Social and cultural anthropology Books
Duke University Press Making Women Pay
Book SynopsisSmitha Radhakrishnan explores India's microfinance industry, showing that despite the rhetoric about improving the everyday lives of women borrowers, the practice is a commercial industry that seeks to extract the maximum value from its customers.Trade Review“Smitha Radhakrishnan's compelling and important study of women in the world of microfinance is one of the best books I've read in several years. No other book on the market features this kind of data, access, or methods of triangulation. With its clear writing, rich stories and nuance, Making Women Pay will challenge readers to think more critically about how microfinance is deeply gendered. Engaging, moving, and powerful.” -- Kimberly Kay Hoang, author of * Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work *“While the scholarship on microfinance has become increasingly nuanced over the past three decades, we still lack critical information about the very people who put microfinance into practice—namely, the loan officers, educators, and field-workers who directly interface with clients and act as brokers between clients and administration, as well as upper-level administrators. Smitha Radhakrishnan fills this critical gap, offering readers a new analysis of microfinance that takes seriously microfinance workers at all levels as social agents. Reading this book is a breath of fresh air and a true delight.” -- Erin Beck, author of * How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs *"...[T]he book is fascinating and does well to showcase how markets hurt women. Recommended. Undergraduates and faculty." -- J. Bhattacharya * Choice *"Smitha Radhakrishnan combines a novelist’s eye with a sharp, feminist analysis. By sympathetically bringing to life the people she encounters in her research in southern India and the USA, she illustrates the serious underlying issues. . . Making Women Pay offers a disturbing but rewarding read." -- Deborah Eade * Gender & Development *"Compelling. . . ." -- Kevin P. Donovan * Boston Review *"Her scholarly analysis can serve as a textbook for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates, and her comprehensive bibliography offers multiple entry points to anyone interested in a deep exploration of microfinance practices." -- Nancy Nyland * Resources For Women And Gender Studies *Table of ContentsAbbreviations and Acronyms ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. The Invisible State of Gender and Credit 25 2. Men and Women of the MFI 47 3. Making Women Creditworthy 70 4. Social Work 100 5. Empowerment, Declined 124 6. Distortions of Distance 148 7. Impact Revisited 177 Conclusion 197 Methodological Appendix 211 Notes 219 Bibliography 233 Index 245
£19.79
Duke University Press Collective Biologies
Book SynopsisAnalyzing a longitudinal study of HPV occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Emily A. Wentzell explores how people can use individual health behaviors like participating in medical research to enhance group well-being amid crisis and change.Trade Review“Collective Biologies is an engaging, theoretically astute, and crisply written ethnography of research participation and shifting notions of gender and modernity in Mexico. Emily A. Wentzell captures a sense of the way biomedical research increasingly becomes enfolded into the experiences and projects of everyday life and particular understandings and aspirations of modernity in a way that is both emergent and urgent to understand. Her thoughtful, accessible, and illuminating examination makes crucial contributions to scholarship in science studies, medical anthropology, and Latin American studies.” -- Megan Crowley-Matoka, author of * Domesticating Organ Transplant: Familial Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico *“Emily A. Wentzell's study challenges medicine's conception of ‘the body’ as a discrete entity and the way medical testing is done and the results understood. It is an excellent contribution to both medical anthropology and to public health.” -- Laura A. Lewis, author of * Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico *"This solid contribution to medical anthropology reifies the concept that individuals enfold themselves into larger, collective, societal arenas. Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." -- G. R. Campbell * Choice *"Wentzell’s skill in describing these biological abstractions is impressive. She has the capacity to weave complex subjects together: class differences, Mexican gender norms, national stereotypes, history, the economy, racial stereotypes, sexual disease transmission, familial and educational concerns, perceptions of governmental function, and more." -- William Sorensen * The Latin Americanist *Table of ContentsPreface: Collective Biologies in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond ix Acknowledgments xiii 1. Sexual Health Research, Relationships, and Social Change in Cuernavaca 1 2. Performing Modern Masculinities in Medical Research 35 3. HPV and Couples Biology 52 4. Cultivating Companionate Families 81 5. Creating a "Culture of Prevention" 106 6. Evangelicals Participating as Piety 130 7. From "Human Subjects" to "Collective Biologies" 155 Appendix: The Study Design 181 References 189 Index 213
£18.89
Duke University Press Anthropology Film Industries Modularity
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity take an anthropological and comparative approach to capturing the diversity and growth of global film industries, bringing into relief common film production practices as well as the local contingencies and deeper cultural realities at work in every film industry.Trade Review“This field-framing book features eight exemplary case studies involving sophisticated fieldwork, comparative analysis, and provocative theorizing. It counters film studies' standard schemes, theorizing ‘modularity’ to explain production as simultaneously local and integral to ‘industries.’ Faulting media industries studies’ coherence and production studies for understating its anthropological debt, the book underscores the need for an interfield reckoning. Adding crucial Asian and African perspectives to the literature, this disciplinary boundary--making project pushes production studies to better explore its common ground with anthropology.” -- John T. Caldwell, Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles“Ramyar D. Rossoukh and Steven C. Caton have put together an exciting collection of essays with a uniformly high level of excellence. Located at a variety of sites around the world, each is ethnographically rich, analytically insightful, and well written. This will be a go-to book for courses in the anthropology of media, visual anthropology, and production studies.” -- Sherry B. Ortner, Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles"This volume shows us that film worlds are not constituted only by the film itself, the viewing experience, and the audience’s engagement with and interpretation of the content. Film creators work under complex conditions of creativity and constraint, local cultural expectations and understandings, and as part of teams, crews, and industries. Each chapter holds up a magnifying glass to different phases of filmmaking processes, analyzing their particular meanings, practices, and contributions to the actual film that audiences eventually watch." -- Reighan Gillam * American Anthropologist *“[Anthropology, Film Industries, Modularity] provides new and comparative insight on these industries’ differences as well as their similarities by being part of global cinema. This text will no doubt be a useful tool for researchers studying cinema and the ethnography and anthropology of film industries throughout the world.” -- Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi * Exertions *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction / Ramyar D. Rossoukh and Steven C. Caton 1 1. “English is So Precise and Hindi Can be So Heavy!”: Language Ideologies and Audience Imaginaries in a Dubbing Studio in Mumbai / Tejaswani Ganti 41 2. The Digital Devine: Postproduction of Majid Majidi's The Willow Tree (2005) / Ramyar D. Rossoukh 63 3. Journalists as Cultural Vectors: Film as the Building Blocks of News Narratives in India / Amrita Ibrahim 89 4. “This is Not a Film”: Industrial Expectations and Film Criticism as Censorship at the Bangladesh Film Censor Board / Lotte Hoek 109 5. “This Most Reluctant of Romantic Cities”: Dis-location Film Shooting in the Old City of Sana’a / Steven C. Caton 129 6. Stealing Shots: The Ethics and Edgework of Industrial Filmmaking / Sylvia J. Martin 163 7. Making Virtual Reality Film: An Untimely View of Film Futures from (South) Africa / Jessica Dickson 181 8. The Moroccan Film Industry: Á Contre-Jour: The Unpredictable Odyssey of a Small National Cinema / Kevin Dwyer 213 References 243 Contributors 267 Index 269
£20.89
Duke University Press Multisituated
Book SynopsisIn Multisituated Kaushik Sunder Rajan evaluates the promises and potentials of multisited ethnography with regard to contemporary debates around decolonizing anthropology and the university. He observes that at the current moment, anthropology is increasingly peopled by diasporic students and researchers, all of whom are accountable to multiple communities beyond the discipline. In this light, Sunder Rajan draws on his pedagogical experience and dialogues to reconceptualize ethnography as a multisituated practice of knowledge production, ethical interlocution, and political intervention. Such a multisituated ethnography responds to contemporary anthropology’s myriad commitments as it privileges attention to questions of scale, comparison, and the politics of ethnographic encounters. Foregrounding the conditions of possibility and difficulty for those doing and teaching ethnography in the twenty-first-century, Sunder Rajan gestures toward an ethos and praxis of ethnography Trade Review“The remarkable transformations over the past thirty years in the nonetheless emblematic research process that still defines anthropologists have never been explored so comprehensively, so instructively, and so passionately by a gifted, imaginative teacher to those who become anthropologists today in a historically key department.” -- George E. Marcus, coeditor of * Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be: Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition *"This challenging and stimulating monograph is intended for faculty involved in training graduate students in ethnographic practice. . . . Highly recommended." -- W. Kotter * Choice *"Multisituated is a passionate and eloquent contribution to contemporary discussions about anthropology’s pasts, presents, and possible futures that deserves to be widely read and keenly debated." -- Stuart McLean * American Ethnologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. A Problem, a Paradox, a Politics . . . and a Praxis 1 1. Scale 29 2. Comparison 57 3. Encounter 91 4. Dialogue 136 Conclusion. Toward a Diasporic Anthropology 169 Notes 189 References 229 Index 245
£20.89
Duke University Press Subversive Archaism
Book SynopsisIn Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld explores how individuals and communities living at the margins of the modern nation-state use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority under both democratic and authoritarian governments. Through close attention to the claims and experiences of mountain shepherds in Greece and urban slum dwellers in Thailand, Herzfeld shows how these subversive archaists draw on national histories and past polities to claim legitimacy for their defiance of bureaucratic authority. Although vilified by government authorities as remote, primitive, or dangerous—often as preemptive justification for violent repression—these groups are not revolutionaries and do not reject national identity, but they do question the equation of state and nation. Herzfeld explores the political strengths and vulnerabilities of their deployment of heritage and the weaknesses they expose in the bureaucratic and ethnonational state in an era of aTrade Review“In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld proposes the concept of ‘subversive archaism,’ a bold new paradigm to investigate forms of resistance by which people claiming to represent authentic national communities thwart incursions on their autonomy by bureaucratic authorities. The writing is lucid, at times lyrical. The utilization of the anthropological archive is masterful. Above all, the comparative ethnography is impeccable, yielding a profoundly human document of the lives and struggles of people in Greece and Thailand during periods of upheaval and change.” -- Douglas R. Holmes, Distinguished Professor, Binghamton University, State University of New York“Working closely with citizens and social movements that are portrayed as affronts to modernity, Michael Herzfeld shows us how state authorities both fetishize and are threatened by the ‘subversive archaism’ of marginalized groups, especially those who proudly embrace their alterity and believe they have morally superior claims to national identity. The book offers an acute assessment of belonging and resistance in nation-state formations, and it does so using ethnographic materials that mainstream political science and orthodox nationalists would rather we ignore.” -- Andrew Shryock, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan"Herzfeld’s Subversive Archaism is a masterly comparative study that will define scholarship on Greece and Thailand for many years to come. Scholars and graduate students of Greek and Thai studies, anthropology, political science, and sociology will benefit greatly from his deep knowledge of cultural anthropology and the richness of his fieldwork studies." -- Eftychia Mylona * IIAS Review *"This work makes an important contribution to the anthropology of the state, providing a set of concepts that help clarify the often troubling rise of traditionalist fundamentalisms globally. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- J. MacKenzie * Choice *“Herzfeld has delineated an approach to human lives too often dismissed as marginal, self-destructive, or blinkered, to instead foreground exemplary civility, empathy, and creativity. . . . The book closes with . . . a powerful and passionate call for anthropology’s sustained attention to the human virtues of resilience, humor, and mutuality as an antidote to the despair conjured and fed through the ersatz patriotism of charlatan-zealots.” -- Keith Brown * Journal of Anthropological Research *"The book is a pleasure to read, and brims with useful ideas on every page. The concept is also sufficiently generalizable, so that it will likely be cited far and wide, and it will apply to numerous contexts beyond the cases he has used. Congratulations are in order." -- Erik Harms * HAU *"Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority. Herzfeld is not proposing that any given group needs to fit neatly into the category of subversive archaists, but rather how some groups reach back into the past to offer an alternative future. . . . I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible." -- Olivia Porter * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments ix Foreword / Robert J. Foster and Daniel R. Reichman xiii 1. The Nation-State Outraged 1 2. National Legitimacy and the Illegitimacy of National Origins 27 3. Belonging and Remoteness 51 4. Cosmologies of the Social 69 5. A Plurality of Polities 97 6. Subversive Comparisons 121 7. Civility, Parody, and Invective 137 8. Does a Subversive Past Have a Viable Future? 157 Notes 171 References 205 Index 229
£72.25
Duke University Press All That Was Not Her
Book SynopsisWhile studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Meyers met a woman named Beverly. In All That Was Not Her Meyers presents an intimate ethnographic portrait of Beverly, stitching together small moments they shared scattered over months and years and, following her death, into the present. He meditates on the possibilities of writing about someone who is gone—what should be represented, what experiences resist rendering, what ethical challenges exist when studying the lives of others. Meyers considers how chronic illness is bound up in the racialized and socioeconomic conditions of Beverly’s life and explores the stakes of the anthropologist’s engagement with one subject. Even as Meyers struggles to give Beverly the final word, he finds himself unmade alongside her. All That Was Not Her captures the complexity of personal relationships in the field and the diTrade Review“This beautiful, smart, and unique book cuts into ethnography and race in powerful and necessary ways, stepping off the plane of current critical race theory into risky, generative thinking and writing. An intimate, frank account of a situation and relationship beyond the convenient stability of an understanding or meaning, All That Was Not Her is an absolutely compelling read.” -- Kathleen Stewart, coauthor of * The Hundreds *“All That Was Not Her is an exceptionally compelling reflection on the long-term complicated relationship through time between an anthropologist and a key interlocutor. Todd Meyers remarkably gets at the fraught, complex, and entangled forms of connection and difference, offering a new understanding of the interpersonal, ethical, and epistemological dimensions of work undertaken in contemporary medical and sociocultural anthropology. This is an altogether necessary book for these times.” -- Robert Desjarlais, author of * The Blind Man: A Phantasmography *"Meyers’s conscience-driven reflections regarding the utility of his work, the shifting parameters of the researcher-interlocutor relationship, and the special challenges of communicating across gaps of class and race, form the heart of the book. He makes academic writing his leaping-off point for a deeply thoughtful, lyrically expressed ethical and philosophical enquiry. This is a book that can be slotted into many non-fiction categories, but don’t be put off: it is a unique work of literature." -- Ian McGillis * Montreal Gazette *"Meyers’ writing is compelling for its beauty and for the honesty of his descriptions. More than anything, I took from this its head-on confrontation with the uneasiness inherent in the relationship between the ethnographer and their subject that should be familiar to anyone with experience of doing ethnographic fieldwork." -- Esca van Blarikom * Sociology of Health & Illness *"The book is not about truth but about swimming in ambiguity. It is not even about the cliché conflict between 'truth' and 'accuracy,' as even these terms begin to disintegrate in the text. Meyers asks us to sit with discomfort and dwell in the fraught nature of ethnography. In this sense, the book is not quite an ethnographic portrait. It is rather an ethnography of ethnography itself—and where ethnography starts to break down." -- Emily Lim Rogers * American Ethnologist *"I thoroughly enjoyed reading All That Was Not Her, by Todd Meyers. The book is beautiful to look at, with artwork unusual in an academic publication. Meyers writes well as he shares with the reader what might most easily be described as a case study. . . . This is an excellent text to prompt critical thought and debate around the important topics of ethics, power relations, and the positioning of the researcher within research that involves people as participants." -- Khyati Tripathi * H-Death, H-Net Reviews *"What his account of Beverly gets her to think about, even though she can’t really grasp it, is the importance of reading for negativity even in those most crushed by the violences of late liberalism. In such an enterprise, our politics will have to be vandalized, experiments in academic writing will need to be undertaken, and the failures depicted in All That Was Not Her will remain beautiful, venerable, and worthy of preservation." -- Elizabeth A. Wilson * Somatosphere *"I was moved by Meyers’s reflections on the unfinished: the errors, failures, and obsessions inherent to the work of an anthropologist." -- Margaux Fitoussi * Somatosphere *"All That Was Not Her is an unsentimental yet vulnerable reckoning of fieldwork. An ethnography of ethnography." -- Andrés Romero * Somatosphere *Table of ContentsUndoing ix 1. These Moments Formed between Us 1 2. Still Life 13 3. The Accident of Contact 41 4. Resuscitations 63 5. A Living Room 85 6. Thoughts of Suicide 97 7. [ . . . ] 123 8. Breathing Feels like a Falsehood 133 9. Notes on a New Moralism 151 10. Black Figurine 175 Reassembling 199 Notes 203 Bibliography 215
£72.25
Duke University Press Atlantis an Autoanthropology
Book SynopsisIn this literary memoir and autoethnography, poet and anthropologist Nathaniel Tarn reflects on a life lived in an array of times, cultures, and environments, from the Battle of Britain and postwar Paris to conducting fieldwork in Guatemala and the halls of academe and beyond.Trade Review“Nathaniel Tarn doesn’t fit our whole world within his imagined autobiographical Atlantis, but he comes intoxicatingly close by way of a rigorous and expansive investigation of his lifelong quest to achieve a science of spirituality. ‘Completion,’ Tarn declares, ‘is not a word that should ever come near this book.’ Likewise, no reader interested in the myriad histories and personae of the self will wish for it either.” -- Albert Mobilio“What a great pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful, original, and necessary book, one that touches on so many aspects of culture, the life of the mind, the sources and resources of the creative imagination, all indelibly arrayed against a long life full of exotic travels and memorable human encounters. There is so much to savor in this fabulously inviting work of courageous generosity.” -- Jed Rasula"A work of brilliant originality, simultaneously a memoir, an ethnography, a sweeping masterpiece of travel literature, and above all, a poetic testimony of unflinching intelligence and grand passion." -- Norman Finkelstein * Restless Messengers *"It’s singularly interesting experience to ingest this book, to be amid it, even to be overwhelmed by it. Atlantis, is a readable avalanche, a discontinuous (but still chronological) memoir, a Big Bricolage of notations, essayistic forays, diary squibs of living life, field notes and polemics, giving the reader charming and telling vignettes . . . these being anecdotes of rare drollery, along with polemics of incisive, and sometimes got-a-bee-in-bonnet challenges...." -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Restless Messengers *"Tarn brings to life a seven-decade career lived traveling and writing throughout the world. Impressive in his ability to conjure up meetings with publishers and conversations with friends that took place more than 50 years ago, Tarn builds on his experiences to create an ethnographic study of himself that reads like a biography that is an autobiography. Enthusiasts of anthropology, poetry, academic life, and self-writing will enjoy Tarn’s approach and the insider’s perspective he brings to a life spent translating, publishing, editing, teaching, and traveling. . . . Recommended. Graduate students through faculty." -- S. Batcos * Choice *"At its heart, it is an exploration of poetry: what it is and how it comes about within the mind of the creator. There are insights into the visionary poetry of Wordsworth and Blake, the need for the poet not merely to give pleasure but crucially to become part of the very spin of the world in motion. It is also about the many different sides of Tarn. . . . Although, at times, the writing is introspective, his style is always engaging and often conversational with a good dose of humour." -- Neil Leadbeater * North of Oxford *Table of ContentsForeword xi Preface xvii Throw One 1 Throw Two 7 Throw Three 16 Throw Four 22 Throw Five 31 Throw Six 39 Throw Seven 46 Throw Eight 57 Throw Nine 69 Throw Ten 80 Throw Eleven 93 Throw Twelve 103 Throw Thirteen 118 Throw Fourteen 127 Throw Fifteen 141 Throw Sixteen 149 Throw Seventeen 161 Throw Eighteen 170 Throw Nineteen 177 Throw Twenty 188 Throw Twenty-One 197 Throw Twenty-Two 205 Throw Twenty-Three 214 Throw Twenty-Four 225 Throw Twenty-Five 233 Throw Twenty-Six 242 Throw Twenty-Seven 255 Throw Twenty-Eight 265 Throw Twenty-Nine 273 Throw Thirty 278 Throw Thirty-One 284 Throw Thirty-Two 291 Throw Thirty-Three 296
£75.65
Duke University Press The Small Matter of Suing Chevron
Book SynopsisIn 2011, an Ecuadorian court issued the world's largest environmental contamination liability: a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. Within years, a US federal court and an international tribunal determined that the Ecuadorian judgment had been procured through fraud and was unenforceable. In The Small Matter of Suing Chevron Suzana Sawyer delves into this legal trilogy to explore how distinct legal truths were relationally composed of, with, and through crude oil. In Sawyer's analysis, chemistry proves crucial. Analytically, it affords a grammar for appreciating how molecular, technical, and legal agencies catalyzed distinct jurisdictional renderings. Empirically, the chemistry of hydrocarbons (its complexity, unfathomability, and misattribution) significantly shaped competing judicial determinations. Ultimately, chemical, scientific, contractual, and litigating techniques precipitated this legal saga's metamorphic transformation, transmuting a contamination claim into an environmental liability, then a racketeering scheme, and then a breach of treaty. Holding the paradoxes of complicity in suspension, Sawyer deftly demonstrates how crude matters, technoscience, and liberal legality configure how risk and reward, deprivation and disavowal, suffering and surfeit become legally and unevenly distributed.Trade Review"A monumental book. . . . An innovative study at the interface of law, health, and the environment, The Small Matter of Suing Chevron will appeal to anthropologists of all stripes, as well as legal scholars, epidemiologists, and those working in the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and Latin American contexts. As global toxics threaten to resign us all to irredeemable loss, Sawyer’s masterful ethnography demonstrates how it is still both possible and necessary to take a stand against corporate power and judicial imperialism." -- Lindsay Ofrias * NACLA *"This book is a valuable addition to work at the critical intersection of law and environmental studies, and essential reading for scholars concerned with energy politics in Latin America. It is best suited for upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars." -- Stuart Kirsch * American Ethnologist *Table of ContentsTime Line Acknowledgments Fraud Opening: Crude's Valence of Truths I. Dissociating Bonds Hearing 1. Chemical Agency: Of Hydrocarbons and Toxicity Inspection 2. Exposure's Orbitals: Of Epidemiology and Calculation Death II. Spectral Radicals Catch 3. Alchemical Deals: Of Contracts and Their Seepage Clandestine 4. Radical Inspections: Of Sensorium as Toxic Proposition Kuankuan III. Delocalized Stabilities CEO 5. Plurivalent Rendering: Of Prehension Becoming Precaution Never 6. Bonding Veredictum: Of Corporate Capacity and Technique Tethered Derision Metamorphic Reprise: Valence in the Mixt Amisacho Notes References Index
£85.50
Duke University Press Gridiron Capital
Book SynopsisLisa Uperesa charts the cultural, historical, and social dynamics that have made American football so central to Samoan culture.Trade Review"Uperesa’s book should not only appeal to anthropologists but also to general readers. She engagingly explains what football has come to mean to a whole range of Samoan players — in college programs and the NFL, as well as on youth and high school teams back home — and gives a compelling account of how dual systems of stratification, one based in Indigenous values and the other in capitalist imperatives, combine, for better and worse. . . . Readers interested in sports and culture in a transnational world will no doubt find Gridiron Capital engrossing." -- David Lipset * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." -- J. A. Badics * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction. Fabled Futures and Gridiron Dreams 1 1. Malaga: Forging New Pathways in Sport and Beyond 23 2. Football, Tautua, and Faʻasāmoa 48 3. Producing the Gridiron Warrior 71 4. Gridiron Capital 103 5. “Faʻmālosi!”: Strength, Injury, and Sacrifice 123 Conclusion. Niu Futures 151 Glossary 155 Notes 159 Bibliography 185 Index 211
£72.25
Duke University Press The Surrounds
Book SynopsisIn The Surrounds renowned urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone offers a new theorization of the interface of the urban and the political. Working at the intersection of Black studies, urban theory, and decolonial and Islamic thought, Simone centers the surrounds—those urban spaces beyond control and capture that exist as a locus of rebellion and invention. He shows that even in clearly defined city environments, whether industrial, carceral, administrative, or domestic, residents use spaces for purposes they were not designed for: schools become housing, markets turn into classrooms, tax offices transform into repair shops. The surrounds, Simone contends, are where nothing fits according to design. They are where forgotten and marginalized populations invent new relations and ways of living and being, continuously reshaping what individuals and collectives can do. Focusing less on what new worlds may come to be and more on what people are creating now, Simone shows how the suTable of ContentsPreface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Exposing the Surrounds as Urban Infrastructure 1 1. Without Capture: From Extinction to Abolition 21 2. Forgetting Being Forgotten 61 3. Rebellion without Redemption 100 Coda. Extensions beyond Value 134 References 139 Index 153
£71.10
Duke University Press In the Shadow of the Palms
Book SynopsisWith In the Shadow of the Palms, Sophie Chao examines the multispecies entanglements of oil palm plantations in West Papua, Indonesia, showing how Indigenous Marind communities understand and navigate the social, political, and environmental demands of the oil palm plant. As Chao notes, it is no secret that the palm oil sector has destructive environmental impacts: it greatly contributes to tropical deforestation and is a major driver of global warming. Situating the plant and the transformations it has brought within the context of West Papua’s volatile history of colonization, ethnic domination, and capitalist incursion, Chao traces how Marind attribute environmental destruction not just to humans, technologies, and capitalism but also to the volition and actions of the oil palm plant itself. By approaching cash crops as both drivers of destruction and subjects of human exploitation, Chao rethinks capitalist violence as a multispecies act. In the process, Chao centers hoTrade Review“[In the Shadow of the Palms] is a beautiful read, a brilliantly executed thesis. . . . [Chao’s] explanations of the Marind life-worlds are grounded thoroughly in lived-experience shared through cohabitation, active-listening, and situated entangled interaction.” -- Robert Wolfgramm * Pacific Circle Newsletter *"In the Shadow of the Palms is a brave, compelling piece of ethnographic work, cleverly structured and delightful in its elegant yet accessible prose, offering a new, powerful take on the longstanding issue of agribusiness expansion in Indonesia." -- Silvia Pergetti * ANUAC - Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale *"This is a brilliant book—beautifully written—based on rigorous and sensitive ethnography and sharp theoretical analysis that seamlessly blends ethnography with theory. Chao’s respect and admiration for her interlocutors shines through the text and brings to life Marinds kinship with sago and more-than-human becomings—and how this is under threat by the oil palm as an actor of multispecies violence. In the Shadow of the Palms is an important contribution to environmental anthropology and will be of interest to those interested in extractive agriculture, posthumanism, indigenous studies and settler colonialism, decolonising anthropology, political ecology and development studies—both within and beyond Southeast Asia and Papuan Oceania." -- Camelia Dewan * Anthropology Book Forum *"In the Shadow of the Palms offers a haunting and novel perspective on themes of dispossession and alienation wrought by the expansion of oil palm agribusiness in Indonesia. . . . In the Shadow of the Palms stands out for its courageous attempt to apprehend and translate the internal experience of the Marind community. Meticulous descriptions of interactions with various animal and plant species evidence a profound intersubjectivity of human and environment in the Marind world." -- Carter Beale * Forest and Society *"This was a story that needed to be told. A counter-narrative to the development agenda that promises a rosy future, without elaborating on the destruction and loss that it entails. . . . Chao's deeply thought-provoking and riveting tome is both theoretical and real, development economics and the anthropology of slow violence. It is a homage to an indigenous community with their own means of resistance—until they too finally fall prey to oil palm." -- Serina Rahman * Journal of Southeast Asian Economies *"In sum, this book is beautifully written, deeply researched, and deserves to be read widely. Not only by students and scholars of Indonesia, but for all those interested in Southeast Asia and environmental politics. In the Shadow of the Palms may well become a classic in both anthropological studies and studies of Southeast Asia. No mean feat for a first book." -- Tomas Cole * Asian Studies Review *“[In the Shadow of the Palms] is ethnographically rich, analytically incisive, and politically engaged. . . . Chao brings people, plants, and animals into a muddled assemblage to explore relationships, interdependencies, oppression, and generation with great effect. . . . This book will appeal greatly to scholars of more-than-human worlds and global capitalism.” -- Sebastian Antoine * Journal of Anthropological Society of Oxford *“As a reader, I laud Chao’s caring analysis and description; her eye for trouble—abu-abu—and her unrelenting commitment to thinking with rather than for the Marind. This accessible yet in-depth account of Marind ontologies, their fracturing, and their tentative remaking in the face of the oil palm is an important volume for diverse scholars and students in different fields, for instance those engaged with plantation ecologies, multispecies thought, and indigenous ontologies.” -- Irene van Oorschot * Etnofoor *“In the Shadow of the Palms represents, above all, a deeply ethical project—in the sense of giving voice to otherwise marginalised and silenced people; and ethical in its broader existential ambitions. This is a book we all need to read: it speaks to the current predicaments facing all of us.” -- Warwick Anderson * The Australian Journal of Anthropology *"In the Shadow of the Palms is a wonderful book that will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and activists. This includes those whose work is specifically focused on the necrobiopolitics of the Plantationocene, as well as anyone who might be having trouble finding possibilities for hope in this moment of planetary undoing." -- Kevin Burke * American Ethnologist *"Chao has a superpower — her writing. ... You’d have to search long and hard for a book that better captures the ineluctable violence of our times, that makes the damage feel so poignant, so inexorable, so real." -- Danilyn Rutherford * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsPrologue ix Introduction 1 1. Pressure Points 33 2. Living Maps 51 Interlude: Lost in the Plantation—The Dream of Yustinus Mahuze 75 3. Skin and Wetness 77 4. The Plastic Cassowary 95 Interlude: Metamorphosis—The Dream of Yosefus Samkakai 115 5. Sago Encounters 117 6. Oil Palm Counterpoint 143 Interlude: The Empty Sago Grove—The Dream of Agustinus Gebze 165 7. Time Has Come to Stop 167 8. Eaten by Oil Palm 183 Interlude: Black Waters of the Bian—The Dream of Elena Basik-Basik 201 Conclusions 203 Epilogue: Endings—The Author's Dream 219 Acknowledgments 221 Notes 227 References 269 Index 311
£75.65
Duke University Press Grammars of the Urban Ground
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Grammars of the Urban Ground develop a new conceptual framework and vocabulary for capturing the complex, ever-shifting, and interactive processes that shape contemporary cities.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Thinking Cities from the Ground / Ash Amin and Michele Lancione 1 1. Social Junk / Natalie Oswin 27 2. Grammars of Dispossession: Racial Banishment in the American Metropolis / Ananya Roy 41 3. Future Densities: Knowledge, Politics, and Remaking the City / Colin McFarlane 58 4. Big: Rethinking the Cultural Imprint of Mass Urbanization / Nigel Thrift 82 5. Urban Legal Forms and Practices of Citizenship / Mariana Valverde 108 6. Transitoriness: Emergent Time/Space Formations of Urban Collective Life / Teresa P. R. Caldeira 126 7. Suturing the (W)hole: Vitalities of Everyday Urban Living in Congo 150 8. Infrastructures of Plutocratic London / Caroline Knowles 164 9. Affirmative Vocabularies from and for the Street / Edgar Pieterse and Tatiana Thieme 180 10. Deformation: Remaking Urban Peripheries through Lateral Comparison / AbdouMaliq Simone 199 11. Edge Syntax: Vocabularies for Violent Times / Suzanne M. Hall 221 Contributors 241 Index
£72.25
Duke University Press Making Peace with Nature
Book SynopsisEleana J. Kim shows how a closer examination of the Demilitarized Zone area in South Korea reveals that the area's biodiversity is inseparable from scientific practices and geopolitical, capitalist, and ecological dynamics.Trade Review"Making Peace with Nature is to be commended for its thoughtful attention to the competing priorities and placemaking of the DMZ region by both human and more-than-human actors. In decentring the human, Kim makes a critical intervention in discourses of peace that instrumentalise the DMZ for political or economic gain. Making Peace with Nature makes a valuable contribution across disciplines and may be of particular interest to scholars and students in Korean studies, Asian studies, cultural anthropology, political science, and the environmental humanities." -- Ivanna Sang Een Yi * Asian Studies Review *"Kim offers an opportunity to think of the ecological ramifications of the closed borders of the last few years. One particularly powerful chapter is her study of undetonated mines along the DMZ from the Korean War." -- Adrian De Leon * Public Books *"Kim’s astute theoretical work … is a refreshing approach to the puzzle of nonhuman agency." -- Caterina Scaramelli * American Ethnologist *"Eleana Kim’s book stands as a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of the Korean DMZ. ... She presents a compelling case for the future sustainability of the Korean DMZ area and leaves an indelible mark on the discourse surrounding this historic landmark." -- Chae-han Kim * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations ix The South Korean DMZ Region xi A Note about Romanization and Translation xii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. In the Meantime of Division 30 2. Ponds 62 3. Birds 87 4. Landmines 119 Epilogue. De/militarized Ecologies 152 Notes 159 Works Cited 177 Index 191
£76.50
Duke University Press Legacies of War
Book SynopsisDrawing on ethnographic research in postconflict Peru and Colombia, Kimberly Theidon examines the lives of children born of wartime rape and impact of violence on human and more-than-human lives, bodies, and ecologies.Trade Review“This stunning and timely book is rightly disturbing, with its focus on sexual violence and the harm inflicted on women and their offspring, directly and indirectly, in Peru and Colombia. Kimberly Theidon has pulled together threads of apparently disparate events over time to reveal how reproductive violence impacts multiple environments, moving far beyond a woman’s womb. She brings formidable insights to this highly perturbing subject.” -- Margaret Lock, Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita, Departments of Social Studies of Medicine and of Anthropology, McGill University“Combining sharp insight, cutting-edge theoretical work, and a profound assessment of the legacies of war and the possibilities of repair, Kimberly Theidon foregrounds the agency of women, insisting on a reproductive justice that includes women’s right to have or not have a child, and the means for choice to be available. Compelling and supremely well written, Legacies of War makes important interventions into studies of gender, war, violence, and human rights and will find an audience among scholars and policy makers working on transitional justice, peacekeeping, and peace building.” -- Elisabeth Jean Wood, author of * Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador *"Urgent, timely, and heartbreaking. . . . As Theidon asks us to move beyond facile assumptions about these women and children, she similarly asks us to expand our analytical focus to consider the connections between reproductive and environmental harm and justice." -- María Elena García * NACLA *"Legacies of War provides deep reflection and raises difficult questions. As such, this is an important book for students of the Andes, global gender justice, and (post-)conflict violence and reconciliation. In addition, it is a very well-written journey through the possibilities and value of ethnographic work and scholarship." -- Jelke Boesten * Journal of Latin American Studies *"Writing in a narratively engaging ethnographic style, the author describes the international agendas, policies, and practices that maintain the invisibility of women’s rights in the context of wartime violence. Throughout the text, Theidon focuses on solutions and calls for an “explicitly feminist peace-building and postconflict reconstruction agenda” (p. 5). Readers will come away with a nuanced account of how war, violence, and reproduction permeate the globe. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- J. Wies * Choice *"Permeated by compassion and deep insight, Legacies of War is a groundbreaking book that offers unique and innovative perspectives on a topic that has received scant attention in academic and policy debates. . . . It holds the potential to improve assistance and support for victims of war—both human and other than human—and should therefore be read by any scholar and practitioner working with reconciliation and post-war reconstruction processes." -- Sofie Rose * International Feminist Journal of Politics *"This book makes visible a widely hidden outcome of sexual violence and poses vital questions of increasing importance as we continue to face assaults on women’s reproductive rights and the natural environment. It would be of particular interest to those engaged with social and environmental justice, gender, Latin American studies, and human rights." -- Nicole Coffey Kellett * Journal of Anthropological Research *"In this book, as excellent as it is timely and urgent to disseminate, Theidon manages to put into perspective the horrors of sexual violence in Colombia and Peru, while bringing up the same problems in various parts of the planet. The author looks inward and outward, from small indigenous populations to large first world countries, to conclude that in all areas patriarchy, machismo and sexual violence against women have not yet listened to the victims of these forms of violence." (translated from Spanish) -- Mara Favoretto * Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research *“Meticulously researched and well-grounded in theory, Legacies of War is an insightful examination of the intergenerational impact of war on women, children, communities, and the environment. By interweaving personal encounters, first-hand examples, and survivor stories with traditional scholarly approaches, Theidon brings the subject matter to life and makes cogent arguments that are easily understood, even by those with little background in the subject matter." -- Lynn C. Purkey * Feministas Unidas *"Theidon demonstrates in Legacies of War a unique ability to recognize, analyze and interconnect, with delicate sensibility and an innovative conceptual apparatus, the intricacies of invisibilized harm in complex post-conflict scenarios. The book should be recommended reading for policy makers and scholars interested in violence, its after effects and a posthumanist approach to justice and reparations." -- Alejandro Quintero Mächler * Revista *Table of ContentsGratitude vii Introduction 1 1. Beyond Stigma 9 2. Situated Biologies 37 3. Ecologies and Aftermaths 57 4. The Long Way Around 85 Final Reflections 93 Notes 97 Bibliography 107 Index 115
£66.60
Duke University Press Violent Utopia
Book SynopsisJovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and its century-long legacy of dispossession, placing it in a larger historical and social context of widespread anti-Black racism and segregation in Tulsa and beyond.Trade Review"Violent Utopia’s findings shed a searching light on Oklahoman history but are not limited to or by it. Whilst humble enough to only define itself as a ‘minor contribution’ to the reparations movement, Violent Utopia’s great strength is an analytical dexterity that studiously balances the dialectical dance of anti-Black violence and Black freedom dreams." -- Thomas Cryer * LSE Review of Books *“This thought-provoking book is worth reading. It shows that much can be learned from studying Black communities from a critical race perspective.” -- Robert L. Boyd * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Skillfully incorporates the tools of geography, ethnography, and history to investigate issues surrounding reparations and what they might accomplish for the African American community. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." * Choice *"Lewis's Violent Utopia offers a fresh and nuanced perspective on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its legacies. ... The book is a stellar ethnohistorical model for scholars." -- Jajuan Johnson * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Violence 21 2. Inheritance 55 3. Restoration 93 4. Repair 131 5. Territory 174 Conclusion 210 Notes 223 Bibliography 239 Index 251
£74.70
Duke University Press Queer Kinship
Book SynopsisThe contributors to this volume assert the importance of queer kinship to queer and trans theory and to kinship theory. In a contemporary moment marked by the rising tides of neoliberalism, fascism, xenophobia, and homo- and cis-nationalism, they approach kinship as both a horizon and a source of violence and possibility. The contributors challenge dominant theories of kinship that ignore the devastating impacts of chattel slavery, settler colonialism, and racialized nationalism on the bonds of Black and Indigenous people and people of color. Among other topics, they examine the “blood tie” as the legal marker of kin relations, the everyday experiences and memories of trans mothers and daughters in Istanbul, the outsourcing of reproductive labor in postcolonial India, kinship as a model of governance beyond the liberal state, and the intergenerational effects of the adoption of Indigenous children as a technology of settler colonialism. Queer Kinship pushes the methoTrade Review"The book is primarily an important creative and analytic contribution to contemporary queer, trans, critical race and kinship theory. Nevertheless, it is also of value for those who explore narratives and form as well as belonging and heritage 'beyond' kinship relations. As Weston illuminates, when exploring kinship, it can, if we are open to it, take us on unexpected routes." -- Rebecka Rehnström * Anthropology Book Forum *"Queer Kinship constitutes a remarkable achievement. Highly readable,theoretically rigorous and exemplary in its commitment to decentring colonial epistemologies, this collection stands to make a seminal contribution to queer and kinship studies. . . . Queer Kinship elicits that most elusive of sensations in the reader: excitement." -- Ry Montgomery * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Kincoherence/Kin-aesthetics/Kinematics / Tyler Bradway and Elizabeth Freeman 1 Queering Linages 1. Kinship beyond the Bloodline / Judith Butler 25 2. The Mixed-Race Child Is Queer Father to the Man / Brigitte Fielder 48 3. World Making: Family, Time, and Memory among Trans Mothers and Daughters in Istanbul / Dilara Çalişkan 71 Kinship, State, Empire 4. In Good Relations: Native Adoption, Kinstillations, and the Grounding of Memory / Joseph M. Pierce 95 5. Queering the Womb: Surrogacy and the Economics of Reproductive Feeling / Poulomi Saha 119 6. Beyond Family: Kinship’s Past, Queer World Making, and the Question of Governance / Mark Rifkin 138 7. Ecstatic Kinship and Trans Interiority in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet / Aqdas Aftab 159 8. Marielle, Presente: The Present and Presence in Marielle Franco Protests / Juliana DeMartini Brito 180 Kinship in the Negative 9. Akinship / Christopher Chamberlin 203 10. Against Friendship / Leah Claire Allen and John S. Garrison 227 11. Kidless Lit: Childlessness and Minor Kinship Forms / Natasha Hurley 248 12. Till Death Do Us Kin: Sworn Kinship and Queer Martydom in Chinese Anti-imperial Struggles / Aobo Dong 269 Epilogue. How Did It Come to This? Talking Kinship with Kath Weston / Kath Weston, Elizabeth Freeman, and Tyler Bradway 291 References 303 Contributors 333 Index 339
£78.30
Duke University Press Hailing the State
Book SynopsisLisa Mitchell explores the historical and contemporary methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable.Table of ContentsA Note on Transliteration and Spelling ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Hailing the State: Collective Assembly, Democracy, and Representation 1 Part I. Seeking Audience 1. Sit-In Demonstrations and Hunger Strikes: From Dharna as Door-Sitting to Dharna Chowk 43 2. Seeking Audience: Refusals to Listen, “Style,” and the Politics of Recognition 67 3. Collective Assembly and the “Roar of the People”: Corporeal Forms of “Making Known” and the Deliberative Turn 94 4. The General Strike: Collective Action at the Other End of the Commodity Chain 122 Part II. The Criminal and the Political 5. Alarm Chain Pulling: The Criminal and the Political in the Writing of History 151 6. Rail and Road Blockades: Illiberal or Participatory Democracy? 168 7. Rallies, Processions and Yātrās: Ticketless Travel and the Journey to “Political Arrival” 197 Conclusion. Of Human Chains and Guinness Records: Attention, Recognition, and the Fate of Democracy amidst Changing Mediascapes 216 Notes 225 Bibliography 265 Index 287
£73.95
Duke University Press The City Electric
Book SynopsisMichael Degani explores how electricity and its piracy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, has become a key site for urban Tanzanians to enact, experience, and debate their social contract with the state.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Ethnography of(f) the Grid 1 1. Emergency Power: A Brief History of the Tanzanian Energy Sector 31 2. The Flickering Torch: Power and Loss after Socialism 71 3. Of Meters and Modals: Patrolling the Grid 109 4. Becoming Infrastructure: Vishoka and Self-Realization 150 Conclusion. The Ingenuity of Infrastructure 187 Notes 207 Works Cited 223 Index 247
£70.55
Duke University Press Activist Affordances
Book SynopsisFor people who are living with disability, including various forms of chronic diseases and chronic pain, daily tasks like lifting a glass of water or taking off clothes can be difficult if not impossible. In Activist Affordances, Arseli Dokumaci draws on ethnographic work with differently disabled people whose ingenuity, labor, and artfulness allow them to achieve these seemingly simple tasks. Dokumaci shows how they use improvisation to imagine and bring into being more habitable worlds through the smallest of actions and the most fleeting of movements---what she calls “activist affordances.” Even as an environment shrinks to a set of constraints rather than opportunities, the improvisatory space of performance opens up to allow disabled people to imagine that same environment otherwise. Dokumaci shows how disabled people’s activist affordances present the potential for a more liveable and accessible world for all of us.Trade Review“In this exciting work Arseli Dokumacı offers compelling ethnographic interviews, journal entries, and her own experiences of difficulties with rheumatoid arthritis. Her accounts of the lives of her interlocutors are rich and evocative and form the basis for her idea of activist affordances: the everyday hacks that allow disabled people to manage the simplest of daily activities as they face a diminishing world of possible action and imaginaries. Addressing what it means to live with bodily challenges, Activist Affordances is critical disability studies at its intersectional best.” -- Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology, New York University“Arseli Dokumacı reveals how people living with illnesses and disabilities navigate an inaccessible and ableist world by identifying the creativity, innovation, and resilience that goes into such navigation. Refusing the still-too-common notion that knowledge about disability is the province of medical experts rather than disabled people themselves, she brilliantly theorizes the accumulation of skills, negotiations, and hacks that disabled people discover to make their way in this world. And in this way, Dokumacı persuasively argues, they help concretize more accessible and just worlds.” -- Alison Kafer, author of * Feminist, Queer, Crip *"This book strikes a balance between academic rigor (i.e., theory) and practical relevance (i.e., practice). Readers will appreciate that many of the hacks discussed also come with pictures to help readers visualize the affordances. The book draws on a range of disciplines, including disability studies, anthropology, and design, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of disability activism. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- G. Colosi * Choice *"Activist Affordances attunes readers to individual, everyday acts that could teach us how to create more habitable futures. Such a perspective opens new spaces for scholarly and political debates on activism, disability, and the preservation of the planet." -- Kostadin Karavasilev * LSE Review of Books *“[A] generative, thought provoking text … it will be exciting to follow how readers ‘make up, make real, and make do with’ this book’s innovative contributions.” -- Christine Sargent * American Ethnologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I. Shrinkage 1. Affordance Encounters Disability 31 2. Chronic Pain, Chronic Disease 55 3. The Habitus of Ableism 71 4. Planetary Shrinkage 87 Part II. Performance 5. A Theory of Activist Affordances 99 6. An Archive of Activist Affordances 119 7. Always in-the-Making 191 8. People as Affordances 205 9. Disability Repertoires 227 10. Speculations for a Shrinking Planet 237 Notes 253 Bibliography 293 Index 311
£73.95
Duke University Press River Life and the Upspring of Nature
Book SynopsisIn River Life and the Upspring of Nature Naveeda Khan examines the relationship between nature and culture through the study of the everyday existence of chauras, the people who live on the chars (sandbars) within the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. Nature is a primary force at play within this existence as chauras live itinerantly and in flux with the ever-changing river flows; where land is here today and gone tomorrow, the quality of life itself is intertwined with this mutability. Given this centrality of nature to chaura life, Khan contends that we must think of nature not simply as the physical landscape and the plants and animals that live within it but as that which exists within the social and at the level of cognition, the unconscious, intuition, memory, embodiment, and symbolization. By showing how the alluvial flood plains configure chaura life, Khan shows how nature can both give rise to and inhabit social, political, and spiritual forms of life.Trade Review"An empirically rich study of changing land and those seeking to carve out an existence upon it. [River Life and the Upspring of Nature] can serve as a model for other authors seeking to look at the interrelation between our environment and ourselves, and the existential questions that a changing world poses to us." -- Andrew Alan Johnson * Ethnos *Table of ContentsList of Maps ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. River Life and Death 1 1. Moving Lands in the Skein of Property and Kin Relations 28 2. History and Morality between Floods and Erosion 59 3. Elections on Sandbars and the Remembered Village 94 4. Decay of the River and of Memory 131 5. Death of Children and the Eruption of Myths 160 Epilogue. The Chars in Recent Years 191 Notes 197 References 215 Index 229
£70.55
Duke University Press Eating beside Ourselves
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Eating beside Ourselves examine eating as a site of transfer and transformation that create thresholds for human and nonhuman relations.Trade Review"This book offers both approachable case studies and provocations for academic conversation across disciplines, such as environmental and medical ethics or human geography and global justice. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." -- S. M. Weiss * Choice *Table of ContentsForeword / Wim Van Daele ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Eating Beside Ourselves / Heather Paxson 1 1. Sweetness across Thresholds at the Edge of the Sea / Amy Moran-Thomas 29 2. The Food of Our Food: Medicated Feed and the Industrialization of Metabolism / Hannah Landecker 56 Intercalary Exchange. Processing / Hannah Lnadecker and Alex Blanchette 86 3. The Politics of Palatability: Hog Viscera, Pet Food, and the Trade in Industrial Sense Impressions / Alex Blanchette 89 Intercalary Exchange. (In)Edibility / Alex Blanchette and Marianne Elisabeth Lien 11 4. Becoming Food: Edibility as Threshold in Arctic Norway / Marianne Elisabeth Lien 114 Intercelary Exchange. Giving / Marianne Elisabeth and Harris Solomon 137 5. On Life Support / Harris Solomon 140 Intercalary Exchange. Transgression / Harris Solomon and Emily Yates-Doerr 158 6. The Placenta: An Ethnographic Account of Feeding Relations / Emily Yates-Doerr 163 Intercalary Exchange/ Nourishment / Emily Yates-Doerr and Deborah Health 187 7. Between Sky and Earth: Biodynamic Viticulture's Slow Science / Deborah Heath 191 Contributors 219 Index
£70.55
Duke University Press Unknowing and the Everyday
Book SynopsisSeema Golestaneh examines how Sufi mystical experience in Iran and the idea of unknowing—the idea that it is ultimately impossible to fully understand the divine—shapes contemporary life.Trade Review"Golestaneh’s writing throughout the book is lucid and effective, frequently poetic. ... A beautifully crafted memoir of a wandering Sufi of an academic, lost in the charmingly mystical landscape of contemporary Isfahan." -- Guangtian Ha * International Journal of Middle East Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Prologue xv Introduction 1 1. Sufism in Iran, Iran in Sufism 29 2. Unknowing of Text, Unknowing of Authority 59 3. Unknowing of Self, Unknowing of Body 96 4. Unknowing of Memory 135 5. Unknowing of Place 165 Postscript 189 Notes 193 Bibliography 211 Index 225
£70.55
Duke University Press Gendered Fortunes
Book SynopsisIn Gendered Fortunes, Zeynep K. Korkman examines Turkey’s commercial fortunetelling cafés where secular Muslim women and LGBTIQ individuals navigate the precarities of twenty-first-century life. Criminalized by long-standing secularist laws and disdained by contemporary Islamist government, fortunetelling cafés proliferate in part because they offer shelter from the conservative secularist, Islamist, neoliberal, and gender pressures of the public sphere. Korkman shows how fortunetelling is a form of affective labor through which its participants build intimate feminized publics in which they share and address their hopes and fears. Korkman uses feeling—which is how her interlocutors describe the divination process—as an analytic to view the shifting landscape of gendered vulnerability in Turkey. In so doing, Korkman foregrounds “feeling” as a feminist lens to explore how those who are pushed to the margins feel their way through oppresTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Gendered Fortunes 1 Part I. The Religious, the Superstitious, and the Postsecular 1. Crimes of Divination 37 2. The Gendered Politics of Secularism 59 3. Feeling Postsecular 87 Part II. Femininity, Intimacy, and Publics 4. Feeling Publics of Femininity 111 5. The Joys and Perils of Intimacy 139 Part III. Feeling Labor, Precarity, and Entrepreneurialism 6. Feeling Labors of Divination 161 7. Entrepreneurial Fortunes 193 Coda. Feminist Divinations 221 Notes 225 References 241 Index 263
£74.70
Duke University Press Waste Works
Book SynopsisIn Waste Works, Brenda Chalfin examines Ghana’s planned city of Tema, theorizing about the formative role of waste infrastructure in urban politics and public life. Chalfin argues that at Tema’s midcentury founding, a prime objective of governing authorities was to cultivate self-contained citizens by means of tightly orchestrated domestic infrastructure and centralized control of bodily excrement to both develop and depoliticize the new nation. Comparing infrastructural innovations across the city, Chalfin excavates how Tema residents pursue novel approaches to urban waste and sanitation built on the ruins of the inherited order, profoundly altering the urban public sphere. Once decreed a private matter to be guaranteed by state authorities, excrement becomes a public issue, collectively managed by private persons. Pushing self-care into public space and extending domestic responsibility for public well-being and bodily outputs, popularly devised waste infrastructurTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Preface xi Acknowledgments xix Introduction. Infrastructural Intimacies: The Vital Politics of Waste in Urban Ghana 1 1. Assembling the New City: From Infrastructure to Vital Politics 45 2. Tema Proper: Infrastructures and Intimacies of Disrepair 96 3. The Right(s) to Remains: Excremental Infrastructure and Exception in Tema Manhean 133 4. Ziginshore: Infrastructure and the Commonwealth of Waste 181 5. Dwelling on Toilets: Tema's Breakaway Republic of Ashaiman 212 Conclusion. From Vital Politics to Deep Domesticity: Infrastructure as Political Experiment 268 Notes 295 References 315 Index 339
£77.35
Duke University Press Since Time Immemorial
Book SynopsisYanna Yannakakis traces the creation of Indigenous custom as a legal category and its deployment as a strategy of resistance to empire in colonial Mexico.Trade Review"Aimed at a scholarly audience, Yanna Yannakakis' Since Time Immemorial explores how Spanish authorities and indigenous elites navigated the ambiguous boundary between custom and law in16th-century Mexico. Deeply reasoned and argued, this book should be of interest to both history majors and experts interested in the legal framework of Spanish Mexico." -- Noah Zachary * World History Encyclopedia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction xiii Part I. Legal and Intellectual Foundations: Twelfth through Seventeenth Centuries 1. Custom, Law, and Empire in the Mediterranean-Atlantic World 23 2. Translating Custom in Castile, Central Mexico, and Oaxaca 45 Part II. Good and Bad Customs in the Native Past and Present: Sixteenth through Seventeenth Centuries 3. Framing Pre-Hispanic Law and Custom 73 4. The Old Law, Polygyny, and the Customs of the Ancestors 109 Part III. Custom in Oaxaca’s Courts of First Instance: Seventeenth through Eighteenth Centuries 5. Custom, Possession, and Jurisdiction in the Boundary Lands 139 6. Custom as Social Contract: Native Self-Governance and Labor 171 7. Prescriptive Custom: Written Labor Agreements in Indian and Spanish Jurisdictions 199 Epilogue 229 Notes 237 Bibliography 273 Index 305
£78.30
Duke University Press Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life
Book SynopsisIn Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life Michael M. J. Fischer calls for a new anthropology of the arts that attends to the materialities and technologies of the world as it exists today. Fischer examines the work of key Southeast and East Asian artists within the crucibles of unequal access, geopolitics, reverberating past traumas, and emergent socialities. He outlines the work of artist-theorists---including Entang Wiharso, Sally Smart, Charles Lim, Zai Kuning, and Kiran Kumar---who speculate about changing the world in ways that are attuned to its cultivation, repair, and rethinking in the Anthropocene. Their artistic vocabulary not only undoes Western art models and categories; it probes the unfolding future, addresses past trauma, and creates contested, vibrant, and flourishing spaces. Throughout Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam---and from Kumar’s experimental dance to Kuning’s rattan and beeswax ghost ships to Lim’s videography of SingTrade Review"[A] dynamic ethnography of prominent works by contemporary artists in Asia ... Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life goes far beyond introducing innovative artists and describing their artworks. It situates contemporary Asian art within ethnographic and geo-political contexts." -- Robin Visser * Journal of Contemporary Asia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Challenging Art as Cultural Systems 12 2. Synthetic Realism: Postcinema in the Anthropocene 31 3. Feminage, Warang, and the Nervous System (Hauntology and Curation) 71 4. Nomadic Video in Turbulent Sea States: How Art Becomes Critique 100 5. Water Notes on Rattan Strings 132 6. Raw Moves and Layered Communication across the Archipelago Seas 165 Epilogue. Probing Art and Emerging Forms of Life 197 Appendix. The Year 2020 and the Camouflage Painting Series: Conversations with Entang Wiharso 215 Notes 221 References 253 Index 281
£73.95
Duke University Press The PrescriptiontoPrison Pipeline
Book SynopsisMichelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing opioid drug epidemic is the result of an endless cycle in which suffering is medicalized and drug use is criminalized.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Quick Fixes to Enduring Problems 1 1. The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain 27 2. Prescription: Getting Hooked 45 3. Pipeline: Sorting Use from Abuse 63 4. Prison: From Medicalization to Criminalization 79 Conclusions: When Medicine Becomes a Drug 93 Appendix: Methodological Note 111 Notes 121 Bibliography 135 Index 153
£67.15
Duke University Press Arc of Interference
Book SynopsisThe radically humanistic essays inArc of Interference refigure our sense of the real, the ethical, and the political in the face of mounting social and planetary upheavals. Creatively assembled around Arthur Kleinman’s medical anthropological arc and eschewing hegemonic modes of intervention, the essays advance the notion of a care-ful ethnographic praxis of interference. To interfere is to dislodge ideals of naturalness, blast enduring binaries (human/nonhuman, self/other, us/them), and redirect technocratic agendas while summoning relational knowledge and the will to create community. The book’s multiple ethnographic arcs of interference provide a vital conceptual toolkit for today’s world and a badly needed moral perch from which to peer toward just horizons. Contributors. Vincanne Adams, João Biehl, Davíd Carrasco, Lawrence Cohen, Jean Comaroff, Robert Desjarlais, Paul Farmer, Marcia Inhorn, Janis H. Jenkins, David S. Jones, SalmaaTrade Review“This is a book about life and death and about the aftermath of death. That alone makes it relevant to our species and to others, but Arc of Interference is also a book about the possibility of something more and something wonderful: across the continents, people struggle to care for one another.” -- Paul Farmer, from the Foreword“In this rich collection, leading medical anthropologists demonstrate ethnography as care. Attending to intimate realities and to the productive power of narrative, they use anthropology for collective healing.” -- Helena Hansen, coauthor of * Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America *“Arc of Interference is essential reading for anyone who cares about our troubled times. Its ethnographic creations mend what is broken by asking us to listen, care, and act.” -- Angela Garcia, author of * The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande *“A major undertaking of humanist anthropology, this volume insists on the necessity of medical anthropology for facing the great challenges of our time, from pandemics and structural violence to climate change and political oppression. Arc of Interference is a milestone in medical anthropology.” -- Susan Reynolds Whyte, editor of * Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda *“Biehl, Adams, and their contributors have . . . penned a classic in Arc of Interference. . . . In our current times of reckoning–both global and disciplinary–contributions like Arc of Interference are a good place to start.” -- Evelyn Hoon * LSE Review of Books *"As a family physician who treats patients, not disease states, I found this book both reinvigorating and challenging. ... The book is a worthwhile read for physicians who care for their patients, whether domestically or globally." -- Mark K. Huntington * Family Medicine *Table of ContentsForeword. Against the Grain: Medical Anthropology in the Anthropocene / Paul Farmer xi Introduction. Art of Interference / João Biehl and Vincanne Adams 1 Part I. Traversing Imperiled Worlds and Envisaging Human Futures 1. Death by Fire: The Problem of Moral Certainty in China’s Tibet / Vincanne Adams 23 2. Bringing Up the Bodies: Erasing and Caring for Mexicans in the Mexico-US Borderland / Davíd Carrasco 42 3. In the Vast Abrupt: Horizon Work in an Age of Runaway Climate Change / Adriana Petryna 65 Part II. The Category Fallacy and Care Amid the Experts 4. Justifying a Lower Standard of Health Care for the World’s Poor: A Call of Decolonizing Global Health / Salmaan Keshavjee 91 5. The Moral Economies of Heart Disease and Cardiac Care in India / David S. Jones 112 6. Intimate and Social Spheres of Mental Illness / Janis H. Jenkins 133 Part III. Worlds of Biotechnological Promise and the Plasticity of Self and Power 7. A Good Death: The Promise and Threat of Biometric Inclusion for Transgender Women in India / Lawrence Cohen 161 8. Medical Cosmopolitanism in Moral Worlds: Aspirations and Stratifications in Global Quests for Conception / Marcia C. Inhorn 187 9. Environments and Mutable Selves / Margaret Lock 210 Part IV. Tracing Arts of Living (Or, Anthropologies After Hope Has Departed) 10. Anthropology in a Mode of Dying / Robert Desjarlais 239 11. Ethnographic Open / João Biehl 257 12. Thinking on Borrowed Time . . . About Privileging the Human / Jean Comaroff 287 Afterword. Lessons Learned from the Ethnography of Care / Arthur Kleinman 305 In Memoriam 327 Acknowledgments 329 Bibliography 331 Contributors 371 Index 373
£77.35
Duke University Press Being Dead Otherwise
Book SynopsisAnne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices surrounding grieving, burial, and ritual in Japan as the old custom of family-based graves and mortuary care is coming undone.Trade Review"This is an extraordinary book. . . . Startling stories of mortician contests, robot Buddhist priests, and clean-up crews dealing with the odor of death illustrate change and the crisis of care in a society where good health care has made very old age a common experience, yet family and community have not kept up to provide solatia and death care for the increasing population of those in need. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- M. White * Choice *Table of ContentsPrelude ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Histories 1. Ambiguous Bones: Dead in the Past 25 2. The Popular Industry of Death: From Godzilla to the Ending Business 47 Preparations 3. Caring (Differently) for the Dead 73 4. Preparedness: A Biopolitics of Making Life Out of Death 99 Departures 5. The Smell of Lonely Death and the Work of Cleaning It Up 123 6. De-parting: The Handling of Remaindered Remains 149 Machines 7. Automated Graves: The Precarity and Prosthetics of Caring for the Dead 173 Epilogue 191 Notes 197 Bibliography 215 Index 231
£70.55
Duke University Press At the Pivot of East and West
Book SynopsisIn At the Pivot of East and West, Michael M. J. Fischer examines documentary filmmaking and literature from Southeast Asia and Singapore for their para-ethnographic insights into politics, culture, and aesthetics. Women novelists—Lydia Kwa, Laksmi Pamuntjak, Sandi Tan, Jing Jing Lee, and Danielle Lim—renarrate Southeast Asian generational and political worlds as gendered psychodramas, while filmmakers Tan Pin Pin and Daniel Hui use film to probe into what can better be seen beyond textual worlds. Other writers like Daren Goh, Kevin Martens Wong, and Nuraliah Norasid reinvent the detective story for the age of artificial intelligence, use monsters to reimagine the Southeast Asian archipelago, and critique racism and the erasure of ethnic cultural histories. Continuing his project of applying anthropological thinking to the creative arts, Fischer exemplifies how art and fiction trace the ways in which taken-for-granted common sense changes over time, speak to the transTrade Review“Michael M. J. Fischer’s pathbreaking use of literature and documentary films to construct Asian ethnographies that splinter binaries and identities makes Asia, and Singapore in particular, far more fractal and dense with images and possibilities than it normally appears in social science literature. For those who know or thought they knew Singapore, this book will be a surprise. For those who don’t, Fischer introduces Singapore as having a mature, edgy, and politically engaged art scene as vibrant as any in Asia.” -- Gregory Clancey, author of * Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868–1930 *“Michael M. J. Fischer’s extraordinary writing demonstrates how much of the inner life of a society becomes manifest by placing novels and films within the domain of ethnographic investigation. Providing access to powerful, often haunting dimensions of both individual lives and societies that are simply not available in such rich form elsewhere, this book has the potential to transform ethnographic practice.” -- Byron J. Good, author of * Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Reader’s Guide and Manifesto 1 1. Oiled Hinges: Sounds and Silences in Documentary Films of Social Change 47 2. Filmic Stutter, Taped Counter-Truths, and Musical Sutures: Knots of Recovery 76 3. White Ink, Family Systems, Forests of Illusion, and Aging: Knots of Passion 111 4. Miniatures: Small Kindnesses across Poisonous Knowledges 141 5. Blue Widow with Green Stripes: Pivots in Widening Horizons 155 6. Filmic Obsessive Repetitions, Dissociations, and Power Relations 194 7. Meritocracy Blues, Chimeras, and Analytic Monsters 212 Afterword. Portals to the Future: MRT Stations, Universities, and the Peopling of Technologies 243 Exergue. Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Historical Hinge in Australia 257 Notes 269 References 313 Index 337
£81.90
Duke University Press Artifactual
Book SynopsisIn Artifactual, Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers, scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout, Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and reconciliation, and thTrade Review“Artifactual is a brilliant exploration of knowledge production through forensic science and documentary filmmaking in postwar Cyprus. Raising penetrating questions about knowledge and the making of truth and evidence in anthropology, Elizabeth Anne Davis makes significant contributions to the anthropologies of missing persons, forensics, and visual anthropology.” -- Yael Navaro, author of * The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity *“The truth in situations of deep conflict may be impossibly elusive, yet people are often forced to reconcile with that opacity. In this beautiful and sensitive book, Elizabeth Anne Davis explores the reckoning with historical violence staged by forensic and documentary knowledge. Exhumed bones and archival images cannot settle a haunted past. But, as Davis shows, these artifacts and those who work with them can achieve something difficult and profound, marking out paths toward a plausible future.” -- Anand Pandian, author of * A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Prologue. Nobody Knows a Thing xix Introduction. Artifactual 1 1. Forensic 45 2. Documentary 173 Epilogue. Our Own Ghosts 287 Appendix. Archive 299 Notes 305 Filmography 337 References 339 Index 353
£80.75
Duke University Press Subversive Archaism
Book SynopsisMichael Herzfeld documents how marginalized groups use official discourses of national tradition against the authority of the bureaucratic nation-state state and violent repercussions that can often follow.Trade Review“In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld proposes the concept of ‘subversive archaism,’ a bold new paradigm to investigate forms of resistance by which people claiming to represent authentic national communities thwart incursions on their autonomy by bureaucratic authorities. The writing is lucid, at times lyrical. The utilization of the anthropological archive is masterful. Above all, the comparative ethnography is impeccable, yielding a profoundly human document of the lives and struggles of people in Greece and Thailand during periods of upheaval and change.” -- Douglas R. Holmes, Distinguished Professor, Binghamton University, State University of New York“Working closely with citizens and social movements that are portrayed as affronts to modernity, Michael Herzfeld shows us how state authorities both fetishize and are threatened by the ‘subversive archaism’ of marginalized groups, especially those who proudly embrace their alterity and believe they have morally superior claims to national identity. The book offers an acute assessment of belonging and resistance in nation-state formations, and it does so using ethnographic materials that mainstream political science and orthodox nationalists would rather we ignore.” -- Andrew Shryock, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan"Herzfeld’s Subversive Archaism is a masterly comparative study that will define scholarship on Greece and Thailand for many years to come. Scholars and graduate students of Greek and Thai studies, anthropology, political science, and sociology will benefit greatly from his deep knowledge of cultural anthropology and the richness of his fieldwork studies." -- Eftychia Mylona * IIAS Review *"This work makes an important contribution to the anthropology of the state, providing a set of concepts that help clarify the often troubling rise of traditionalist fundamentalisms globally. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- J. MacKenzie * Choice *“Herzfeld has delineated an approach to human lives too often dismissed as marginal, self-destructive, or blinkered, to instead foreground exemplary civility, empathy, and creativity. . . . The book closes with . . . a powerful and passionate call for anthropology’s sustained attention to the human virtues of resilience, humor, and mutuality as an antidote to the despair conjured and fed through the ersatz patriotism of charlatan-zealots.” -- Keith Brown * Journal of Anthropological Research *"The book is a pleasure to read, and brims with useful ideas on every page. The concept is also sufficiently generalizable, so that it will likely be cited far and wide, and it will apply to numerous contexts beyond the cases he has used. Congratulations are in order." -- Erik Harms * HAU *"Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority. Herzfeld is not proposing that any given group needs to fit neatly into the category of subversive archaists, but rather how some groups reach back into the past to offer an alternative future. . . . I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible." -- Olivia Porter * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments ix Foreword / Robert J. Foster and Daniel R. Reichman xiii 1. The Nation-State Outraged 1 2. National Legitimacy and the Illegitimacy of National Origins 27 3. Belonging and Remoteness 51 4. Cosmologies of the Social 69 5. A Plurality of Polities 97 6. Subversive Comparisons 121 7. Civility, Parody, and Invective 137 8. Does a Subversive Past Have a Viable Future? 157 Notes 171 References 205 Index 229
£19.94
Duke University Press Atlantis an Autoanthropology
Book SynopsisIn this literary memoir and autoethnography, poet and anthropologist Nathaniel Tarn reflects on a life lived in an array of times, cultures, and environments, from the Battle of Britain and postwar Paris to conducting fieldwork in Guatemala and the halls of academe and beyond.Trade Review“Nathaniel Tarn doesn’t fit our whole world within his imagined autobiographical Atlantis, but he comes intoxicatingly close by way of a rigorous and expansive investigation of his lifelong quest to achieve a science of spirituality. ‘Completion,’ Tarn declares, ‘is not a word that should ever come near this book.’ Likewise, no reader interested in the myriad histories and personae of the self will wish for it either.” -- Albert Mobilio“What a great pleasure it is to read such a thoughtful, original, and necessary book, one that touches on so many aspects of culture, the life of the mind, the sources and resources of the creative imagination, all indelibly arrayed against a long life full of exotic travels and memorable human encounters. There is so much to savor in this fabulously inviting work of courageous generosity.” -- Jed Rasula"A work of brilliant originality, simultaneously a memoir, an ethnography, a sweeping masterpiece of travel literature, and above all, a poetic testimony of unflinching intelligence and grand passion." -- Norman Finkelstein * Restless Messengers *"It’s singularly interesting experience to ingest this book, to be amid it, even to be overwhelmed by it. Atlantis, is a readable avalanche, a discontinuous (but still chronological) memoir, a Big Bricolage of notations, essayistic forays, diary squibs of living life, field notes and polemics, giving the reader charming and telling vignettes . . . these being anecdotes of rare drollery, along with polemics of incisive, and sometimes got-a-bee-in-bonnet challenges...." -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Restless Messengers *"Tarn brings to life a seven-decade career lived traveling and writing throughout the world. Impressive in his ability to conjure up meetings with publishers and conversations with friends that took place more than 50 years ago, Tarn builds on his experiences to create an ethnographic study of himself that reads like a biography that is an autobiography. Enthusiasts of anthropology, poetry, academic life, and self-writing will enjoy Tarn’s approach and the insider’s perspective he brings to a life spent translating, publishing, editing, teaching, and traveling. . . . Recommended. Graduate students through faculty." -- S. Batcos * Choice *"At its heart, it is an exploration of poetry: what it is and how it comes about within the mind of the creator. There are insights into the visionary poetry of Wordsworth and Blake, the need for the poet not merely to give pleasure but crucially to become part of the very spin of the world in motion. It is also about the many different sides of Tarn. . . . Although, at times, the writing is introspective, his style is always engaging and often conversational with a good dose of humour." -- Neil Leadbeater * North of Oxford *Table of ContentsForeword xi Preface xvii Throw One 1 Throw Two 7 Throw Three 16 Throw Four 22 Throw Five 31 Throw Six 39 Throw Seven 46 Throw Eight 57 Throw Nine 69 Throw Ten 80 Throw Eleven 93 Throw Twelve 103 Throw Thirteen 118 Throw Fourteen 127 Throw Fifteen 141 Throw Sixteen 149 Throw Seventeen 161 Throw Eighteen 170 Throw Nineteen 177 Throw Twenty 188 Throw Twenty-One 197 Throw Twenty-Two 205 Throw Twenty-Three 214 Throw Twenty-Four 225 Throw Twenty-Five 233 Throw Twenty-Six 242 Throw Twenty-Seven 255 Throw Twenty-Eight 265 Throw Twenty-Nine 273 Throw Thirty 278 Throw Thirty-One 284 Throw Thirty-Two 291 Throw Thirty-Three 296
£18.99
Duke University Press The Small Matter of Suing Chevron
Book SynopsisSuzana Sawyer traces Ecuador’s lawsuit against the Chevron corporation for the environmental devastation resulting from its oil drilling practices, showing how distinct legal truths were relationally composed of, with, and through crude oil.Trade Review"A monumental book. . . . An innovative study at the interface of law, health, and the environment, The Small Matter of Suing Chevron will appeal to anthropologists of all stripes, as well as legal scholars, epidemiologists, and those working in the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and Latin American contexts. As global toxics threaten to resign us all to irredeemable loss, Sawyer’s masterful ethnography demonstrates how it is still both possible and necessary to take a stand against corporate power and judicial imperialism." -- Lindsay Ofrias * NACLA *Table of ContentsTime Line Acknowledgments Fraud Opening: Crude's Valence of Truths I. Dissociating Bonds Hearing 1. Chemical Agency: Of Hydrocarbons and Toxicity Inspection 2. Exposure's Orbitals: Of Epidemiology and Calculation Death II. Spectral Radicals Catch 3. Alchemical Deals: Of Contracts and Their Seepage Clandestine 4. Radical Inspections: Of Sensorium as Toxic Proposition Kuankuan III. Delocalized Stabilities CEO 5. Plurivalent Rendering: Of Prehension Becoming Precaution Never 6. Bonding Veredictum: Of Corporate Capacity and Technique Tethered Derision Metamorphic Reprise: Valence in the Mixt Amisacho Notes References Index
£22.79
Duke University Press Gridiron Capital
Book SynopsisLisa Uperesa charts the cultural, historical, and social dynamics that have made American football so central to Samoan culture.Trade Review"Uperesa’s book should not only appeal to anthropologists but also to general readers. She engagingly explains what football has come to mean to a whole range of Samoan players — in college programs and the NFL, as well as on youth and high school teams back home — and gives a compelling account of how dual systems of stratification, one based in Indigenous values and the other in capitalist imperatives, combine, for better and worse. . . . Readers interested in sports and culture in a transnational world will no doubt find Gridiron Capital engrossing." -- David Lipset * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." -- J. A. Badics * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction. Fabled Futures and Gridiron Dreams 1 1. Malaga: Forging New Pathways in Sport and Beyond 23 2. Football, Tautua, and Faʻasāmoa 48 3. Producing the Gridiron Warrior 71 4. Gridiron Capital 103 5. “Faʻmālosi!”: Strength, Injury, and Sacrifice 123 Conclusion. Niu Futures 151 Glossary 155 Notes 159 Bibliography 185 Index 211
£18.89
Duke University Press Grammars of the Urban Ground
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Grammars of the Urban Ground develop a new conceptual framework and vocabulary for capturing the complex, ever-shifting, and interactive processes that shape contemporary cities.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Thinking Cities from the Ground / Ash Amin and Michele Lancione 1 1. Social Junk / Natalie Oswin 27 2. Grammars of Dispossession: Racial Banishment in the American Metropolis / Ananya Roy 41 3. Future Densities: Knowledge, Politics, and Remaking the City / Colin McFarlane 58 4. Big: Rethinking the Cultural Imprint of Mass Urbanization / Nigel Thrift 82 5. Urban Legal Forms and Practices of Citizenship / Mariana Valverde 108 6. Transitoriness: Emergent Time/Space Formations of Urban Collective Life / Teresa P. R. Caldeira 126 7. Suturing the (W)hole: Vitalities of Everyday Urban Living in Congo 150 8. Infrastructures of Plutocratic London / Caroline Knowles 164 9. Affirmative Vocabularies from and for the Street / Edgar Pieterse and Tatiana Thieme 180 10. Deformation: Remaking Urban Peripheries through Lateral Comparison / AbdouMaliq Simone 199 11. Edge Syntax: Vocabularies for Violent Times / Suzanne M. Hall 221 Contributors 241 Index
£19.79
Duke University Press A Ritual Geology
Book SynopsisSet against the ongoing corporate enclosure of West Africa’s goldfields, A Ritual Geology tells the untold history of one of the world’s oldest indigenous gold mining industries: Francophone West Africa’s orpaillage. Establishing African miners as producers of subterranean knowledge, Robyn d’Avignon uncovers a dynamic “ritual geology” of techniques and cosmological engagements with the earth developed by agrarian residents of gold-bearing rocks in savanna West Africa. Colonial and corporate exploration geology in the region was built upon the ritual knowledge, gold discoveries, and skilled labor of African miners even as states racialized African mining as archaic, criminal, and pagan. Spanning the medieval and imperial past to the postcolonial present, d’Avignon weaves together long-term ethnographic and oral historical work in southeastern Senegal with archival and archeological evidence from Burkina Faso, Côte d’IvoTrade Review“The foremost contribution of A Ritual Geology is the representation of African miners as intellectual actors. . . . A Ritual Geology is impressive. It is crucial reading for anthropologists and historians looking to understand decolonial methodologies. It should also find a readership among actors who intervene in mining worlds, be it as corporate employees, state officials or development agencies.” -- Dr Dagna Rams * LSE Review of Books *"D’Avignon illuminates the complex narrative of African knowledge production and resource extraction using thick ethnographic descriptions, oral and life histories, and archival sources. ... [The] book is refreshing and provokes debates about African artisanal miners and local knowledge." -- Jabulani Shaba * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Orthographic Notes xv Abbreviations xvii Introduction. Geology and West African History 1 1. A Tale of Two Miners in Tinkoto, Senegal, 2014 29 2. West Africa’s Ritual Geology, 800–1900 58 3.Making Customary Mining in French West Africa 86 4. Colonial Geology and African Gold Discoveries 108 5. Mineral Mapping and the Global Cold War in Sénégal Oriental 129 6. A West African Language of Subterranean Rights 153 7. Race, Islam, and Ethnicity in the Pits 177 Conclusion. Subterranean Granaries 201 Glossary 207 Notes 211 Bibliography 259 Index 295
£19.79
Duke University Press Violent Utopia
Book SynopsisIn Violent Utopia Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, from the post-Reconstruction migration of Black people to Oklahoma Indian Territory to contemporary efforts to rebuild Black prosperity. He focuses on how the massacre in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood—colloquially known as Black Wall Street—curtailed the freedom built there. Rather than framing the massacre as a one-off event, Lewis places it in a larger historical and social context of widespread patterns of anti-Black racism, segregation, and dispossession in Tulsa and beyond. He shows how the processes that led to the massacre, subsequent urban renewal, and intergenerational poverty shored up by nonprofits constitute a form of continuous slow violence. Now, in their attempts to redevelop resources for self-determination, Black Tulsans must reconcile a double inheritance: the massacre’s violence and the historical freedom and prosperity that GreenwoodTrade Review"Violent Utopia’s findings shed a searching light on Oklahoman history but are not limited to or by it. Whilst humble enough to only define itself as a ‘minor contribution’ to the reparations movement, Violent Utopia’s great strength is an analytical dexterity that studiously balances the dialectical dance of anti-Black violence and Black freedom dreams." -- Thomas Cryer * LSE Review of Books *“This thought-provoking book is worth reading. It shows that much can be learned from studying Black communities from a critical race perspective.” -- Robert L. Boyd * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Skillfully incorporates the tools of geography, ethnography, and history to investigate issues surrounding reparations and what they might accomplish for the African American community. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." * Choice *"Lewis's Violent Utopia offers a fresh and nuanced perspective on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its legacies. ... The book is a stellar ethnohistorical model for scholars." -- Jajuan Johnson * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Violence 21 2. Inheritance 55 3. Restoration 93 4. Repair 131 5. Territory 174 Conclusion 210 Notes 223 Bibliography 239 Index 251
£18.89
Duke University Press The City Electric
Book SynopsisMichael Degani explores how electricity and its piracy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, has become a key site for urban Tanzanians to enact, experience, and debate their social contract with the state.Trade Review"As The City Electric so expertly shows, infrastructure then becomes a way to explore the moral economy of provisioning, from the headline grabbing corruption scandals over multi-million dollar contracts to everyday negotiations where people decide by what means, and to what extent, they will bend the rules to gain access to the electricity grid. In Degani’s hands, the channel where electricity sometimes passes and sometimes doesn’t, is an incredibly rich site for analysing movements of power more generally." -- Emily Brownell * Journal of Development Studies *"Degani’s The City Electric is useful not only to energy anthropologists but also to the larger STS community. It is an outcome of meticulous research and uses persuasive English to convey its substance." -- Frank Edward * Technology and Culture *"Degani’s work combines both archival and ethnographic analyses into a coherent and engaging narrative helping us to gain unique perspectives on the everyday life of neoliberalism and the post-socialist state in Tanzania. The book will be of great interest and utility to scholars interested in the critical analyses of contemporary infrastructures and for those interested in the politics of neoliberalism in the Global South more generally." -- Viswanathan Venkataraman * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Ethnography of(f) the Grid 1 1. Emergency Power: A Brief History of the Tanzanian Energy Sector 31 2. The Flickering Torch: Power and Loss after Socialism 71 3. Of Meters and Modals: Patrolling the Grid 109 4. Becoming Infrastructure: Vishoka and Self-Realization 150 Conclusion. The Ingenuity of Infrastructure 187 Notes 207 Works Cited 223 Index 247
£18.89
Duke University Press Semiotics of Rape
Book SynopsisIn Semiotics of Rape, Rupal Oza follows the social life of rape in rural northwest India to reveal how rape is not only a violation of the body but a language through which a range of issues-including caste and gender hierarchies, control over land and labor, and the shape of justice-are contested. Rather than focus on the laws governing rape, Oza closely examines rape charges to show how the victims and survivors of rape reclaim their autonomy by refusing to see themselves as defined entirely by the act of violation. Oza also shows how rape cases become arenas where bureaucrats, village council members, caste communities, and the police debate women's sexual subjectivities and how those varied understandings impact the status and reputations of individuals and groups. In this way, rape gains meaning beyond the level of the survivor and victim to create a social category. By tracing the shifting meanings of sexual violence and justice, Oza offers insights into the social significance of rape in India and beyond.Trade Review"This poignant, timely, and urgent discussion of rape and sexual politics in rural India, Oza underscores that Dalit women’s bodies, often marked by the problematic images of vigilante justice, are defined by their sexual subjectivity and are not victims. Instead, they are complex sexual subjects which assert their choices in rape cases. . . . Oza’s monograph, therefore, makes an important contribution to the fields of gender, women’s and sexuality studies, transnational studies, anthropology, and South Asian studies. It will also be helpful for introductory feminist theory graduate courses." -- Nidhi Shrivastava * South Asian Review *"An interesting read for scholars pursuing research on gender/women’s studies, sexuality, and related topics. Policymakers should find this book interesting to sensitise authorities dealing with cases of violence against women." -- Rituparna Bhattacharyya * Asian Studies Review *Table of ContentsPreface vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Consent 36 2. Compromise 65 3. Land 104 4. Death 130 Conclusion 161 Notes 173 Sources 185 Index
£18.99
Duke University Press River Life and the Upspring of Nature
Book SynopsisIn River Life and the Upspring of Nature Naveeda Khan examines the relationship between nature and culture through the study of the everyday existence of chauras, the people who live on the chars (sandbars) within the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. Nature is a primary force at play within this existence as chauras live itinerantly and in flux with the ever-changing river flows; where land is here today and gone tomorrow, the quality of life itself is intertwined with this mutability. Given this centrality of nature to chaura life, Khan contends that we must think of nature not simply as the physical landscape and the plants and animals that live within it but as that which exists within the social and at the level of cognition, the unconscious, intuition, memory, embodiment, and symbolization. By showing how the alluvial flood plains configure chaura life, Khan shows how nature can both give rise to and inhabit social, political, and spiritual forms of life.Trade Review"An empirically rich study of changing land and those seeking to carve out an existence upon it. [River Life and the Upspring of Nature] can serve as a model for other authors seeking to look at the interrelation between our environment and ourselves, and the existential questions that a changing world poses to us." -- Andrew Alan Johnson * Ethnos *"The book is well written, impressive in its scope, and detailed in its application. . . . a valuable addition to the growing literature on rethinking rivers, lands, and peoples in South Asia, especially those people who are living on river islands that had remained beyond the periphery of mainstream academic vision. It aids understanding of why people live tenuous lives on uncertain grounds, and how their lives are shaped by the river and how they shape the river’s flow." -- Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt * Asian Studies Review *Table of ContentsList of Maps ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. River Life and Death 1 1. Moving Lands in the Skein of Property and Kin Relations 28 2. History and Morality between Floods and Erosion 59 3. Elections on Sandbars and the Remembered Village 94 4. Decay of the River and of Memory 131 5. Death of Children and the Eruption of Myths 160 Epilogue. The Chars in Recent Years 191 Notes 197 References 215 Index 229
£18.89
Duke University Press Glyphosate and the Swirl
Book SynopsisIn Glyphosate and the Swirl Vincanne Adams explores the chemical glyphosate-the active ingredient in Roundup and a pervasive agricultural herbicide-as a predicament of contested science and chemically saturated life. Adams traces the history of glyphosate's invention and its multiple uses as activists, regulators, scientists, clinicians, consumers, and sick people try to determine its safety and harm. Scientific and political debates over glyphosate's toxicity are agitated into a swirl-a condition in which certainty is continually contested, divided, and multiplied. This movement replicates the chemical's movement in soils, foods, bodies, archives, labs, and legislative bodies, settling in some places here and in other places there, its potencies changing and altering what it touches with different scales and kinds of impact. The swirl is both an artifact of academic capitalism, activist tactics, and contested scientific facts and a way to capture the complexity of contemporary life with chemicals.Trade Review"This book could be used in the disciplines of food studies, anthropology, government, environmental studies, and social justice studies. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." * Choice *"Adams’ latest book is a beautifully written, provocative foray into re-thinking the ever-swirling sources of, and possible responses to, chemical injury, urging critical scholars of toxicity to shepherd the swirl towards tangible and embodied forms of environmental justice." -- Melina Packer * Science as Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix 1. From Blossoms 1 2. Building the Food Chemosphere 16 3. Ontological Multiplicity & Glyphosate’s Safety 37 4. Chemical Life, Clinical Encounters 51 5. The Scientific Consensus & the Counterfactual 73 6. Consensuses, Academic Capitalism & the Swirl 97 7. Glyphosate Becomes an Activist 114 8. Chemicals as Agents of Care 130 Notes 139 References 145 Index 167
£67.15
Duke University Press Waste Works
Book SynopsisIn Waste Works, Brenda Chalfin examines Ghana’s planned city of Tema, theorizing about the formative role of waste infrastructure in urban politics and public life. Chalfin argues that at Tema’s midcentury founding, a prime objective of governing authorities was to cultivate self-contained citizens by means of tightly orchestrated domestic infrastructure and centralized control of bodily excrement to both develop and depoliticize the new nation. Comparing infrastructural innovations across the city, Chalfin excavates how Tema residents pursue novel approaches to urban waste and sanitation built on the ruins of the inherited order, profoundly altering the urban public sphere. Once decreed a private matter to be guaranteed by state authorities, excrement becomes a public issue, collectively managed by private persons. Pushing self-care into public space and extending domestic responsibility for public well-being and bodily outputs, popularly devised waste infrastructurTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Preface xi Acknowledgments xix Introduction. Infrastructural Intimacies: The Vital Politics of Waste in Urban Ghana 1 1. Assembling the New City: From Infrastructure to Vital Politics 45 2. Tema Proper: Infrastructures and Intimacies of Disrepair 96 3. The Right(s) to Remains: Excremental Infrastructure and Exception in Tema Manhean 133 4. Ziginshore: Infrastructure and the Commonwealth of Waste 181 5. Dwelling on Toilets: Tema's Breakaway Republic of Ashaiman 212 Conclusion. From Vital Politics to Deep Domesticity: Infrastructure as Political Experiment 268 Notes 295 References 315 Index 339
£21.59
Duke University Press Since Time Immemorial
Book SynopsisYanna Yannakakis traces the creation of Indigenous custom as a legal category and its deployment as a strategy of resistance to empire in colonial Mexico.Trade Review"Aimed at a scholarly audience, Yanna Yannakakis' Since Time Immemorial explores how Spanish authorities and indigenous elites navigated the ambiguous boundary between custom and law in16th-century Mexico. Deeply reasoned and argued, this book should be of interest to both history majors and experts interested in the legal framework of Spanish Mexico." -- Noah Zachary * World History Encyclopedia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction xiii Part I. Legal and Intellectual Foundations: Twelfth through Seventeenth Centuries 1. Custom, Law, and Empire in the Mediterranean-Atlantic World 23 2. Translating Custom in Castile, Central Mexico, and Oaxaca 45 Part II. Good and Bad Customs in the Native Past and Present: Sixteenth through Seventeenth Centuries 3. Framing Pre-Hispanic Law and Custom 73 4. The Old Law, Polygyny, and the Customs of the Ancestors 109 Part III. Custom in Oaxaca’s Courts of First Instance: Seventeenth through Eighteenth Centuries 5. Custom, Possession, and Jurisdiction in the Boundary Lands 139 6. Custom as Social Contract: Native Self-Governance and Labor 171 7. Prescriptive Custom: Written Labor Agreements in Indian and Spanish Jurisdictions 199 Epilogue 229 Notes 237 Bibliography 273 Index 305
£999.99
Duke University Press The PrescriptiontoPrison Pipeline
Book SynopsisMichelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing opioid drug epidemic is the result of an endless cycle in which suffering is medicalized and drug use is criminalized.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Quick Fixes to Enduring Problems 1 1. The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain 27 2. Prescription: Getting Hooked 45 3. Pipeline: Sorting Use from Abuse 63 4. Prison: From Medicalization to Criminalization 79 Conclusions: When Medicine Becomes a Drug 93 Appendix: Methodological Note 111 Notes 121 Bibliography 135 Index 153
£17.99
Duke University Press Security from the South
Book SynopsisContributors to this special issue use a pluriversal lens to trace the colonial continuities, the imperial geographies, and the forms of difference through which people become subjects of, resist, and shore up security regimes across the world. Using a transnational feminist approach, the authors contest the boundedness of the category Global South, instead emphasizing the fluidity between supposedly separate scales, such as North/South and intimate/global. Essay topics include imperial warfare in East Africa, national security and the politics of protest at India's borderlands, the diasporic politics of race and class in Jamaica's security dynamics, the use of religion to designate state-sanctioned violence as legitimate, and securitizing patriarchies in postcolonial India. Contributors. Samar Al-Bulushi, Sahana Ghosh, Inderpal Grewal, Dipin Kaur, Negar Razavi, Sasha Sabherwal, Deborah A. Thomas
£11.39
Duke University Press At the Pivot of East and West
Book SynopsisIn At the Pivot of East and West, Michael M. J. Fischer examines documentary filmmaking and literature from Southeast Asia and Singapore for their para-ethnographic insights into politics, culture, and aesthetics. Women novelists—Lydia Kwa, Laksmi Pamuntjak, Sandi Tan, Jing Jing Lee, and Danielle Lim—renarrate Southeast Asian generational and political worlds as gendered psychodramas, while filmmakers Tan Pin Pin and Daniel Hui use film to probe into what can better be seen beyond textual worlds. Other writers like Daren Goh, Kevin Martens Wong, and Nuraliah Norasid reinvent the detective story for the age of artificial intelligence, use monsters to reimagine the Southeast Asian archipelago, and critique racism and the erasure of ethnic cultural histories. Continuing his project of applying anthropological thinking to the creative arts, Fischer exemplifies how art and fiction trace the ways in which taken-for-granted common sense changes over time, speak to the transTrade Review“Michael M. J. Fischer’s pathbreaking use of literature and documentary films to construct Asian ethnographies that splinter binaries and identities makes Asia, and Singapore in particular, far more fractal and dense with images and possibilities than it normally appears in social science literature. For those who know or thought they knew Singapore, this book will be a surprise. For those who don’t, Fischer introduces Singapore as having a mature, edgy, and politically engaged art scene as vibrant as any in Asia.” -- Gregory Clancey, author of * Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868–1930 *“Michael M. J. Fischer’s extraordinary writing demonstrates how much of the inner life of a society becomes manifest by placing novels and films within the domain of ethnographic investigation. Providing access to powerful, often haunting dimensions of both individual lives and societies that are simply not available in such rich form elsewhere, this book has the potential to transform ethnographic practice.” -- Byron J. Good, author of * Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Reader’s Guide and Manifesto 1 1. Oiled Hinges: Sounds and Silences in Documentary Films of Social Change 47 2. Filmic Stutter, Taped Counter-Truths, and Musical Sutures: Knots of Recovery 76 3. White Ink, Family Systems, Forests of Illusion, and Aging: Knots of Passion 111 4. Miniatures: Small Kindnesses across Poisonous Knowledges 141 5. Blue Widow with Green Stripes: Pivots in Widening Horizons 155 6. Filmic Obsessive Repetitions, Dissociations, and Power Relations 194 7. Meritocracy Blues, Chimeras, and Analytic Monsters 212 Afterword. Portals to the Future: MRT Stations, Universities, and the Peopling of Technologies 243 Exergue. Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Historical Hinge in Australia 257 Notes 269 References 313 Index 337
£21.59
Duke University Press The Cunning of Gender Violence
Book SynopsisThe Cunning of Gender Violence focuses on how a once visionary feminist project to combat gender-based violence and violence against women has folded itself into contemporary world affairs in ways that that harm the very people it seeks to protect.Trade Review“The Cunning of Gender Violence is a riveting and much-needed interdisciplinary collection that aims both to understand and radically shift the securitized, racialized, and imperial approaches to gender violence that dominate law, policy, and the media. Compellingly calling on feminists to recognize the Faustian bargain they have struck by perpetuating these dominant approaches, the book brings to the fore lives and experiences that have often been relegated to the margins of global feminist attention, even as they are at the center of multiple forms of quotidian global and state violence.” -- Karen Engle, author of * author of The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law *“Those committed to an anti-Muslim agenda appoint themselves as modern, humanitarian, democratic, and feminist, a status achieved against a Third World constituted as premodern, illiberal, Muslim, and uniquely given to gender-based violence. It is a major contribution of this book to show how global racial governance is achieved through the idea of gender-based violence as a defining feature of Third World cultures and communities.” -- Sherene H. Razack, author of * Nothing Has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy through Anti-Muslim Racism *"A remarkable piece of work within the realm of geopolitical feminism. ... It stands out for its sharp acumen and the detailed analysis of scholars who have dedicated themselves to researching and confronting gender-based violence against women in various global contexts." -- Yanyan Zhu * Affilia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Circuits of Power in GBVAW Governance / Lila Abu-Lughod, Rema Hammami, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian 1 I. Securitization 1. Lawfare, CVE, and International Conflict Feminism / Vasuki Nesiah 55 2. Securofeminism: Embracing a Phantom / Lila Abu-Lughod 88 3. The Role of “Honor Killings” in the Muslim Ban / Leti Volpp 122 4. Because Religion: Does Something Called “Religion” Cause Gender-Based Violence? / Janet R. Jakobsen 151 II. States of Violence, Unruly Subjects 5. GBV and Postcolonial India: Transnational Media, Hindutva, and Muslim Racializations / Inderpal Grewal 177 6. The Politics of Legislating “Honor Crime” in Contemporary Pakistan / Shenila Khoja-Moolji 209 7. State Criminality and Gender-Based Violence: Palestinian Schoolgirls between Books and Rifles / Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian 233 8. Power, Subjectivity, and Sexuality in Iranian Political Prisons / Shahla Talebi 259 III. Civilizing Interventions: Development and Humanitarianism 9. Child Marriage in the Feminist Imagination / Dina M. Siddiqi 293 10. Catastrophic Aid: GBV Humanitarianism in Gaza / Rema Hammami 324 11. What Counts as Violence? Transgender Refugees, Torture, and Sanctions / Sima Shakhsari 361 IV. Media Frames 12. Weaponized Bodies: Female Genital Mutilation and Immigrant Exclusion / Rafia Zakaria 391 13. Breaking the Frame: The Power of Media Narratives and the Question of Agency / Samira Shackle 405 14. Dressed Up, Stripped Down: Media Depictions of Conflict Rape / Nina Berman 422 Contributors 439 Index 445
£84.15