theoretical work on the state and society in Venezuela. . . . This book is a highly useful aid to that project." -- Daniel Hellinger * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Schiller’s book boldly unthinks commonsensical categories in the liberal episteme, namely 'the state' and 'society.' Doing so casts the popular classes not as victims of Western imperialism or of Chavista hegemony, but as activated agents who debated in what kind of state would be made. It is an important entry in the emergent field of Chavismo media studies." -- Noah Zweig * International Journal of Communication *"We must read Naomi Schiller's Channeling the State, a compelling study of community media in Venezuela, with a sense of urgency.… The book offers a deep understanding of complex political and social processes occurring within social movements that established alliances with the state. What makes it so unique is the engrossing narrative that, benefiting from ethnographic detail, presents a tangible approach to difficult conceptual debates on state formation, populism, and subalternity." -- Luis Duno-Gottberg * NACLA Report on the Americas *"While Schiller considers statecraft and the role of poor people rather than the medium of media per se, I'd encourage anyone thinking about media as a channel for social justice to take up Channeling the State. I further recommend this book to anyone considering the relations between the marginalized and the state and the specifics of Venezuelan politics at a particular moment in time." -- Amanda Daniela Cortez * American Ethnologist *"A fascinating behind-the-scenes account that draws on months of ethnographic fieldwork. . . . The book’s framing of CatiaTVe as a legacy of New Latin American Cinema makes it an essential reference for researchers of film and participatory film-making." -- Rebecca Jarman * Modern Language Review *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. State-Media Relations and the Rise of Catia TVe 23 2. Community Media as Everyday State Formation 62 3. Class Acts 89 4. Channeling Chávez 128 5. Mediating Women 164 6. Reckoning with Press Freedom 196 Conclusion 227 Notes 241 References 251 Index 269
£25.19
Duke University Press Colonial Transactions
Book SynopsisIn Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in the Gabonese imaginary, and the use ofhuman organs for fetishes. Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as 'transactions.' Together they also shared an awareness of how the colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in present-day Gabon.Trade Review". . .This should be a key text for African studies and certainly for any collection centered on West and Central Africa." -- J. R. Kenyon * Choice *"Bernault's ability to trace . . . imaginaries throughout centuries of thought and praxis in both France and Gabon make this book a valuable addition to the historiography of west Africa." -- Amanda Ford * International Social Science Review *"Bernault’s book fills a void in many ways, providing an English-speaking audience with one among the very few in-depth studies out there on a nation and its people that certainly merit more attention." -- Cheryl Toman * Postcolonial Text *“A well-documented scholarly work enriched with an elegant style…. With this new book, Florence Bernault makes an invaluable contribution to African cultural anthropology by proposing an innovative approach to witchcraft that transcends the nativist paradigm and explores the intersecting third space of mutual influences (colonized/colonizers) from which arose the creolized spiritual landscape of postcolonial Gabon.” -- Marc Mvé Bekale * African Studies Review *“Florence Bernault offers an original and refreshing history of European-African colonial encounters in Gabon, Equatorial Africa. She does so by using a wealth of sources.... [Colonial Transactions] will appeal to scholars of colonialism in Africa and beyond, and to anyone interested in African spirituality and modernity.” -- Ndubueze L. Mbah * Journal of African History *“Bernault’s conception of colonialism as a transaction . . . does much to reconfigure understandings of power under colonialism. . . . [Colonial Transactions] should be read widely not just by scholars of history and gender but also by anthropologists and others interested in African studies or colonialism, more broadly.” -- Avenel Rolfsen * Gender & History *“Colonial Transactions expands our knowledge and refines our understanding of the two themes that stand at its center – witchcraft and colonialism. . . . No future research about witchcraft or about colonial relations will be able to ignore this fascinating and eye-opening book.” -- Ruth Ginio * Middle Ground Journal *Table of ContentsPreface ix Introduction 1 1. A Siren, an Empty Shrine, and a Photograph 27 2. The Double Life of Charms 69 3. Carnal Fetishism 96 4. The Value of People 118 5. Cannibal Mirrors 138 6. Eating 168 Conclusion 194 Notes 205 Bibliography 293 Index 321
£25.19
Duke University Press Anthropos and the Material
Book SynopsisPresenting ethnographic case studies from across the globe, the contributors to Anthropos and the Material question and complicate long-held understandings of the divide between humans and things by examining encounters between the human and the nonhuman in numerous social, cultural, technological, and geographical contexts.Trade Review“This book underscores that the Anthropocene poses challenges that far exceed disciplinary or methodological boundaries, just as they exceed the bounds of the anthropos or the material. The contributors take us far in imagining analytical frameworks, sensibilities, and political possibilities that are ‘more than human’ at a time when anthropocentrism is confronting the consequences of its hubris.” -- Nidhi Subramanyam * Geographical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction / Penny Harvey, Christian Krohn-Hansen, and Knut G. Nustad 1 Part I: Materializing Structures 1. Uncommoning Nature: Stories from the Anthropo-Not-Seen / Marisol de la Cadena 35 2. Contemporary Capitalism and Dominican New Yorkers' Livery-Cab Bases: A Taxi Story / Christian Krohn-Hansen 59 3. Anthropos and Pragmata: On the Shape of Things to Come / Ingjerd Hoëm 81 Part II: Material Potential 4. Tabu and Bitcoin: Fluctuating (Im)materiality in Two Nonstate Media of Exchange / Keir Martin 103 5. Sperm, Eggs, and Wombs: The Fabrication of Vital Matters through Legislative Acts / Marit Melhuus 122 6. Lithic Vitality: Human Entanglement with Nonorganic Matter / Penny Harvey 143 7. Traces of Pasts and Imaginings of Futures in St Lucia, South Africa / Knut G. Nustad 161 Part III: Material Uncertainties and Heterogeneous Knowledge Practices 8. Matters that Matter: Air and Atmosphere as Material Politics in South Africa / Rune Flikke 179 9. The Ghost at the Banquet: Ceremony, Community, and Industrial Growth in West Norway / Marianne Elisabeth Lien and John Law 196 10. When the Things We Study Respond to Each Other: Tools for Unpacking "the Material" / Anna Tsing 221 Contributors 245 Index 249
£98.60
Duke University Press From Russia with Code
Book SynopsisThe contributors to From Russia with Code examine Russian computer scientists, programmers, and hackers in and outside of Russia within the context of new international labor markets and the economic, technological, and political changes in post-Soviet Russia.Trade Review“The most striking achievement of this in so many ways outstanding book rests in its ethnographic accounts of the RCS [Russian Computer Scientists] as a new type of power-knowledge intellectual…. The book is easy on technical language and should be accessible to a wide readership beyond Russian studies.” -- Dušan I. Bjelic * Slavic Review *“From Russia with Code...is both timely and unique.... Biagioli and Lépinay’s volume demonstrates that IT professionals both in Russia and abroad have the potential to disrupt the Russian state’s current conception of sovereignty...and to redefine the relationship between the state, its citizens, and the international community.” -- Alexandra V. Orlova * Surveillance & Society *“This book is a valuable read for those with an interest in computer programming and high-tech cultures outside the United States, in post-Soviet ethnography, and in the elusive myth of the Russian programmer.” -- Adam Kriesberg * Information & Culture *“From Russia with Code offers a rich and insightful view into the Russian IT sector and brings welcome scholarly attention to a population that has been overrepresented in popular journalism, but less well attended to in scholarship.... This accessibly written, engaging, and insightful volume will be of interest to broad audiences.” -- Julie Hemment * Anthropos *“This is a superb collection of articles on post-Soviet IT by highly accomplished scholars.” -- Barbara Walker * Technology and Culture *“From Russia with Code appears as essential reading for those interested in STS, cultural history, transnational migrations, and the sociology, history, and anthropology of Russian-speaking information science and information technology. . . . I am confident that the complex, grounded realities of From Russia with Code take the first necessary step on a path toward understanding how Russian-speakers coded the world.” -- Benjamin Peters * Soviet and Post-Soviet Review *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Russian Economies of Code / Mario Biagioli and Vincent Lépinay 1 I. Coding Collectives 1. Before the Collapse: Programming Cultures in the Soviet Union / Ksenia Tatarchenko 39 2. From Lurker to Ninja: Creating an IT Community at Yandex / Marina Fedorova 59 3. For Code and Country: Civic Hackers in Contemporary Russia / Ksenia Ermoshina 87 II. Outward-Looking Enclaves 4. At the Periphery of the Empire: Recycling Japanese Cars into Vladivostok's IT Communuity / Alexandra Masalskaya and Zinaida Vasilyeva 113 5. Kazan Connected: "IT-ing Up" a Province / Alina Kontareva 145 6. Hackerspaces and Technoparks in Moscow / Aleksandra Simonova 167 7. Siberian Software Developers / Andrey Inkukaev 195 8. E-Estonia Reprogrammed: Nation Branding and Children Coding / Daria Savchenko 213 III. Interlude: Russian Maps 9. Post-Soviet Ecosystems of IT / Dmitrii Zhikharevich 231 IV. Bridges and Mismatches 10. Migrating Step by Step: Russian Computer Specialists in the UK / Irina Antoschyuk 271 11. Brain Drain and Boston's "Upper-Middle Tech" / Diana Kurkovsky West 297 12. Jews in Russia and Russians in Israel / Marina Fedorova 319 13. Russian Programmers in Finland: Self-Presentation in Migration Narratives / Lyubava Shatokhina 347 Contributors 365 Index 369
£112.20
Duke University Press Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation
Book SynopsisIn 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed by over 160 countries and hailed as the key symbol of a common vision for saving Earth''s biodiversity, set forth three primary mandates: preserving biodiversity, using biodiversity components sustainably, and enabling economic benefit-sharing. The CBD—which gave signatory countries the ability to claim sovereignty over nonhuman genetic resources native to each nation—defined biodiversity through a politics of nationhood in ways that commodified genetic resources. In Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation Sakari Tamminen traces the ways in which the CBD''s seemingly compatible yet ultimately paradox-ridden aims became manifest in efforts to create, conserve, and capitalize on distinct animal and plant species. In using Finland as a case study with which to understand the worldwide efforts to convert species into manifestations of national identity, Tamminen shows how the CBD''s policies contribute less to biodTrade Review“How do animals and plants ground the making of national natures today, in the age of biotechnology, when we know those natures to be thoroughly social, technical, and economic? Sakari Tamminen's excellent ethnography examines what he arrestingly names as ‘nonhuman nationhood,’ using the case of Finland to show us how histories of animal breeding along with new genres of molecular manipulation are shaping fresh claims and contests over genetic sovereignty.” -- Stefan Helmreich, author of * Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond *“Sakari Tamminen offers a deft combination of field observation and theoretical analysis to persuasively problematize the whole notion of national genetic heritage. Outlining the tension between increasingly energetic claims about indigeneity, originality, and nativeness and the fact that all such claims inevitably rest on construction and wishful thinking, he uses his focus on Finland to illuminate issues of global relevance.” -- Harriet Ritvo, author of * Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History *"This highly informative study should be widely read." -- R. S. Kowalczyk * Choice *"The contribution of the book to critical discussions on the politics of life lies in highlighting the entangled relations between nation-building and biology, and the re-emergence of the nation as a crucial player in biopolitical battles. Furthermore, in a political climate where nations are increasingly interested in strengthening their borders – both physically and discursively – we will do well to remember Tamminen’s message about how new biotechnological relations and the related politics and institutions can expand territories and borders, but also redraw and reinforce existing ones." -- Annika Lonkila * New Genetics and Society *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The New Biopolitics of Nature and the Nature of (Mis)Stakes 1 1. Finncattle: Biowealth as National Life 38 2. Alexander and the (Re)Birth of Nation: Apple Trees' Genetic Fingerprinting and the Making of a Molecular Nationhood 84 3. Stilled Life: Animal Gene Banks and New Infrastructures of Life 127 4. Experimental Administration: Genetic Sovereignty and the Institutional (Bio)Politics of Nonhuman Nationhood 173 Conclusion. Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation 210 Notes 223 References 237 Index 259
£98.60
Duke University Press From Russia with Code
Book SynopsisThe contributors to From Russia with Code examine Russian computer scientists, programmers, and hackers in and outside of Russia within the context of new international labor markets and the economic, technological, and political changes in post-Soviet Russia.Trade Review“The most striking achievement of this in so many ways outstanding book rests in its ethnographic accounts of the RCS [Russian Computer Scientists] as a new type of power-knowledge intellectual…. The book is easy on technical language and should be accessible to a wide readership beyond Russian studies.” -- Dušan I. Bjelic * Slavic Review *“From Russia with Code...is both timely and unique.... Biagioli and Lépinay’s volume demonstrates that IT professionals both in Russia and abroad have the potential to disrupt the Russian state’s current conception of sovereignty...and to redefine the relationship between the state, its citizens, and the international community.” -- Alexandra V. Orlova * Surveillance & Society *“This book is a valuable read for those with an interest in computer programming and high-tech cultures outside the United States, in post-Soviet ethnography, and in the elusive myth of the Russian programmer.” -- Adam Kriesberg * Information & Culture *“From Russia with Code offers a rich and insightful view into the Russian IT sector and brings welcome scholarly attention to a population that has been overrepresented in popular journalism, but less well attended to in scholarship.... This accessibly written, engaging, and insightful volume will be of interest to broad audiences.” -- Julie Hemment * Anthropos *“This is a superb collection of articles on post-Soviet IT by highly accomplished scholars.” -- Barbara Walker * Technology and Culture *“From Russia with Code appears as essential reading for those interested in STS, cultural history, transnational migrations, and the sociology, history, and anthropology of Russian-speaking information science and information technology. . . . I am confident that the complex, grounded realities of From Russia with Code take the first necessary step on a path toward understanding how Russian-speakers coded the world.” -- Benjamin Peters * Soviet and Post-Soviet Review *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Russian Economies of Code / Mario Biagioli and Vincent Lépinay 1 I. Coding Collectives 1. Before the Collapse: Programming Cultures in the Soviet Union / Ksenia Tatarchenko 39 2. From Lurker to Ninja: Creating an IT Community at Yandex / Marina Fedorova 59 3. For Code and Country: Civic Hackers in Contemporary Russia / Ksenia Ermoshina 87 II. Outward-Looking Enclaves 4. At the Periphery of the Empire: Recycling Japanese Cars into Vladivostok's IT Communuity / Alexandra Masalskaya and Zinaida Vasilyeva 113 5. Kazan Connected: "IT-ing Up" a Province / Alina Kontareva 145 6. Hackerspaces and Technoparks in Moscow / Aleksandra Simonova 167 7. Siberian Software Developers / Andrey Inkukaev 195 8. E-Estonia Reprogrammed: Nation Branding and Children Coding / Daria Savchenko 213 III. Interlude: Russian Maps 9. Post-Soviet Ecosystems of IT / Dmitrii Zhikharevich 231 IV. Bridges and Mismatches 10. Migrating Step by Step: Russian Computer Specialists in the UK / Irina Antoschyuk 271 11. Brain Drain and Boston's "Upper-Middle Tech" / Diana Kurkovsky West 297 12. Jews in Russia and Russians in Israel / Marina Fedorova 319 13. Russian Programmers in Finland: Self-Presentation in Migration Narratives / Lyubava Shatokhina 347 Contributors 365 Index 369
£27.90
Duke University Press Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation
Book SynopsisIn 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed by over 160 countries and hailed as the key symbol of a common vision for saving Earth''s biodiversity, set forth three primary mandates: preserving biodiversity, using biodiversity components sustainably, and enabling economic benefit-sharing. The CBD—which gave signatory countries the ability to claim sovereignty over nonhuman genetic resources native to each nation—defined biodiversity through a politics of nationhood in ways that commodified genetic resources. In Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation Sakari Tamminen traces the ways in which the CBD''s seemingly compatible yet ultimately paradox-ridden aims became manifest in efforts to create, conserve, and capitalize on distinct animal and plant species. In using Finland as a case study with which to understand the worldwide efforts to convert species into manifestations of national identity, Tamminen shows how the CBD''s policies contribute less to biodTrade Review“How do animals and plants ground the making of national natures today, in the age of biotechnology, when we know those natures to be thoroughly social, technical, and economic? Sakari Tamminen's excellent ethnography examines what he arrestingly names as ‘nonhuman nationhood,’ using the case of Finland to show us how histories of animal breeding along with new genres of molecular manipulation are shaping fresh claims and contests over genetic sovereignty.” -- Stefan Helmreich, author of * Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond *“Sakari Tamminen offers a deft combination of field observation and theoretical analysis to persuasively problematize the whole notion of national genetic heritage. Outlining the tension between increasingly energetic claims about indigeneity, originality, and nativeness and the fact that all such claims inevitably rest on construction and wishful thinking, he uses his focus on Finland to illuminate issues of global relevance.” -- Harriet Ritvo, author of * Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History *"This highly informative study should be widely read." -- R. S. Kowalczyk * Choice *"The contribution of the book to critical discussions on the politics of life lies in highlighting the entangled relations between nation-building and biology, and the re-emergence of the nation as a crucial player in biopolitical battles. Furthermore, in a political climate where nations are increasingly interested in strengthening their borders – both physically and discursively – we will do well to remember Tamminen’s message about how new biotechnological relations and the related politics and institutions can expand territories and borders, but also redraw and reinforce existing ones." -- Annika Lonkila * New Genetics and Society *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The New Biopolitics of Nature and the Nature of (Mis)Stakes 1 1. Finncattle: Biowealth as National Life 38 2. Alexander and the (Re)Birth of Nation: Apple Trees' Genetic Fingerprinting and the Making of a Molecular Nationhood 84 3. Stilled Life: Animal Gene Banks and New Infrastructures of Life 127 4. Experimental Administration: Genetic Sovereignty and the Institutional (Bio)Politics of Nonhuman Nationhood 173 Conclusion. Biogenetic Paradoxes of the Nation 210 Notes 223 References 237 Index 259
£25.19
Duke University Press A Possible Anthropology
Book SynopsisConceptualizing anthropology as a mode of practical and transformative inquiry, Anand Pandian stages an ethnographic encounter with the field in an effort to grasp its impact on the world and its potential for addressing and offering solutions to the profound crises of the present.Trade Review“Incorporating the current movements beyond 'writing culture' of twentieth-century anthropology, Anand Pandian reinstantiates the poetics of an ethnographic method that anticipates futures. In the midst of a surge of multimodal experimentation, Pandian stunningly reinvests in the narrative character of ethnography.” -- George E. Marcus, coauthor of * Ethnography by Design: Scenographic Experiments in Fieldwork *“Offering the daring gambit of revisiting anthropology's past to make it new, and critically meditating, too, upon the field's latest theoretical moves, Anand Pandian's captivating book is a stirring brief for ethnography as a method for exploring that which is and may yet be possible.” -- Stefan Helmreich, author of * Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond *"This is a book that practicing anthropologists and students of anthropology must both read." -- Shweta Krishnan * Anthropology Book Forum *"A Possible Anthropology is bold, caring, and creative in trying to confront these issues head on, in trying to imagine some other kind of world." -- Andrés Romero * Cultural Anthropology *"With a focus on figures in the discipline’s past and current practices, A Possible Anthropology contributes to debates about the future of anthropological inquiry (and the ethnographic method) in academia and the wider world. It is an evocative and inspired book, clearly written and rigorous." -- Adam Fleischmann * Anthropological Quarterly *"This book is an inspirational joy and a read I recommend." -- Robert Meckin * Qualitative Research *“Pandian has offered a strong work. . . . A Possible Anthropology is indeed a hopeful book for uneasy times, that encourages us to dive deeper into an anthropological way of engaging with the world.” -- Julia Nina Baumann * Anthropos *Table of ContentsIntroduction. An Ethnographer among the Anthropologists 1 1. The World at Hand: Between Scientific and Literary Inquiry 15 2. A Method of Experience: Reading, Writing, Teaching, Fieldwork 44 3. For the Humanity Yet to Come: Politics, Art, Fiction, Ethnography 77 Coda. The Anthropologist as Critic 110 Acknowledgments 123 Notes 127 Bibliography 141 Index 155
£67.15
Duke University Press Energopolitics
Book SynopsisDominic Boyer examines the politics of wind power and how it is shaped by myriad factors—from the legacies of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance to state bureaucracy and corporate investment—while outlining the fundamental impact of energy and fuel on political power.Trade Review"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- L. L. Johnson * Choice *"Howe and Boyer look back on the past with fresh eyes. . . . Howe and Boyer’s project has many virtues. For one, it articulates the perils of corporate wind economies. For another, it positions Indigenous communities (like the Zapotec) not as outmoded objects for anthropological inquiry, but (á la Gayatri Spivak) as 'active [producers] of culture.' Most importantly, perhaps, is how Wind and Power in the Anthropocene documents alternatives to corporate wind ventures like Mareña. The book highlights, for example, community-based initiatives that also seek to harness the awesome power of istmeño wind—projects that promote communal welfare and environmental justice." -- Stacey Balkan * Public Books *"The duograph is an interesting and novel way to approach collaborative writing, which I enjoyed engaging with. . . . Energopolitics elegantly brings together political theory and ethnography. -- Anna G. Sveinsdóttir * Journal of Latin American Geography *“In Wind and Power in the Anthropocene, a two-volume ‘duograph,’ Cymene Howe, in Ecologics, and Dominic Boyer, in Energopolitics, explore the development of wind parks during the early twenty-first century on the isthmus of Tehuantepec…. One of the most refreshing components of their collaborative and individual writing is the clarity of their position as researchers in this project as they circulated among politicians, indigenous peoples, and corporate officials. It is a necessary exercise, as they argue, for appreciating the entrenchment of the wind in local political and social relations.” -- Nathan Kapoor * Technology and Culture *“Boyer’s book seeks ways around human-centered notions of politics.... More important than his theoretical discussion is his contention that in order to understand aeolian politics in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, one must attend to situated, historical processes with which transitions to renewable energy become intimately entangled.” -- Chakad Ojani * Anthropology Book Forum *“[Ecologics and Energopolitics] make strong arguments on political processes in the field of wind energy in Mexico...[and] are important contributions to an anthropology of energy, a still growing field within the discipline.” -- Oliver D. Liebig * Anthropos *Table of ContentsJoint Preface to Wind and Power in the Anthropocene / Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer ix Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 1. Ixtepec 27 2. La Ventosa 60 3. Oaxaca de Juaréz 95 4. Distrito Federal 127 5. Guidxiguie' (Juchitán de Zaragoza) 158 Joint Conclusion to Wind and Power in the Anthropocene / Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer 194 Notes 199 References 225 Index 251
£98.60
Duke University Press Ethnopornography
Book SynopsisWith topics that span the sixteenth century to the present in Latin America, the United States, Australia, the Middle East, and West Africa, the contributors show how ethnopornography—the eroticized observation of the Other for supposedly scientific or academic purposes—is fundamental to the creation of race, colonialism, and archival and ethnographic knowledge.Trade Review“Making powerful arguments and bold methodological claims, this ambitious collection confronts the genealogies of ethnopornographic circulations while offering exemplary readings of ethnopornographic objects and optics. A significant intervention in anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, feminist theory, critical theory, and beyond.” -- Antoinette Burton, author of * Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation *“In its ambitious analysis of ethnopornography's histories and circulations, this volume challenges readers to consider ethnopornography's centrality to forms of knowledge itself. This bold collection makes important contributions to fields across the humanities, including literary studies, history, black studies, ethnic studies, visual culture studies, gender studies, and anthropology. It also compels readers to think about the politics and ethics of our collective desires to see and to know and about how those desires have come to form the basis of disciplinary knowledge.” -- Jennifer C. Nash, author of * Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality *"Brilliantly, the editors invite us to consider ethnography as a form of pornography invested with institutional power." -- A. Ponce de Leon * Choice *"This fascinating and wide-ranging collection has the potential to influence the academic study of sexuality and push it toward a more courageous and self-reflexive future. Many of the scholars involved serve as models for this kind of work." -- Nicole von Germeten * Hispanic American Historical Review *"The editors' ability to position this collection within broader discussions of gender and sexuality is a significant strength of this work. Although the editors and authors are discussing material that is rich in theory it is written in such a way that the content is accessible to a reader unfamiliar with the topic. . . . This work would be perfect for a graduate seminar because of its diverse narratives that focus on similar themes that would allow emerging scholars to self-reflect on their own research. The editors put together an engaging collection of essays that challenges its readers to grapple with the implications of their own scholarly gaze and interrogate the lasting impact of colonial narratives that has historical sexualized the other." -- Edith Ritt-Coulter * International Social Science Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Ethnopornography as Methodology and Critique / Pete Sigal, Zeb Tortorici, and Neil L. Whitehead 1 Part I. Visualizing Race 1. Exotic/Erotic/Ethnopornographic: Black Women, Desire, and Labor in the Photographic Archive / Mireille Miller-Young 41 2. "Hung, Hot, and Shameless in Bed": Blackness, Desire, and Politics in a Brazilian Gay Porn Magazine, 1997–2008 / Bryan Pitts 67 3. The Ghosts of Gaytanamo / Beatrix McBride 97 4. Under White Men's Eyes: Racialized Eroticism, Ethnographic Encounters, and the Maintenance of the Colonial Order / Sidra Lawrence 118 Part II. Ethnopornography as Colonial History 5. Franciscan Voyeurism in Sixteenth-Century New Spain / Pete Sigal 139 6. European Travelogues and Ottoman Sexuality: Sodomitical Crossings Abroad, 1550–1850 / Joseph Allen Boone 169 7. Sexualizing the Other: From Ethnopornography to Interracial Pornography in European Travel Writing about West African Women / Pernille Ipsen 205 8. "Men Like Us": The Invention of Ethnopornography / Helen Pringle 225 Conclusion: Ethnopornography Coda / Neil L. Whitehead 245 Contributors 253 Index 257
£72.25
Duke University Press Ecologics
Book SynopsisCymene Howe traces the complex relationships between humans, nonhuman beings and objects, and geophysical forces that shaped the Mareña Renovables project in Oaxaca, Mexico, which had it been completed, would have been Latin America's largest wind power installation.Trade Review"Research included interviews carried out with key representatives of international, national, regional, and local interests, supporting a richly nuanced account of often emotionally charged encounters. Howe balances multiple viewpoints, ranging from those gained though formal appointments and official press conferences in Mexico City to those observed in restaurant meetings and confrontations between protesters and police on the Isthmus. The chapters oscillate between chronological telling of events—from wind power anticipated, to the project interrupted and ultimately suspended—and consideration of three other-than-human forces that played key roles in the unfolding of events: wind, trucks, and species. Recommended. All readers." -- C. Hendrickson * Choice *"Howe and Boyer look back on the past with fresh eyes. . . . Howe and Boyer’s project has many virtues. For one, it articulates the perils of corporate wind economies. For another, it positions Indigenous communities (like the Zapotec) not as outmoded objects for anthropological inquiry, but (á la Gayatri Spivak) as 'active [producers] of culture.' Most importantly, perhaps, is how Wind and Power in the Anthropocene documents alternatives to corporate wind ventures like Mareña. The book highlights, for example, community-based initiatives that also seek to harness the awesome power of istmeño wind—projects that promote communal welfare and environmental justice." -- Stacey Balkan * Public Books *"The duograph is an interesting and novel way to approach collaborative writing, which I enjoyed engaging with. . . . Howe discusses, through her vivid writing style, what happens when distinct imaginaries of environmental care and environmental harm come into conflict, examining how wind energy—an antidote to the Anthropocene—became both failure and success." -- Anna G. Sveinsdóttir * Journal of Latin American Geography *“In Wind and Power in the Anthropocene, a two-volume ‘duograph,’ Cymene Howe, in Ecologics, and Dominic Boyer, in Energopolitics, explore the development of wind parks during the early twenty-first century on the isthmus of Tehuantepec…. One of the most refreshing components of their collaborative and individual writing is the clarity of their position as researchers in this project as they circulated among politicians, indigenous peoples, and corporate officials. It is a necessary exercise, as they argue, for appreciating the entrenchment of the wind in local political and social relations.” -- Nathan Kapoor * Technology and Culture *“Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer have crafted two eloquent accounts of the turbulent, aeolian politics that unfolded during their 16-month-long field research in Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, between 2009 and 2013.... Ecologics...is perhaps the most evocative half of the duograph.” -- Chakad Ojani * Anthropology Book Forum *“[Ecologics and Energopolitics] make strong arguments on political processes in the field of wind energy in Mexico...[and] are important contributions to an anthropology of energy, a still growing field within the discipline.” -- Oliver D. Liebig * Anthropos *Table of ContentsJoint Preface to Wind and Power in the Anthropocene / Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer ix Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 1. Wind 23 2. Wind Power, Anticipated 43 3. Trucks 73 4. Wind Power, Interrupted 103 5. Species 137 6. Wind Power, in Suspension 170 Joint Conclusion to Wind and Power in the Anthropocene / Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer 191 Notes 197 References 223 Index 243
£98.60
Duke University Press A Future History of Water
Book SynopsisFocusing on Costa Rica and Brazil, Andrea Ballestero examines the legal, political, economic, and bureaucratic history of water in the context of the efforts to classify it as a human right, showing how seemingly small scale devices such as formulas and lists play large role in determining water's status.Trade Review"Through the brilliant selection of the devices to exhibit her ideas, the author invites readers to think deeply beyond courts or treaties establishing a human right to water and shows how many other factors also contribute to and shape this." -- Gayathri D Naik * LSE Review of Books *"[Ballestero's] insightful analysis convinces the reader that such apparently mundane technical devices are indeed wonderful in their capacities to compose the water worlds of the future." -- Veronica Strang * PoLAR *“Throughout her ethnography, Ballestero emphasizes the messiness and oftentimes mundane work it takes to make access to water a human right within capitalist society…. A Future History of Water showcases how everyday technolegal devices perform the essential work of creating a future in which water is accessible to all.” -- Kelsey Kim * Catalyst *“Ballestero’s elegant formulation allows for an anthropology of water not found elsewhere. It is an account attentive to both ethnographic detail and to the insight that anthropology can bring to larger debates over water’s value, management, and meaning. A Future History of Water should be on shelves of water scholars interested in the intersections of politics, economics, and the material relations of water. It will make an excellent contribution to courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in anthropology and critical social sciences.” -- Jeremy J. Schmidt * Anthropos *“A Future History of Water is an important contribution to the literature on urban infrastructure, water policy and the urbanisation of the global south, as well as to environmental anthropology. The book reveals how widespread global water policy is; the policy of water pipes, the functioning of local policy and the unforeseen consequences of economic reforms…. Through a careful choice of devices, the author encourages the reader to think globally about the human right to water and shows how many factors, outside of laws and treaties, still contribute to supporting and shaping the recognition of water as a human right.” -- Simona Zupanc * Anthropological Notebooks *“Dense and beautifully detailed, Ballestero’s story shows how government bureaucrats and regulators moved beyond the declarative to the actual performance of the exacting work that a commitment to rights demands. In the process, the book unravels a set of seemingly uncharismatic devices, such as the consumer price index. Ballestero makes these technical tools appear as exuberant microcosms of technopolitical craftiness, unexpected historical depth, and ethical future-making." -- Andrea Muehlebach * Public Works *“After many years of relative abandonment, the topic of water has flooded back into anthropology.... At the forefront of this renovated interest in the topic of water is Andrea Ballestero, and her excellent book A Future History of Water.” -- Casey Walsh * Luso-Brazilian Review *“Proportions and bifurcations play a central role in Andrea Ballestero’s mesmerizing and indispensable monograph on the practical futures of water governance.... Such is the virtue of this wondrous book :an ethnography of proportions that is disproportionately rewarding." -- Alberto Corsin-Jimenez * Allegra Lab *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. Formula 36 2. Index 75 3. List 109 4. Pact 144 Conclusion 185 Notes 201 References 211 Index 225
£76.50
Duke University Press The Licit Life of Capitalism
Book SynopsisThe Licit Life of Capitalism is both an account of a specific capitalist projectU.S. oil companies working off the shores of Equatorial Guineaand a sweeping theorization of more general forms and processes that facilitate diverse capitalist projects around the world. Hannah Appel draws on extensive fieldwork with managers and rig workers, lawyers and bureaucrats, the expat wives of American oil executives and the Equatoguinean women who work in their homes, to turn conventional critiques of capitalism on their head, arguing that market practices do not merely exacerbate inequality; they are made by it. People and places differentially valued by gender, race, and colonial histories are the terrain on which the rules of capitalist economy are built. Appel shows how the corporate form and the contract, offshore rigs and economic theory are the assemblages of liberalism and race, expertise and gender, technology and domesticity that enable the licit life of capitalismpractices that are legTrade Review“A brilliant and deeply ethical rumination on the emancipatory potential and limitations of ethnographic critiques of capitalism, this searing ethnography delves into the very making of landscapes of exploitation and subordination. It is a theoretically and methodologically breathtaking investigation into the conditions of possibility that allow global capitalism to self-represent as ‘aboveboard’ and ‘transparent.’ By delving into the muck of what constitutes ‘the licit’ in the architecture of capitalism, Hannah Appel notices and refuses ‘comp-licit’ normative assumptions. The Licit Life of Capitalism thus achieves what few ethnographies have: it shows how capitalist abstractions are culturally deliberate and painstakingly reproduced.” -- Karen Ho, author of * Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street *“In this compelling and engaging work Hannah Appel ethnographically captures a big thing: capitalism as a project. Asking after the fulsomeness with which capitalism powerfully does all the things it is supposed to do, Appel sets out a new path for grappling with this dominant force in contemporary politics and economics. Her book exemplifies the best critical writing on the workings of capitalism in anthropology, geography, sociology, and allied fields.” -- Bill Maurer, author of * How Would You like to Pay?: How Technology is Changing the Future of Money *"This book deserves a very wide audience. Scholars and activists engaged with the impact of multinational corporations in African countries, neoliberal efforts to control the movement of bodies while endorsing unlimited flows of capital and uneven distributions of blame, and the limits of neoliberal calls for political reform really need to read The Licit Life of Capitalism." -- Jeremy Rich * African Studies Quarterly *"Appel’s study of US oil companies in Equatorial Guinea is revelatory for its theoretical contributions to the anthropology of capitalism (beyond the rather more niche anthropology of oil), with a critical recentring of attention on the role of industry in shaping the politics and economics of resource extraction. With enviable access to the internal operations of these transnational corporations, Appel provides key insights into the assumptions and worldmaking strategies of what has long been an ethnographic black box." -- Wen Zhou * LSE Review of Books *“The Licit Life of Capitalism is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of oil or the itinerant infrastructures of global capitalism. While Appel’s subject matter is complex, the book’s clear, compelling, and approachable prose make it an excellent addition to graduate-level geography courses focused on political economy, political ecology, infrastructure, or racial capitalism. Portions of the book, particularly ‘The Enclave’ and ‘The Economy,’ would also be appropriate for upper-division undergraduate courses on global development, postcolonial geography, and natural resource geographies.” -- Kendra Kintzi * Geographical Review *“The Licit Life of Capitalism is an outstanding work of scholarship that combines theoretical innovation with incisive ethnographic detail.... Appel’s text makes for essential reading for anyone concerned about the energy industry, multinational corporations, and the lopsided exchanges between the global South and North.” -- Tanmoy Sharma * Society for the Anthropology of Work *“The Licit Life of Capitalism is an energetic and polemical read. Appel’s account brings to life the seemingly yawn-worthy artefacts of the oil industry—contracts, budgets, corporate housing, conferences, sub-contracts—and reveals how these objects depend on and re-create the global, racialized inequality which itself doubles as one of this book’s central themes.” -- James Christopher Mizes * Society & Space *“Appel’s scholarship has helped define anthropology’s infrastructural turn. Here, she expands her portrayal of oil not through money alone—the narrow prerogative of resource curse theories—but as an industry dependent on material infrastructures, racialized labor regimes, technical expertise, and capitalist fantasies.” -- Geoffrey Aung * Focaal *“The Licit Life of Capitalism is above all a sophisticated study of capitalist world-making at different levels.... The book holds the tension between the ethnographic ‘particular’ and the ‘universal’ exceptionally well.” -- Gisa Weszkalnys * Anthropological Quarterly *“The Licit Life of Capitalism is incredibly informative. . . . The finely detailed ethnographic particulars in each chapter do an excellent job of illustrating contemporary life in Equatorial Guinea.” -- Jerry K. Jacka * Africa *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Offshore 37 2. The Enclave 79 3. The Contract 137 4. The Subcontract 172 5. The Economy 204 6. The Political 247 Afterword 279 Notes 285 References 295 Index 317
£98.60
Duke University Press The Fernando Coronil Reader
Book SynopsisThis posthumously published collection of Fernando Coronil's most important work highlights his deep concern with the global South, Latin American state formation, theories of nature, empire and postcolonialism, and anthrohistory as an intellectual and ethical approach.Trade Review“I highly recommend this Reader, and hope that it can contribute to make the work of Fernando Coronil even better known and appreciated among scholars, hopefully beyond the circles of metropolitan academia too. And I am sure that a translation into Spanish would be very well received among readers in Latin American and Caribbean countries.” -- Luis Angosto-Ferrández * Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research *“The Fernando Coronil Reader is an invaluable addition to the field of Latin American Studies from a myriad of perspectives–e.g. anthropology, history, cultural studies. Coronil’s work challenges us to rethink our approaches to key contemporary epistemological, political, and ethical questions.” -- Gianfranco Selgas * European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Transcultural Paths and Utopian Imaginings / Mariana Coronil, Laurent DuBois, Julie Skurski, and Gary Wilder 1 Part I. Labyrinths of Critique: The Promise of Anthrohistory Introduction / David Pedersen 47 1. Pieces for Anthrohistory: A Puzzle to be Assembled Together 53 2. Transculturation and the Politics of Theory: Countering the Center, Cuban Counterpoint 69 3. Foreword to Close Encounters of Empire 118 4. Perspectives on Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado 123 5. The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America (1989–2010) 128 Part II. Geohistorical States: Latin American Counterpoint Introduction / Edward Murphy 165 6. Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of Political Violence in Venezuela 171 7. Transitions to Transitions: Democracy and Nation in Latin America 231 8. Venezuela's Wounded Bodies: Nation and Imagination during the 2002 Coup 250 9. Oilpacity: Secrets of History in the Coup against Hugo Chávez 262 10. Crude Matters: Seizing the Venezuelan Petro-state in Times of Chávez 266 Part III. Beyond Occidentalism, Beyond Empire Introduction / Paul Eiss 309 11. Occidentalism 315 12. Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories 323 13. Listening to the Subaltern: The Poetics of Neocolonial States 368 14. Smelling Like a Market 385 15. Latin American Postcolonial Studies and Global Decolonization 399 16. After Empire: Reflections on Imperialism from the Américas 425 Credits 457 Index 459
£112.20
