Social and cultural anthropology Books

Book SynopsisAn extensive historical exploration of touch which lies at the heart of our experience of the worldTrade Review "Classen is a veteran at telling sensory histories, with a deft touch. . . . A major appeal of Classen's new book is her account of the Industrial Revolution."--The Chronicle Review"This is a wise book, filled with fascinating observations, from which every reader will learn a great deal. The Deepest Sense breaks new ground not only by focusing on the long history of the sense of touch from the Middle Ages to the modern period, but also by drawing the tactile into a number of important historical conversations."--Richard Newhauser, coeditor of Pleasure and Danger in Perception: The Five Senses in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (special issue of The Senses and Society) “Provides a nuanced and informative narrative on how humanity's relationship with touch has changed throughout history.”--Publishers Weekly"Recommended."--Choice "Classen's lush descriptions provide an excellent underscoring of her exploration of this intimate sense."--Library Journal "Classen eloquently argues that touch is the deepest sense not only because its cultural meanings stretch into the distant past but also because its social meanings remain embedded within core concepts of modernity… Classen shows that the history of touch is itself reflexive: although they can be only be inferred from sources, these once palpable embraces tell the history of the very deepest connections between us."--American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewValdimar Hafstein [is the] author of some of the most mordant and witty critical analysis of intangible heritage protection. -- From "UNESCO and the Strange Career of Multiculturalism," published in the Los Angeles Review of BooksWhile a prior knowledge of international heritage policy can help, students, scholars, and professionals in anthropology, folklore, and allied fields and disciplines – those interested in heritage theory and practice, and those out on the frontlines of "ICH" work – should read this book. * Cultural Analysis *The book is a useful tool for the study of critical heritage studies as well as for the expansion of our knowledge about the uses and resignifications linked to the concept of intangible heritage. * Anthropological Journal of European Cultures *Table of ContentsPrelude: Confessions of a Folklorist1. Making Heritage: Introduction2. Making Threats: The Condor's Flight3. Making Lists: The Dance Band in the Hospital4. Making Communities: Protection as Dispossession5. Making Festivals: Folklorisation RevisitedPostlude: Intangible Heritage as Diagnosis, Safeguarding as TreatmentConclusion: If Intangible Heritage is the Solution, What is the Problem?AcknowledgmentsWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis powerful collection of 16 critical essays takes aim at the myriad forms in whichhate, violence, othering, disenfranchisement, etc., manifest in social life as the resultof dominant power structures supported by the "legacies of white supremacy,homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and other injustices and forms ofdiscrimination" (19). It is these power structures, among others, that have keptcertain individuals and communities at the margins. The "margins," as presented in thebook, vary by author and range from the physical (such as prisons) to the symbolic (asin the intersections between methodologies and ideas). . . . The result is an illuminating, moving, and reflexivity-inducing work that takes us into and through very different marginal worlds "among, and with, Mexican, Wolof, Native American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Martinican, Andean, North American, African Diaspora, and LGBTQI folk cultures and communities"(13). -- Julián Antonio Carrillo * Journal of Folklore and Education *Table of ContentsPart I: Critical PathsIntroduction: How does Folklore find its voice in the 21st century? An offering/invitation from the margins1. White Traditioning and Bruja Epistemologies: Rebuilding the House of USAmerican Folklore Studies2. Un Tumbe Ch'ixi: Incorporating Afro-descendant Ideas into an Andean Anti-Colonial Methodology3. Disrupting the ArchivePart II: Framing the Narrative4. Afrolatinx Folklore and Visual Representation: Interstices and Anti-Authenticity5. Behaving Like Relatives: Or we don't sit around and talk about politics with strangers6. Political Protest, Ideology, and Social Criticism in Wolof Folk Poetry7. Sugar Cane Alley: Teaching the Concept of "Group" from a Critical Folkloristics Perspective8. movimiento armado/armed movementPart III: Visualizing the Present9. Ni lacras, ni lesbianas normalizadas: Trauma, matrimonio, conectividad y representación audiovisual para la comunidad lesbiana en Cuba10. "¿Batata? ¡Batata!": Examining Puerto Rican Visual Folk Expression in Times of Adversities11. Forming Strands and Ties in the Knotted Atlantic: Methodologies of Color and Practice of Beadwork in Lukumí Religion12. Of Blithe Spirits: Narratives of Rebellion, Violence, and Cosmic Memory in Haitian VodouPart IV: Placing Community13. "No one would believe us": An Auto-Ethnography of Conducting Fieldwork in a Conflict14. "La Sierra Juárez en Riverside": The Inaugural Oaxacan Philharmonic Bands Audition on a university campus15. Hidden thoughts and exposed bodies: art, everyday life, and queering Cuban masculinities16. Complexifying Identity through Disability: Critical Folkloristic Perspectives on Being a Parent and Experiencing Illness & Disability through My ChildIndex

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Book SynopsisSocial anthropology was at the forefront of debates about culture, society, and economic development in the British Empire. This book explores the discipline's rise in the interwar period, crisis amid decolonization, and ironic reemergence in the postwar metropole. Across the humanities and social sciences, activists and scholars used anthropological concepts forged in empire to rethink British society at midcentury. Participant Observers shows how colonial anthropology helped define the social imagination of postimperial Britain. Part institutional history of the discipline's formation, part cultural history of its impact, this is the first account of social anthropology's pivotal role in Britain's intellectual culture.Table of ContentsContents Map Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Islands and Institutions Anthropology in Britain and the British Empire in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century 2. Philanthropists and Imperialists Indirect Rule, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise of LSE Anthropology 3. Pencils, Schemes and Letters Fieldwork and Pedagogy in 1930s Social Anthropology 4. Popularising the Field Interwar Anthropologists on the Radio and in Literary Culture 5. From Kinship Studies to Community Studies ‘Race Relations’, the ‘Traditional Working-Class Neighbourhood’ and the ‘Social Network’ in Post-war British Sociology 6. The Development Decades The African Survey, the CSSRC and Three Approaches to Social Anthropology in the British Empire, 1935–1955 7. From Development Economics to the ‘Moral Economy’ At the Margins of Anthropology, Economics and Social History in the 1950s and 1960s Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisProvides an analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2005 Victoria Schuck Award, American Political Science Association Honorable Mention for the 2005 Albert Hourani Book Award, Middle East Studies Association "Mahmood's book is a tour de force that provides an alternative prism through which we may understand the women's mosque movement in Egypt."--Cynthia Nelson, Middle East JournalTable of ContentsPreface to the 2012 Edition ix Preface xxi Acknowledgments xxv Note on Transcription xxix CHAPTER 1: The Subject of Freedom 1 CHAPTER 2: Topography of the Piety Movement 40 CHAPTER 3: Pedagogies of Persuasion 79 CHAPTER 4: Positive Ethics and Ritual Conventions 118 CHAPTER 5: Agency, Gender, and Embodiment 153 Epilogue 189 Glossary of Commonly Used Arabic Terms 201 References 205 Index 225

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Nominee for the James Beard Media Award in Reference, History, and Scholarship""Winner of the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes, BC and Yukon Book Prizes""Few readers, I suspect, have ever considered fungi to be sentient, but Michael Hathaway . . . argues that mushrooms (as well as plants and other organisms widely considered as passive automatons), though not exactly conscious, nevertheless 'engage their surroundings in a dynamic way.' . . . The takeaway, Hathaway advises, should at least be a renewed appreciation of the interconnectedness of all forms of life, flora, fauna, and 'funga,' and a realization that the world is 'made and remade through relationships.'"---Laurence A. Marschall, Natural History"This book will be valuable to social scientists and ecologists, and essential to philosophers of human-fungi relationships." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Impressive."---Christopher de Bellaigue, New York Review of Books"This book is an authoritative and well-written summary of what we might call the majority view. There is a streak in this book, however, of more radical thinking. . . . It leads him near the end of the book to some startling predictions for Afghanistan's possible futures."---Gerard Russell, Foreign Policy"Thomas Barfield's new book offers a remedy for Americans' pervasive ignorance of Afghanistan. . . . Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is an invaluable book. Mr. Barfield does not give the United States a way out of Afghanistan, but he does provide the context necessary for good policymaking."---Doug Bandow, Washington Times"A brilliant book to educate all of us about a country we should know and appreciate. . . . Thomas Barfield's book on Afghanistan is likely to become the first source that serious students turn to as a guide to this complicated country. His comprehensive portrait of Afghanistan is a stunning achievement."---Joseph Richard Preville, Saudi Gazette"Barfield, an anthropologist and old Afghanistan hand, has written a history of Afghanistan that weaves in geography, economics, and culture (think tribes, rural-urban dichotomies, value systems) while maintaining a focus throughout on Afghan rulers' relations with their own people and the outside world. . . . [The book] is lightened by many breaks in the narrative to address broad themes or make intriguing comparisons, such as likening patrimonial Afghanistan to medieval Europe." * Foreign Affairs *"In this riveting study, Barfield does a splendid job of informing us why Afghanistan is the way it has always been." * Daily Star *"Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield is a primer for anyone seeking to understand the region, its cultural and political underpinnings."---Raghu Mohan, Businessworld"Barfield shows how Afghan notions of political legitimacy and social organization are eerily timeless. . . . This book may change the way you think about Afghanistan."---Brian Kappler, Montreal Gazette"Despite a plethora of books about Afghanistan in the last few years, a good book on the country has not been published since Louis Dupress's 1973 Afghanistan. Maybe the long wait is over. Barfield's new book . . . comes close to matching Dupree's sweeping sense of Afghanistan's complicated history and culture. An anthropologist, as was Dupree, who personally visited most areas of Afghanistan, Barfield is able to put the bewildering complexity of tribes, ethnic groups, religious sects, warlords, and political feuds that is Afghanistan into a coherent whole that is both readable and informative." * Choice *"Thomas Barfield . . . has provided a rich discussion of the anthropological and historical context for developing such a formula, which is a critical missing piece in the Obama Administration's policy in Afghanistan. . . . Barfield has given us a valuable effort by a Westerner to decode a very foreign society—never an easy task. As a prism through which to understand the current conflict in Afghanistan, this book reminds us that war is about politics and that politics is about who rules and how rule is legitimated."---Marin Strmecki, American Interest"[Barfield's] deep knowledge brings clarity to a frightfully complicated region that has been and will continue to be of extraordinary importance to policy debates. Scholarly experts in search of an exhaustive reference to the region and those seeking an introduction to the ins and outs of Afghan history will find this book of interest."---Malou Innocent, Cato Journal"Impressive. . . . Barfield traces much of what Afghanistan is about to its geography and to developments from thousands of years ago, but he also asserts that the decade of Russian occupation changed Afghanistan permanently."---Harry Eagar, Maui News"Anyone who wishes to comprehend the intricacies of this complex and mysterious country would be wise to consult this exceedingly valuable book."---Raphael Israeli, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs"Overall, Barfield is successful in his attempts to render the history of Afghanistan legible to the trained or casual reader. His clear and approachable writing style, use of narrative, metaphor and personal stories to illustrate his arguments, thoroughness and quickness of pace, and his clear personal joy, investment and fascination with the country make this a highly readable—and more—digestible, historical account. . . . It is, in the end, a fascinating read and a tremendous resource."---Rebecca Gang, Jura Gentium"Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History makes a serious attempt to survey and analyze the changing political, cultural, and social landscapes of the country from the ancient time to the present. It provides meaningful and objective insights into governance, state legitimacy, social and economic development, and foreign interventions, and Afghan responses to them, with an admirable degree of thoughtfulness and fluency."---Amin Saikal, Marine Corps University Journal"Barfield has written a magnificent, learned, provoking book. He knows Afghanistan better than almost anyone writing on the topic today. He matches that knowledge with keen insight into how human societies grow and change. Barfield helps us think well about a complex and distant land, which is no small achievement."---Paul D. Miller, Books and Culture"Barfield offers a critique of U.S. and Western strategy in Afghanistan that will likely generate controversy, but strategists, planners, and those on missions in Afghanistan ignore them at their peril. Highly recommended."---Prisco R. Hernández, Military Review"In his admirable volume on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield has written a real tour de force. . . . No one should venture today into Afghanistan, in whatever capacity, without first reading this guide for the perplexed."---Raphael Israeli, European Legacy"Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand either the history of Afghanistan or what is happening there now."---Danny Yee, Danny Reviews

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Book SynopsisA timely anthropological examination of the effect of land claims settlements and co-management of resources on the Kluane First Nation of the Southwest Yukon.Trade ReviewThe book is well written and carefully argued. Nadasdy draws effectively on the seminal ethnography and ethnological work of the Penn Boasians: Frank Speck, A.I. Hallowell, and their many informal students, and his own ethnographic observations are revealing and apt. -- David Dinwoodie, University of New Mexico * Western Historical Quarterly, Summer 2005 *At first blush, it seems a very long reach from the aboriginal hunting camps of the Kluane in Canada’s Yukon wilderness to the poststructuralist environs of modern French philosophy. Yet careful reading of Paul Nadasdy’s prodigal new work of contemporary ethnography reveals that geographically, culturally, and philosophically the distance involved is much less than might be expected. -- William Hipwell, Department of Geography, Kyungpook National University, South Korea * Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy, Spring 2005 *Table of ContentsIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 Aboriginal-State Relations in Kluane Country: An Overview2 “It’s Not Really ‘Knowledge’ at All, It’s More a Way of Life”3 The Politics of TEK: Power and the Integration of Knowledge4 Counting Sheep: The Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee and the Construction of Knowledge5 Knowledge-Integration in Practice: The Case of the Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee6 “Just Like Whitemen”: Property and Land Claims in Kluane CountryConclusionNotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the Name of Wild takes you on the five-year journey one family made across five continents to re-imagine the meaning of wildness.Trade ReviewThe Vanninis' findings are surprising and thought-provoking ... This entertaining and educational book takes along not only the family but readers too ... You can enjoy the journey, ponder and philosophize, and then decide what your answer might be. -- Graham Chandler * BC Bookworld *Table of ContentsPrologue1 “Wild” Can Be a Challenging Word: Galápagos2 “Wild” Can Be an Adjective: Tasmania3 Wild Can Be Ephemeral: Aotearoa-New Zealand 4 Wild Can Change: South Tyrol5 Wild Can Be Reimagined: Belize6 Wild Can Be a Foreign Concept: Japan7 Wild Can Be Alive: Patagonia8 Wild Can Be Photogenic: Iceland9 Wildlife Can Be Us: Thailand10 Wild Can Be Someone’s Home: Canada

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Book SynopsisFavazza critically assesses new and significant biological, ethnological, social, and psychological findings regarding self-injury; presents current understandings of self-injurious acts from cultural and clinical perspectives; and places self-mutilation in historical and contemporary context.Trade Review"The second edition of the fascinating but gruesome Bodies under Siege by Armando R. Favazza explores the various ways in which people mutilate their bodies. Favazza explores the historical background and offers insights into how and why people do truly appalling things to their limbs, heads, and genitals. He pleads for understanding for a group of patients who are often seen as bizarre and repellent." (New Scientist) "The seminal book on [nonsuicidal self-injury]; presents a comprehensive historical, anthropological, and clinical review of the topic." (Current Directions in Psychological Science) "A compendium of cultural and clinical reports of self-mutilation and a summary of what is and what is not known about therapy, the book is a major contribution to both the anthropological and psychiatric literature. I know that having read it I will see my next self-mutilating patient through more insightful and compassionate eyes." (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders)"Table of ContentsPreface to the Third EditionPart I: Mutilative Beliefs, Religion, Eating, and Ethology1. Mutilative Beliefs, Attitudes, Practices, and Images2. Self-mutilation in Myths of Creation, Shamanism, and Religion3. Self-injury and Eating Disorders4. Animals and AutomutilationPart II: Mutilation and Self-Injury of Body Parts: Cultural and Clinical Cases5. The Head and Its Parts6. The Limbs7. The Skin8. The GenitalsPart III: Insight and Treatment9. Understanding Self-injury10. The Assessment, Psychology, and Biology of Self-injury11. Treatment12. Personal ReflectionsEpilogue: Body Play: My Journey, Fakir MusafarReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisA memoir of life, experience, and education of a Lakota child in the late 1800s. The author describes the home life and education of Indian children. Like other boys, he played with toy bows and arrows in the tipi before learning to make and use them and became schooled in the ways of animals and in the properties of plants and herbs.Trade Review"The book is replete with information. Standing Bear details many native beliefs and interpretations, as well as the symbolism, of the things of nature that guided the very lives of the Lakota, and makes lucid many conceptions that white people have usually regarded as mere superstition because not understood."—Saturday Review of Literature

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Book SynopsisA chilling, incisive, and firsthand look at the landscape of community news today, Lost Storytellers argues that the decline of local journalism threatens the future of democracy. Lost Storytellers offers insights for all who feel confused about the media, politics, and the well-being of their communities in the information age.

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Book SynopsisExplores the role that cultural heritage and museums played in the construction of a national identity in postcolonial Cuba. Pablo Alonso Gonzalez illustrates how political and ideological shifts have influenced ideas about heritage and how, in turn, heritage has been used by different social actors to consolidate political regimes.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"As we contemplate the relevance of the humanities in the twenty- first century, The Nonhuman Turn offers a valuable, if provocative, direction to pursue—question the “human” in the humanities."—ISLE"A good overview of the various strands of thinking that have contributed to thought on the Anthropocene in relation to media."—The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory"A fascinating, daring and challenging read that deserves to fuel discussion and raises some interesting challenges to anthropocentric critical discourse."—The Anthropocene Review Blog"Presents rich, compelling interdisciplinary work that pushes the boundary of how we understand the human and the nonhuman, relationality, art, sympathy, and literary critical writing."—ConfigurationsTable of ContentsContentsIntroductionRichard Grusin1. The Supernormal AnimalBrian Massumi2. Consequences of PanpsychismSteven Shaviro3. ArtfulnessErin Manning4.The Aesthetics of Philosophical CarpentryIan Bogost5. Our Predictive Condition; or, Prediction in the WildMark B. N. Hansen6. Crisis, Crisis, Crisis; or, the Temporality of NetworksWendy Hui Kyong Chun7. They Are HereTimothy Morton8. Form / Matter / Chora: Object-Oriented Ontology and Feminist New MaterialismRebekah Sheldon9. Systems and Things: On Vital Materialism and Object-Oriented PhilosophyJane BennettAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisDrawing on more than a decade of research in Japan and the United States, David Novak traces the "cultural feedback" that generates and sustains Noise, an underground music genre combining distortion and electronic effects.Trade Review“While Japanoise gives a fantastically detailed account of Noise’s history and evolution, it is also interesting to see it framed as a true representative of what has come to be known as ‘Cool Japan.’ As the government promotes sugary sweet pop acts that cause toothaches abroad, the grassroots noise scene (OK, it might be causing earaches) is making real progress in keeping Japan cool.” -- Shaun McKenna * Japan Times *“The major strength of Novak’s book lies in its ability to describe the goings on at various gigs in both Japan and the United States in such a way that the reader is able to sense something of what it must have been like to be there, just enough, perhaps, to wish that s/he had actually been there. For a reader such as this reviewer, indeed, there is much envy-inducing material here. In this respect, Novak’s book is very much in the David Toop school of writing, and as such there are many passages that provide the reader with truly engaging, fascinating and beautifully written accounts of some musical events the like of which will never be heard again.” -- Greg Hainge * Asian Studies Review *“Novak succeeds in highlighting the cultural implications of Noise in ways that productively broaden scholarly inquiries about music and culture. This book is an invaluable, groundbreaking contribution for ethnomusicology that is applicable to scholars across disciplines with interests in transnationalism, technology, and globalization.” -- Nana Kaneko * Ethnomusicology Review *“This is a thought-provoking book that is well written and researched, and it made me reflect on not just Noise as experimental music that pushes the boundaries of aesthetics and physical listening but also on listening to a variety of sounds in daily life, on our relationship to technology and our ability to shape sound through it, and on the collaborative connections and blurred identities that exist among artists, distributors, and consumers.” -- Carolyn S. Stevens * American Ethnologist *"Novak’s mesmerizing writing style achieves the impressive (almost magical, it seemed to me) feat of depicting the art without confining it to narrative. Indeed, the manner in which Novak’s beautifully fragmented depictions of heterogeneous ethnographic 'scenes' tie together in a cohesive sort of chaos seemed intended to evoke Noise itself.” -- Scott W. Aalgaard * Journal of Asian Studies *"Japanoise, on one hand, delineates Noise’s historical resonance with musique concrète, post-war jazz, experimental rock and Dada happenings, to name just a few orienting styles. On the other, it encourages and provides a template for approaching challenging music with sensitivity to its form as well as its cultural logic. The book thus astutely addresses not only scholars but students at a variety of levels." -- Benjamin Tausig * Ethnomusicology Forum *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Scenes of Liveness and Deadness 28 2. Sonic Maps of the Japanese Underground 64 3. Listening to Noise in Kansai 92 4. Genre Noise 117 5. Feedback, Subjectivity, and Performance 139 6. Japanoise and Technoculture 169 7. The Future of Cassette Culture 198 Epilogue: A Strange History 227 Notes 235 References 259 Index 279

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Book SynopsisBased on ethnographic research in the foothills of the Argentine Andes, Gastón R. Gordillo reveals the spatial, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. For the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.Trade Review"[I]t is the signal merit of Gordillo’s book to remind us of the value of the loose, but productive and fertile, horizontal connections and communities that make up the network of nodes and constellations that we too easily dismiss as 'mere' rubble." -- Jon Beasley-Murray * Posthegemony blog *“Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction is theoretically dense and richly illustrated with diagrams and photographs. The ethnographic detail is often engrossing, while the overall argument challenges heritage and regional specialists to engage in more penetrating analysis of how historic forces of destruction shape the world and add to the rubble that piles up along the way.” -- Diane Barthel-Bouchier * Journal of Latin American Geography *“Rubble is remarkable because Gordillo does not shy away from complex theorizing while also providing us with rich ethnographic storytelling. The result is a book that is as engaging as it is innovative, and which should capture the interest of a diverse audience. … dealing with the social production of space, racialized and ethnicized relations in Latin and South America, human-environment relationships, and affect theory. If the purpose of a book is to change the way one sees the world, Rubble succeeds.” -- Roberto E. Barr * Journal of Anthropological Research *“Both the idea of rethinking ruins and going deep into the Chaco region are original and a welcome foray into events and people that have been side-lined by official histories. ...Rubble gives us layers of history, of rubble, overlapping stories of indigenous identity and conquering violence.” -- Marcela López Levy * Latin America Bureau blog *“Rubble makes a series of generative interventions into the vast literature on memory and heritage studies in Latin America. Particularly rewarding for historians, anthropologists, and geographers interested in critical perspectives on modernity.” -- Mónica Salas Landa * Hispanic American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Constellations 1 Part One. Ghosts of Indians 1. A Haunted Frontier 31 2. On the Edge of the Void 53 Part Two. Lost Cities The Destruction of Space 77 3. Land of Curses and Miracles 85 4. The Ruins of Ruins 111 Part Three. Residues of a Dream World Treks across Fields of Rubble 125 5. Ships Stranded in the Forest 131 6. Bringing a Destroyed Place Back to Life 153 7. Railroads to Nowhere 169 Part Four. The Debris of Violence Bright Objects 185 8. Topographies of Oblivion 191 9. Piles of Bones 209 10. The Return of the Indians 229 Conclusion: We Aren't Afraid of Ruins 253 Notes 271 References 287 Index 303

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Book SynopsisCombining political theory with ethnographic research among the Mohawks of Kahnawake, a reserve community in what is now southwestern Quebec, this book examines their struggles to articulate and maintain political sovereignty through centuries of settler colonialism.Trade Review“In her brilliant study of Kahnawà:ke, a Mohawk reserve outside Montréal, anthropologist Simpson rejects this dominant image of indigenous nationhood on the brink and ‘starts with a grounded refusal, not a precipice.’ The author problematizes long-standing assumptions to position the actions of the Kahnawà:ke nation as that of refusal, a valid alternative to political recognition. Through in-depth ethnographic research, Simpson identifies what is important to the community, as evidenced by her discussion of important intellectual Louis Hall, whose analysis of Mohawk nationhood has deeply influenced Haudenosaunee people, yet has been largely ignored by scholars. . . . Such incisive analysis promises that this study will be influential and widely read. . . . Essential. All levels/libraries.” -- K. L. Ackley * Choice *“Simpson accomplishes what she set out to do in this text, namely to offer a critical evaluation of settler colonialism as experienced by Kahnawà:ke Mohawk. Her book is beautifully written: her prose is elegant, and she interweaves ethnographic research with political history and theory to build her argument. … Simpson enhances our understanding of how a community of people struggle to understand, and why they must continually fight for, their political independence after centuries of settler colonialism.” -- Ruth Burgett Jolie * Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism *“[A]n essential read for any study of settler colonialism, native/indigenous/first-nation studies, or the study of sovereignty, and also stands on its own as an important narrative of North America’s ongoing colonial history.” -- Ian Kalman * Comparative Studies in Society and History *“Mohawk Interruptus deftly interrogates how settler colonialism and anthropological practice in the United States and Canada have circumscribed Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) identities—and Mohawk identities, in particular—in ways that ignore contested interpretations of indigeneity and serve to erase indigenous nationhood. … A major takeaway from Simpson’s account is that anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and those of us in Native American studies need to theorize and examine how people experience and feel membership, citizenship, and nationhood while not replicating colonial projects of erasure in our scholarly research and writing." -- Lisa K. Neuman * American Ethnologist *“[A] tour de force exploration of contemporary Kahnawa:ke political life. . . . In its examination and sustained critique of the settler colonialism and the politics of nationhood, recognition, and refusal, and its vision of more productive and inclusive understandings of Kahnawa:ke citizenship, Mohawk Interruptus joins some of the most provocative and cutting-edge work taking place in Native/indigenous studies today. We would be wise to heed its challenge to develop similarly rigorous and critical studies of indigenous self-determination throughout the hemisphere, in whatever forms they might take.” -- Kirby Brown * American Indian Culture and Research Journal *"Mohawk Interruptus, was recently voted 'Best First Book Published in 2014' by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and after reading it I can understand why.... The complexities of Indigenous life in Mohawk Interruptus are given neither the security of romanticization nor the comfort of the scholarly pulpit." -- Brendan Hokowhitu * Native American and Indigenous Studies *"Rather than merely a book of and for anthropology, then, Mohawk Interruptus calls upon its reader to rethink action and collectivity through a different modality than the current political registers presume. Refusal, both as a political theoretical concept and as a quotidian shared practice, may allow a continued, powerful, and even potentially joyful relationship to state power." -- Kennan Ferguson * Theory & Event *"[Simpson] offers a highly nuanced and theoretically sophisticated ethnographical study illustrating the kinds of critical research questions insider researchers can ask that lead to new understandings and challenge the orthodoxy. Simpson has made a significant contribution as an insider researcher, an Indigenous studies scholar, an anthropologist, that highlights the exciting new era of Indigenous research we have entered." -- Robert Alexander Innes * Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History *"I expect Mohawk Interruptus will assert its place in the Haudenosaunee canon, which will compel subsequent scholars to take a closer look at how Indigenous communities in general struggle to maintain their political integrity under the pressure of a variety of colonially created borders and the laws that enforce them over the sovereign rights of others." -- David Martínez * Wicazo Sa Review *"This marvelous book is a searing exposition of a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk subjectivity hardened in opposition to social 'facts' taken for granted by millions in settler societies. . . . Readers will appreciate Simpson’s passionately argued and provocative thesis, in-depth and intimate ethnographic descriptions, incisive prose, and iconoclastic engagements with anthropological history and political theory." -- Nicholas Copeland * North American Dialogue *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix 1. Indigenous Interruptions: Mohawk Nationhood, Citizenship, and the State 1 2. A Brief History of Land, Meaning, and Membership in Iroquoia and Kahnawà:ka 37 3. Constructing Kahnawà:ka as an "Out-of-the-Way" Place: Ely S. Parker, Lewis Henry Morgan, and the Writing of the Iroquois Confederacy 67 4. Ethnographic Refusal: Anthropological Need 95 5. Borders, Cigarettes, and Sovereignty 115 6. The Gender of the Flint: Mohawk Nationhood and Citizenship in the Face of Empire 147 Conclusion. Interruptus 177 Appendix. A Note on Materials and Methodology 195 Notes 201 References 229 Index 251

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Despite the depressing story that it has to tell, Land’s End is a real pleasure to read, a tour de force without a trace of bombast, a model of ethnographic writing for new generations of students and agrarian researchers to follow.” -- Ben White * Development and Change *“Every so often we have the privilege of reading a book that, like Tania Li’s Land’s End, radically realigns our thinking on pressing problems. Li combines a nuanced analysis of long-term ethnographic data and a straightforward, yet sophisticated, theoretical framework to prod us to reexamine an issue that is hardly unique to Indonesia: how have landless rural people been left behind in the march toward capitalist agricultural production and market expansion?" -- Sarah Lyon * Anthropological Quarterly *“This text adds deep and valuable ethnographic insight to existing narratives of the emergence of capitalist relations in indigenous societies. It rightfully challenges structuralist accounts of primitive accumulation using detailed ethnographic data. As such, it should be read, and likely will be, beyond the borders of development studies and anthropology." -- Christopher Webb * Canadian Journal of Development Studies *"Land’s End is book of delicate power, almost a laboratory account of how capital seizes hold and transforms the latticework of social relations through an almost banal process of ‘erosion’, where the bearers of capital, unrecognized, participate in the re-invention of their own ‘subject’ position. … Aided by artful ethnography, Land’s End crafts a strange yet deeply familiar world. Many sedimentary views are felled along the way, gently but firmly. Notions of indigeneity, frontier, custom, moral economy, primitive accumulation, transition, development, and citizenship, all come in for scrutiny and are left rattled.” -- Vinay Gidwani * Antipode *"The combination of the ethnographic longevity of her work with the theoretical sophistication of her analysis results in a provocative account of growing inequality and dynamic capitalist relations. The case studies and stories Li relates bring these elements to life, but the implications stretch far beyond the Lauje highlands." -- Susan M. Darlington * American Ethnologist *"Land’s End is a very fine book indeed. Tania Murray Li has written one of those studies—all too few in number—which, while empirically focused, builds an argument that will resonate with scholars working across widely differing contexts." -- Jonathan Rigg * Pacific Affairs *"Land’s End operates at a compelling theoretical interspace very much needed in contemporary accounts of globalization. . . . In short, it’s really good anthropology." -- Shane Greene * American Anthropologist *“Land’s End is a thorough and compelling piece of ethnographic scholarship. Written in very accessible narrative style, but appropriately grounded in social theory, it is a great read for social scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, rural development practitioners, and inquisitive nonacademics.” -- Ramzi Tubbeh * Rural Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Positions 2. Work and Care 3. Enclosure 4. Capitalist Relations 5. Politics, Revisited Conclusion Appendix: Dramatis Personae Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book is a major contribution that has about it the excitement that comes with addressing genuinely fresh issues. Examining the ethics of everyday life as they are embodied in speech and other kinds of action, its contributors stake out an important new area of research. Certain to have a great impact on anthropology, this is book that should also be widely read by those in all fields who take ethics to be an important topic of study." -- -Joel Robbins University of California, San Diego "A forceful demonstration of what anthropology has to contribute to debates about ethics within moral philosophy." -- -Charles Hirschkind University of California, Berkeley

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsNote on Orthography and Pronunciation, ix Introduction: Unwinding the Language Question, 1 Part I Colonial Literary Modernity 1. The Fetish of Textuality: David Boilat’s Notebooks and the Making of a Literary Past, 33 2. Para-literary Authorship: Colonial Education and the Uses of Literature, 51 3. Toward the Future Reader: Print Networks and the Question of the Audience, 96 Part II Decolonization and the Language Question 4. Senghor’s Grammatology: The Political Imaginaries of Writing African Languages, 123 5. Counterpoetics: Translation as Aesthetic Constraint in Sembène’s Mandabi and Ndao’s Buur Tilleen, 152 Part III World Literature, Neoliberalism 6. How Mariama Bâ Became World Literature: Translation and the Legibility of Feminist Critique, 181 7. Aesthetics After Austerity: Boubacar Boris Diop and the Work of Literature in Neoliberal Senegal, 203 Epilogue. Out of Time: Decolonization and the Future of World Literature, 233 Acknowledgments, 243 Notes, 247 Bibliography, 303 Index, 331

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Book SynopsisTextures of the Ordinary shows how life is marked not only by catastrophic events but also by the soft knife of economic deprivation and the repetitive corrosions and routine violence within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence.Table of ContentsPreface | xi Introduction | 1 1 Wittgenstein and Anthropology: Anticipations | 29 2 A Politics of the Ordinary: Action, Expression, and Everyday Life | 58 3 Ordinary Ethics: Take One | 96 4 Ethics, Self-Knowledge, and Words Not at Home: The Ephemeral and the Durable | 120 5 Disorders of Desire or Moral Striving? Engaging the Life of the Other | 148 6 Psychiatric Power, Mental Illness, and the Claim to the Real: Foucault in the Slums of Delhi | 173 7 The Boundaries of the “We”: Cruelty, Responsibility, and Forms of Life | 198 8 A Child Disappears: Law in the Courts, Law in the Interstices of Everyday Life | 216 9 Of Mistakes, Errors, and Superstition: Reading Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer | 246 10 Concepts Crisscrossing: Anthropology and Knowledge-Making | 275 11 The Life of Concepts: In the Vicinity of Dying | 307 Acknowledgments | 333 Notes | 337 References | 373 Index | 403

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Book SynopsisReassesses conventional understanding of Japan’s Asia-Pacific War by defamiliarizing and expanding the rhetorical narrative. The nine chapters, diverse in theme and method, are united in their goal to recover a measured historicity about the conflict by either introducing new areas of knowledge or reinterpreting existing ones.

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Book SynopsisDiverse perspectives on Manila that suggest the city's exhilarating sights and sounds broaden how Philippine histories are defined and understoodTrade Review“Beauty and Brutality is a carefully curated, original, and sophisticated collection of essays that explores Manila in all of its complexity, possibility, and potential. Readers will engage with Manila through multiple senses—from the snarl of traffic and the density of the city’s air to its stunning display of cultural forms of resistance and persistence amid national and transnational violence. Beauty and Brutality provides key historical and contextual information, serving as an invaluable orientation to the city, what it represents, and its significance both within the Philippines and abroad.”—Denise Cruz, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and author of Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina“Metro Manila has long served as one of the world’s poster cities for uneven and unequal development. These exhaustive studies in Beauty and Brutality explore the vast complexity and manifold contradictions of Manila as a space of dense inhabitation and a place of conflicting affections. The editors and contributors attend, with criticality and care, to the irrepressible desires and hopes of its citizens, inveterate survivors of Manila’s long history of beautification and brutalization by capitalists and colonizers. To such ‘beauty’ and ‘brutality,’ contributor Ferdinand Lopez adds ‘blood,’ with its paradoxical connotations of vitality, vigor, and violence. Bloody, not just beautiful and brutal, this incomparable city is, indeed!”—Oscar V. Campomanes, Professor of English at Ateneo de Manila University"An essential anthology of 15 essays curated by Manalansan, Diaz, and Tolentino, the book takes beauty as a point of departure to explore diverse spatio-temporal practices of city-making through Manila.... [A] unique contribution to both urban studies and Manila studies.... Beauty and Brutality presents an indispensable addition to the growing body of contemporary and historical works that seek to creatively document the fascinating shifts and spaces in a rapidly changing Manila."—Journal of Urban Affairs

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Book SynopsisUnder capitalism, economic growth is seen as the key to collective well-being. In Self-Devouring Growth Julie Livingston upends this notion, showing that while consumption-driven growth may seem to benefit a particular locale, it produces a number of unacknowledged, negative consequences that ripple throughout the wider world. Structuring the book as a parable in which the example of Botswana has lessons for the rest of the globe, Livingston shows how fundamental needs for water, food, and transportation become harnessed to what she calls self-devouring growth: an unchecked and unsustainable global pursuit of economic growth that threatens catastrophic environmental destruction. As Livingston notes, improved technology alone cannot stave off such destruction; what is required is a greater accounting of the web of relationships between humans, nonhuman beings, plants, and minerals that growth entails. Livingston contends that by failing to understand these relationships and the cTrade Review“Highly engaging, deeply thoughtful, and beautifully written, Self-Devouring Growth helps us to understand the environmental dangers the planet faces not as something to be avoided or prevented, but as something to expect and to live through. Julie Livingston's thinking about environmental and other futures is a breath of fresh air and cuts across stale debates around economic development and environmental sustainability in a very original way.” -- James Ferguson, author of * Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution *“Julie Livingston's concept of ‘self-devouring growth’ will become an essential tool across many forms of scholarship—and for concerned earth dwellers across the planet. As Livingston puts it, “GROW! is a mantra so powerful that it obscures the destruction it portends.” Self-Devouring Growth tells of the failure of Botswana's public water system, strained by failing rains and pumped dry by mining and commercial beef rearing for export. Regarded as a success of development, Botswana is the ideal site for a parable of the Anthropocene.” -- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, coeditor of * Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene *"Livingston has written a beautiful book, which speaks from Tswana cosmology towards the complexities of global problems, and that points towards forms of activism that we can all take forward." -- Shannon Morreira * Africa Is a Country *"An imaginative parable about human society and life on Earth. . . . The author notes that everyone cries foul when poorer countries achieve a standard of living enjoyed elsewhere, yet the global inequality reflected in this complaint suggests the need for collective creative thinking about new forms of growth for life on Earth to survive. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- E. P. Renne * Choice *"I find self-devouring growth a powerful and clarifying concept. I’m more accustomed to thinking about the climate change emergency through numbers, like the temperature beyond which the earth must not warm, or the number of tons of carbon we can safely put into the atmosphere. Instead, Livingston illuminates our way of life. She is asking a lot of the reader: she is asking us to understand that many of the things that make us feel well, prosperous, and secure are the very things that are killing us. . . . It is deeply unsettling to live with." -- Emily Callaci * Dissent *"Livingston has forged a path into an anthropology of futures, one responsive to and reflective of the Anthropocene and the threats to human survival we witness daily on our ever-more vulnerable planet. She offers methodological and conceptual tools that will enable other scholars to grapple with futures, those that are unfolding now because of self-devouring growth, and those we want to imagine differently. This book is for everyone." -- Sharon R. Kaufman * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“I like reading Julie Livingston’s Self-Devouring Growth as a push against the consumption of modernist time—that is, against the suspension of historical flux, imaginative possibility, and alter-social development.... The book so convincingly dispels efforts to reduce the planetary condition to a matrix problem begging for technological solutions....” -- Alex Blanchette * Somatosphere *“It is a testament to the distilled clarity and prescience of Julie Livingston’s parable of a book that its title, Self-Devouring Growth, can strike one immediately as both so true and suddenly so evident....” -- Abou Farman * Somatosphere *“[Self-Devouring Growth is] a book that offers an elegant and important argument about industrial capitalism and growth that is devouring the world in which we live.... It is a book firmly grounded in critical medical anthropology, which has for a long time dug into the political economy of health and the structural violence of capitalism....” -- Fanny Chabrol * Somatosphere *Only Julie Livingston could write this book because of the sources, sensibilities, and experiences from which she draws.... [She] leads us to think about the biggest burning question of our common era: What kind of future is possible when our ways of living are literally invested in our collective destruction?” -- Juno Salazar Parreñas * Somatosphere *“Through the realist genre of the parable, this marvelous little book discusses an interconnected world organized by ‘self-devouring growth’.... This immensely readable book will appeal to a broad audience of academics, policymakers and practitioners in international development....” -- Tanya Matthan * Progress in Development Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Prologue: A Planetary Parable 1 1. Rainmaking and Other Forgotten Things 11 2. In the Time of Beef 35 Cattle to Beef: A Photo Essay of Abstraction 61 3. Roads, Sand, and the Motorized Cow 85 4. Power and Possibility, or Did You Know Aesop Was Once a Slave? 121 Notes 129 Index 153

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Book SynopsisIn Parenting Empires, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas focuses on the parenting practices of Latin American urban elites to analyze how everyday experiences of whiteness, privilege, and inequality reinforce national and hemispheric idioms of anti-corruption and austerity. Ramos-Zayas shows that for upper-class residents in the affluent neighborhoods of Ipanema (Rio de Janeiro) and El Condado (San Juan), parenting is particularly effective in providing moral grounding for neoliberal projects that disadvantage the overwhelmingly poor and racialized people who care for and teach their children. Wealthy parents in Ipanema and El Condado cultivate a liberal cosmopolitanism by living in multicultural city neighborhoods rather than gated suburban communities. Yet as Ramos-Zayas reveals, their parenting strategies, which stress spirituality, empathy, and equality, allow them to preserve and reproduce their white privilege. Defining this moral economy as parenting empires, she sheds light on how child-rearing practices permit urban elites in the Global South to sustain and profit from entrenched social and racial hierarchies.Trade Review“In this brilliant ethnography, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas invites us into the intimate worlds of parents and children in two affluent enclaves to listen carefully to conversations about ordinary things: nature, yoga, Eastern spirituality, mindfulness, government corruption, austerity, and sovereignty. She astutely and sensitively shows us how to read the mundane worlds of childrearing as imperial formations that are recasting hierarchies of race and class in very unequal societies under the shadow of U.S. empire.” -- Laura Briggs, author of * Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico *“This ambitious and fascinating book connects the interior lives, affects, and childrearing practices of urban elites in Brazil and Puerto Rico to their spatial environments, interpersonal relationships, and national and international political and discursive contexts. Based on rich ethnography in an understudied field, Parenting Empires makes a strong contribution to research on elites and will be of interest to people working on a broad range of issues from class, race, and identity to parenting, urban studies, and development.” -- Rachel Sherman, author of * Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence *"Social scientists and political philosophers – as well as professional politicians and all those who are concerned with racial and class injustices – should take careful note of this contribution by Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, especially on how Latin American elites come to morally justify wealth and inequalities in the name of parenting and austerity subjectivities." -- Jaime Fierro * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Parenting Empires reveals that a strategy for governability in subject populations is to cultivate the imperial core's likeness in them, or at least in the key elite. I recommend this high-end science for students and scholars of social/racial stratification, political economy, and Latin Americanists of all stripes." -- Stanley Bailey * American Journal of Sociology *“Agile, informed, and engaging prose.... Where Parenting Empires reveals itself as a trail-blazing text within critical race studies in Latin America is in the author’s knack for picking up, and keenly reflecting, on the anxiety and uncertainty that sit at the root of white identities.” -- Guillermo Rebollo Gil * CENTRO *"Brimming over with insightful analyses, memorable fieldwork, and instigating arguments, Parenting Empires is a pathbreaking monograph on the workings of race and class privilege among Latin American upper classes." -- Maureen E. O'Dougherty * Anthropos *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix 1. Parenting Empires and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Brazil and Puerto Rico 1 2. The Feel of Ipanema: Social History and Structure of Feeling in Rio de Janeiro 37 3. Parenting El Condado: Social History and Immaterial Materiality in San Juan 65 4. Whiteness from Within: Elite Interiority, Personhood, and Parenthood 95 5. Schooling Whiteness: Adult Friendships, Social Ease, and the Privilege of Choosing Race 127 6. The Extended Family: Intimate Hierarchies and Ancestral Imaginaries 157 7. Affective Inequalities: Childcare Workers and Elite Consumptions of Blackness 185 Epilogue 215 Notes 231 References 261 Index 277

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Book SynopsisIn Chemical Heroes Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military''s attempts to design performance enhancement technologies and create pharmacological 'supersoldiers' capable of withstanding extreme trauma. Bickford traces the deep history of efforts to biologically fortify and extend the health and lethal power of soldiers from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, from early adoptions of mandatory immunizations to bio-protective gear, to the development and spread of new performance enhancing drugs during the global War on Terrorism. In his examination of government efforts to alter soldiers'' bodies through new technologies, Bickford invites us to contemplate what constitutes heroism when armor becomes built in, wired in, and even edited into the molecular being of an American soldier. Lurking in the background and dark recesses of all US military enhancement research, Bickford demonstrates, is the desire to preserve US military and imperial power.Trade Review“In exploring projects fantastical and frightening in their forms of intervention and enhancement, Andrew Bickford offers important insights into not only the US military's efforts to fortify the bodies and minds of its service members but also what it means to go to war on a twenty-first-century global battlefield.” -- Sarah Wagner, author of * What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War *“Andrew Bickford presents a mind-blowing array of technological and pharmacological innovations that promise to deliver the next stage of human warriors while raising the possibility that many of these innovations may unleash new nightmares. Drawing out the themes of utopian promises and dystopian realities, Chemical Heroes makes a significant theoretical contribution to anthropology and critical studies of the military that should be broadly read, discussed, and taught by anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and others working in peace and conflict studies.” -- David H. Price, author of * Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology *“Chemical Heroes describes decades of efforts by the US military to go beyond armoring soldiers from external attack by remaking soldiers’ bodies in ways that let them remain in combat for ever-longer periods of time.... Chemical Heroes lets readers see into the military’s fantasy world.” -- Richard Lachmann * Social Forces *"[Chemical Heroes] is a significant contribution to military studies in anthropology, sociology, and political science, supplemented with tables, diagrams, illustrations, and direct quotations from military documents and research." -- G. B. Osborne * Choice *“Chemical Heroes breaks new ground by exploring military innovation as a site of anxious preemption and dead­ly play, highlighting its contradictions, tensions, and nervous state in the robust tradition of anthropological work on militarization and US empire. The book provides a set of tools that will be valuable to students and scholars alike.” -- Jocelyn Lim Chua * Anthropological Quarterly *“Those interested in a detailed history of the development of military biomedical interventions will be quite pleased. . . . Scholars of peace and conflict studies, biomedicine, technology, and labor will be well served by Bickford’s detailed work.” -- Jesse Wozniak * Contemporary Sociology *“Vivid accounts, along with the author’s lucid, unpretentious, and conversational style and wonderful photo illustrations, will make it appealing to undergraduate and graduate students alike. . . . [Chemical Heroes] will be required reading for anyone interested in the militarization of American life.” -- Roberto J. González * Current Anthropology *“Chemical Heroes is an important and deeply researched archive of information regarding the U.S. military’s vision for the future. . . . The book is simultaneously technical and readable and will contribute to critical military studies, science and technology studies, as well as the anthropology of the body.” -- Christopher Webb * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *Table of ContentsTerms and Abbreviations ix Acknowledgments xiii Prologue: Supersoldier Bob Writes Home xvii Introduction: Chemical Heroes 1 Part I. Thematic Framings 1. "Innovation at the Speed of Change": War, Anticipation, Imagination 37 2. The Superman Solution: The New Man, Superheroes, and the Supersoldier 56 3. Government (T)Issue: Military Medicine, Performance Enhancement, and the Biology of the Soldier 75 Part II. Early Imaginaries of the US Supersolder 4. "Science Will Modernize Him": The Soldier of the Futurearmy 103 5. "A Biological Armor for the Soldier": Idiophylaxis and the Self-Armoring Soldier 111 Part III. Imagining the Modern US Supersoldier 6. "The Force Is With You": An Army of One to the Future Force Warrior 147 7. Molecular Militarization: War, Drugs, and the Structures of Unfeeling 180 8. "Kill-Proofing the Soldier": Inner Armor, Environmental Threats, and the World as Battlefield 216 9. "Catastrophic Success": Back to the Futurarmy 239 10. Natural Cowards, Chemical Heroes 245 Works Cited 259 Index 285

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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 capTrade 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

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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

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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

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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

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Book SynopsisIn A Vital Frontier Andrea Muehlebach examines the work of activists across Europe as they organize to preserve water as a commons and public good in the face of privatization. Traversing social, political, legal, and hydrological terrains, Muehlebach situates water as a political fault line at the frontiers of financialization, showing how the seemingly relentless expansion of capital into public utilities is being challenged by an equally relentless and often successful insurgence of political organizing. Drawing on ethnographic research, Muehlebach presents water protests as a vital politics that comprises popular referenda, barricades in the streets, huge demonstrations, the burning of utility bills, and legal disputes over transparency and contracts. As Muehlebach documents, Europe’s water activists articulate their own values of democracy and just price, raising far-reaching political questions about private versus common property and financing, liberal democracy, soTrade Review"This book will be helpful for faculty and students interested in social movements, neoliberalism, and/or international water management practices. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- E. Bridger Wilson * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction. A Vital Frontier 1 1. You Cannot Sell to Us What We Already Possess! 35 2. No More Blood from These Stones! 67 3. We Berliners Want Our Water Back! 103 4. Just Price 135 Epilogue 167 Notes 179 References 213 Index 239

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Book SynopsisComplicating perspectives on diversity in video gamesGamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular understanding of gamer shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight, adolescent, cisgender male, the troubles that emerge both confirm and challenge our understanding of identity politics. In Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips excavates the turbulent relationships between surface and depth in contemporary gaming culture, taking readers under the hood of the mechanisms of video games in order to understand the ways that difference gets baked into its technological, ludic, ideological, and social systems. By centering the insights of queer and women of color feminisms in readings of online harassment campaigns, industry animation practices, and popular video games like Portal and Mass Effect, Phillips adds essential analytical tools to our conversations about video games. She embraces the trouble that attends disciplinary crossroads, linking thTrade ReviewGamer Trouble is a much-needed twist on representation, gaming culture, and the technology–human interaction through a feminist lens in gaming studies ... Embracing the generative power of troubling ruptures in gaming conversations, Phillips moves the discussion surrounding gaming studies toward a productive avenue that will change how understand the relationship between games, people, and politics. * The Journal of Popular Culture *Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in video games or game studies. Inspired by queer (and) women of color feminism, this much-needed, timely, and insightful book troubles the figure of the gamer and boldly shifts how we understand video games and their place in society. -- Bonnie Ruberg, author of Video Games Have Always Been QueerAs Phillips demonstrates, the gaming world is no stranger to the turbulence and struggle over meaning, identity, and culture. But by historicizing both the racism and sexism in the industry, Gamer Trouble demands a different kind of engagement by the user: one that does not shy away from this complexity. Rather, Phillips lifts the hood to understand how these histories are made both part and parcel of gameplay. -- Radhika Gajjala, author of Digital Diasporas: Labor and Affect in Gendered Indian Digital PublicsI learnt a lot from Gamer Trouble, from its feminist citational multiplicity, alternative methods of textual analysis, and inspirational structural flow. All of these will have a lasting influence towards my own approaches to studying and writing about video games. * First Person Scholar *

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Book SynopsisA cultural study of modern Qatar and how it navigates change and tradition Qatar, an ambitious country in the Arabian Gulf, grabbed headlines as the first Middle Eastern nation selected to host the FIFA World Cup. As the wealthiest country in the worldand one of the fastest-growingit is known for its capital, Doha, which boasts a striking, futuristic skyline. In Changing Qatar, Geoff Harkness takes us beyond the headlines, providing a fresh perspective on modern-day life in the increasingly visible Gulf. Drawing on three years of immersive fieldwork and more than a hundred interviews, he describes a country in transition, one struggling to negotiate the fluid boundaries of culture, tradition, and modernity. Harkness shows how Qataris reaffirmand challengetraditions in many areas of everyday life, from dating and marriage, to clothing and humor, to gender and sports. A cultural study of citizenship in modern Qatar, this book offers an illuminating portrait that cannot be found elsewheTrade ReviewThis book reads very well. The author’s writing style is engaging, easy to follow and thought provoking....Given the dearth of information on Qatar, I believe this book will have wide appeal and provide useful and interesting insight into a little known country and culture. -- Christine Lindholm, Associate Dean for Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the ArtsChanging Qatar changes not just how we think about the Arabian Gulf but how we think about political order, gender and the role of great wealth in making up cities and the people within them. It is a singular accomplishment—shrewd, engrossing, and rich with ideas and substance. -- Harvey Molotch, co-editor of The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress

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Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated graphic novel tells the history of contemporary Thailand through the life of a blind man who walks on the streets of the capital for the last time.Trade Review"The artwork is at least as important as text. Sara Fabbri’s colored line drawings give the tale an urgency that words themselves cannot convey." -- Peter Gordon * Asian Review of Books *"Shades of hope and humor glimmer amid the forces of inequity and impunity depicted in this memorable book that homes in on the rich lives of ordinary people, those who the country's rulers are meant to serve." -- David Hopkins * Nikkei Asia *"This book is a triumph." -- Chris Baker * Bangkok Post *“Well informed and captivating. Much more than a didactic good-versus-evil tale, The King of Bangkok does justice to the complex people who animate a country that many of us would do well to know better.” -- Rosalie Metro, University of Missouri-Columbia * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsForeword by Nick Sousanis Preface Prelude Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Acknowledgments Appendix I: Timeline of Events Appendix II: Interview with the Authors Appendix III: Reading Guide Appendix IV: Further Readings

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Book SynopsisIn Frankenstein Was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity, and Symbolism, Michael Owen Jones tackles topics often overlooked in foodways. At the outset he notes it was Victor Frankenstein''s daemon in Mary Shelley''s novel that advocated vegetarianism, not the scientist whose name has long been attributed to his creature. Jones explains how we communicate through what we eat, the connection between food choice and who we are or want to appear to be, the ways that many of us self-medicate moods with foods, and the nature of disgust. He presents fascinating case studies of religious bigotry and political machinations triggered by rumored bans on pork, the last meal requests of prisoners about to be executed, and the Utopian vision of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of England''s greatest poets, that was based on a vegetable diet like the creature''s meals in Frankenstein. Jones also scrutinizes how food is used and abused on the campaign trail, how gender issue

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Book SynopsisA Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers'' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.Trade ReviewIn her ethnographic study, conducted over a three-year period, Dan-Cohen followed two laboratories with widely differing technical and epistemological approaches working in a complex multidisciplinary and high-profile field. Observations and interviews included here catch the day-to-day action as principal investigators, post-docs, and students navigate successes and failures in the laboratory, face the challenges of publishing, and deal with the complexities of institutional politics. These accounts are both informative and entertaining. * Choice *In her ethnography of two synthetic biology laboratories at Princeton University, Dan-Cohen writes that synthetic biology is "the latest permutation in a history of mutual incursions between nature and culture, and a contested, heterogeneous, and unstable one at that * American Anthroplogist *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Labs, Lives, Technoscience 2. The Virtues of the Naïve View 3. Looking for Patterns 4. To the Editor 5. On the Move Epilogue

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Book SynopsisIn this book, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson draws on philosophy, biography, ethnography, and literature to explore the meanings and affordances of friendship—a relationship just as significant as, yet somehow different from, kinship and love. Beginning with Aristotle’s accounts of friendship as a political virtue and Montaigne’s famous essay on friendship as a form of love, Jackson examines the tension between the political and personal resonances of friendship in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, the biography of the Indian historian Brijen Gupta, and the oral narratives of a Kuranko storyteller, Keti Ferenke Koroma. He offers reflections on childhood friends, imaginary friends, lifelong friendships, and friendships with animals. He ruminates particularly on the complications of friendship in the context of anthropological fieldwork, exploring the contradiction between the egalitarian spirit of friendship on the one hand and, on the other, the power imbalance between ethnographers and their interlocutors. Through these stories, Jackson explores the unpredictable interplay of mutability and mutuality in intimate human relationships, and the critical importance of choice in forming friendship—what it means to be loyal to friends through good times and bad, and even in the face of danger. Through a blend of memoir, theory, ethnography, and fiction, Jackson shows us how the elective affinities of friendship transcend culture, gender, and age, and offer us perennial means of taking stock of our lives and getting a measure of our own self-worth.Trade Review"A compelling exploration of friendship, rich with insights and astute anthropological and philosophical reflections. Friendship offers a highly original treatment of an important topic in clear and incisive terms. I know of no other work that examines the many diverse aspects of friendship in people’s lives in such rich and informed ways." * Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College *

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Book SynopsisAs activists strategize, build resistance, and foster solidarity, they also call for better dialogue between researchers and movements and for research that can aid their causes. In this volume, contributors examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a unique social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so activists and social movements can fight them. Featuring research from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Bangladesh, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and the United States on matters as diverse as anti-poverty organizing, prisoners'' re-entry, anti-fracking campaigns, left-inspired think-tank development, non-governmental partnerships, involuntary psychiatric admission, and perils of immigration medical examination, contributors to this volume adopt a bottom-up approach to inquiry to produce knowledge

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Book SynopsisDorothea Bleek’s selection of xam narratives from the well-known Bleek and Lloyd Collection were originally published in the journal Bantu Studies during the 1930s. Decades later, Jeremy Hollmann collated and edited these extracts, adding notes on each of the narratives as well as Dorothea Bleek’s ‘sketch ‘of xam grammar. The first edition of his book was published in 2004.This substantially revised second edition integrates new scholarship on the Bleek and Lloyd archive, and restores previously omitted material. The introduction to each narrative is expanded to contextualise it within the archive as a whole and, where relevant, reference it to the Notebook of which it is a part. The texts are critically reassessed, with additional notes and commentaries, particularly on English translations of the xam language. Customs and Beliefs of the xam, second edition, is an in-depth, authoritative resource that will be invaluable to scholars, heritage workers and activists.Table of Contents Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction to the second edition Contributors to Customs and Beliefs of the |xam |xam speech People in the notebooks PART 1 BABOONS The baboon narratives Baboons and the Early Race Special powers of baboons Respecting baboons Narratives PART 2 THE LION Lions are people too The extraordinary powers of lions Respect for lions Lions and sorcery Narratives PART 3 GAME ANIMALS Respecting the game The potency of game animals Narratives PART 4 OMENS, WINDMAKING, CLOUDS Relationships with the wind Winking The wind Narratives PART 5 RAIN ǃkhwɑː and the rain The riders of the rain ǃkhwɑː and women Respecting the rain Taking care of the community Narratives PART 6 RAINMAKING Fetching the rain Hilltops: places of power Angry rainmakers Narratives PART 7 SORCERORS The anatomy of sorcery Relations between ǃgiːtǝn and ordinary people The ǀnu ǃkˀe, the spirit people Narratives PART 8 MORE ABOUT SORCERORS AND CHARMS The breaking of the string The old woman and the chameleon Vegetable medicines and charms Narratives PART 9 SPECIAL SPEECH OF ANIMALS AND MOON The Early Race Storytelling Narratives APPENDIX 1: DOROTHEA F. BLEEK’S BUSHMAN GRAMMAR Introduction by Tom Güldemann ǀxam Bushman Grammar by Dorothea Bleek APPENDIX 2: SUMMARY OF THE NARRATIVES REFERENCES INDEX

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Book SynopsisTribes and Politics in Yemen tells the story of the Houthi conflict in Sa'dah Province, Yemen, as seen through the eyes of the local tribes. In the West the Houthi conflict, which erupted in 2004, is often defined through the lenses of either the Iranian-Saudi proxy war or the Sunni-Shia divide. Yet, as experienced by locals, the Houthi conflict is much more deeply rooted in the recent history of Sa'dah Province. Its origins must be sought in the political, economic, social and sectarian transformations since the 1960s civil war and their repercussions on the local society, which is dominated by tribal norms. From the civil war to the Houthi conflict these transformations involve the same individuals, families and groups, and are driven by the same struggles over resources, prerogatives, and power. This book is based on years of anthropological fieldwork expertise both on the ground and through digital anthropological approaches. It offers a detailed account of the local complexities of the Houthi conflict and its historical background and underscores the absolute imperative of understanding the highly local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal conflict in Yemen.Trade Review'Remarkable.'‘An excellent book . . . an indispensable read to anyone with an interest in Yemeni politics, both past and present.’'Brandt . . . has delved deeply into the emergence and evolution of the Houthi phenomenon and explains in extensive detail the entangled and incredibly complex roots of the conflict . . . she has done so thoroughly, convincingly and admirably . . . . an invaluable glimpse into the complexity of Yemeni society and politics.''As a writer and researcher on Yemen, this is the book I've been waiting for. A thorough, painstakingly assembled account of the rise of one of the world's least understood rebel groups - it makes for a riveting read. This is an indispensable addition to the pool of knowledge on Yemen and a must read for everyone who wants to understand why we are here today.' -- Peter Salisbury, Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House'The most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date of the Houthi conflict in Yemen, providing critical insights into the rise of the Houthis as a national movement and how a local conflict metastasized into a regional one. Published as the Saudi-led "Operation Decisive Storm" is still in full swing, this long overdue and well-researched book will help readers understand how Yemen became a laboratory for new wars in the Middle East.' -- Gabriele vom Bruck, Senior Lecturer at School of Oriental and African Studies; author of Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition'Marieke Brandt's book is a fascinating piece of ethnography and history. Through exceptional fieldwork in the northern highlands of Yemen, it explores the minute details and roots of a political and religious phenomenon that remains fundamental to our understanding of the contemporary Arabian Peninsula.' -- Laurent Bonnefoy, researcher at the CERI/Sciences Po, author of Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious Identity‘This book provides a deep and comprehensive insight into the complex “Houthi conflict” by studying its political, tribal and personal dynamics. Brandt pays great attention to the wide spectrum of local causes that explain the conflict’s onset, persistence, and expansion on the basis of a “bottom-up” social anthropological approach.’ -- Horst Kopp, former professor at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; researcher on the urban and rural geography of Yemen'Brandt's detailed, even intimate, analysis of the Houthi movement's history, internal social dynamics and relations with local and regional actors is essential reading for understanding its current and prospective role in Yemen's politics. Beyond Yemen, the book demonstrates the importance of anthropological analysis in explaining local and national politics.' -- Helen Lackner, Research Associate at London Middle East Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies; author of Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Jussi Parikka’s A Geology of Media really expands what media theory can do. The materiality of media is no longer restricted to questions of economies or technics but extends all the way to its molecular composition. It connects the fast calculations of digital time to the deepest of temporalities, that of the earth itself. An essential contribution to a media theory for the Anthropocene."—McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red "A Geology of Media does not complete or close down an area of research, but rather opens one up. This book is vital to any continuing consideration of media today."—Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism"A powerful, illuminating, passionate book rewriting the history and future of media from a much needed materialist perspective."—Theory, Culture & Society"Parikka prods us to think big, to get past our primordial inhibitions, to look beyond mass media consumerism."—Furtherfield"Parikka’s book offers refreshing insights into the materiality of digital technologies - that have radically changed cinema too - and can make us place past and theoretical debates into the present."—New Review in Film and Television Studies"Parikka points readers toward a more expansive media theory in ways that no other researcher has."—CHOICE"A satisfying and challenging book."—boundary 2"Parikka’s invaluable book will prompt a myriad of important conversations within his discipline over the nature of media and technology."—The New Inquiry"A Geology of Media offers a greatly expanded definition of media materialism, productively redefines the scope of media archaeology, and nuances the discourse of ecocritical media theory with its emphasis on the importance of the nonorganic world."—Afterimage"With A Geology of New Media, Parikka not only expands and vitalizes the fields of media theory and media history, he also forces the humanities at large to rethink its methods and objectives."—Spheres"A Geology of Media is an excellent book, which mixes cultural theory and history with geological science and contemporary art."—The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory"Radical in its far-reaching and interdisciplinary approach, and welcome for being so, the scope of A Geology of Media reflects its topical intricacy whilst reshaping the arenas of discourse in which interrogations of an evolving, non-discrete, complex of media cultures can take place."—TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies"A provocative book that succeeds in proposing a potentially vast field of study."—Early Popular Visual Culture"A Geology of Media provides rich theoretic interventions and examples that expand on the increasing scholarship on the Anthropocene, materiality, and waste."—Cultural Geographies" A welcome contribution to this relevant area of study."—Prabuddha Bharata"Jussi Parikka deeply has examined the rawest matter of media."—Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly "In A Geology of Media, Jussia Parikka offers a refreshingly raw materiality approach to media studies." —Culture MachineTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Materiality: Grounds of Media and Culture2. An Alternative Deep Time of the Media3. Psychogeophysics of Technology4. Dust and the Exhausted Life5. Fossil FuturesAfterword: So-Called NatureAppendix. Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art MethodGarnet Hertz and Jussi ParikkaNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book consists of eight comparative studies drawn from history, archeology, economics, economic history, geography, and political science. The studies cover a spectrum of approaches; geographically, they include the United States, Mexico, Brazil, western Europe, tropical Africa, India, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand, and other Pacific islands.Trade ReviewA superb collection of eminently teachable essays bound together by a common methodological framework that connects it directly to cutting-edge theoretical and empirical research across the disciplines of anthropology, archeology, history, political science, and sociology. -- John Coatsworth, Columbia UniversityNatural Experiments of History reaches across a wide variety of disciplines, in ways that should be accessible to just about every educated reader. It is tied together not by topic or region but by the idea that we can make useful and insightful comparisons in ways that are not casual or sloppy, but actually contribute to our understanding of human life. -- Jeffry Frieden, Harvard UniversityNatural Experiments of History is a short book packed with huge ideas. Its collected essays advocate how controlled experiments can be applied to the messy realities of human history, politics, culture, economics and the environment. It demonstrates productive interdisciplinary collaborations but also reveals gulfs between different cultures of academia...All of the essays in Natural Experiments of History will trigger debate. -- Jon Christensen * Nature *This ambitious, at times challenging, book aspires to contribute new ways of historical thinking and historical research by drawing attention, on the one hand, to the similarities between science (including social sciences) and history, and on the other, by using social sciences methods, especially statistical analysis, to study history. The editors argue that though the difference between studies of nature and human history is obvious, there are clear overlaps. They can be viewed through studying comparative history or by conducting "natural experiments of history" and analyzing the "perturbations" and their causes (exogenous or endogenous) in the involved cases. The book offers a broad array of case studies to illustrate and explain the argument, ranging from nonliterate to contemporary societies and from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to Brazil, India, and tropical Africa. The comparative methods showcased are quite versatile, from two-way to multiple-way comparisons. All the case studies are interesting and help demonstrate how, via comparative study, one society's, region's, or country's situation is better displayed and explained by juxtaposing it with other, similar ones. A useful read in macro, global history. -- Q. E. Wang * Choice *Natural Experiments of History is a thought-provoking collection of essays that covers an impressive array of topics and would make an excellent text for a course on comparative studies of human history." -- Thomas E. Currie * Cliodynamics *Table of Contents* Prologue: Natural Experiments of History Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson * Controlled Comparison and Polynesian Cultural Evolution Patrick V. Kirch * Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies James Belich * Politics, Banking, and Economic Development: Evidence from New World Economies Stephen Haber * Intra-Island and Inter-Island Comparisons Jared Diamond * Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades Nathan Nunn * Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer * From Ancien Regime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson * Afterword: Using Comparative Methods in Studies of Human History Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson * Contributors

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Book SynopsisAnthropologist Bruce Albert captures the poetic voice of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon, in this unique reading experience—a coming-of-age story, historical account, and shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.Trade ReviewA perfectly grounded account of what it is like to live an indigenous life in communion with one’s personal spirits. We are losing worlds upon worlds. -- Louise Erdrich * New York Times Book Review *What does it mean when someone says they can understand the inner lives of animals, trees, or even forests? Bruce Albert and Davi Kopenawa provide a vivid sense of this in The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. The Yanomami of the Amazon, like all the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia, have experienced the end of what was once their world. Yet they have survived and somehow succeeded in making sense of a wounded existence. They have a lot to teach us. -- Amitav Ghosh * The Guardian *One of the first and best autobiographical narratives by an indigenous lowland Amazonian…The book is a mix of autobiography, history, personal philosophy, and cultural criticism of whites for their destruction of the world, worship of the material, and lack of spirituality and vitality…The book is not only finely detailed and full of challenging philosophical points, it also contains much humor…Ultimately, it is Kopenawa’s voice that tells us who he is, who his people are, and who we are to them. It is complex and nuanced; I’d go so far as to call The Falling Sky a literary treasure: invaluable as academic reading, but also a must for anyone who wants to understand more of the diverse beauty and wonder of existence. -- Daniel L. Everett * New Scientist *I have just read your manuscript and am enormously impressed by this work of such powerful methodological interest and prodigious documentary richness. It wholly captivates the reader yet is simultaneously so complex, raising so many questions. -- Claude Lévi-Strauss, letter to Bruce Albert, July 10, 2006The words of the Yanomami shamans are powerful: they conjure up another world responsible for this one. Davi Kopenawa proves it for us. Not only do his words give us an unparalleled experience of the life of the Yanomami, but his moving description of their struggle to save the forest and themselves from destruction by the whites reveals the modern tragedy of indigenous peoples in ways we never imagined. -- Marshall Sahlins, University of ChicagoKopenawa provides a fascinating glimpse into his life as well as into Yanomami cultural beliefs and practices, setting his story against the various threats the Yanomami people and their forest have faced since the 1960s...Kopenawa's story is eloquent, engaging, and thought-provoking, exuding heartfelt wisdom. This extraordinary and richly detailed work is an outstanding explication of the Yanomami worldview as well as a plea to all people to respect and preserve the rain forest. -- Elizabeth Salt * Library Journal (starred review) *This engaging text, the autobiography of Yanomami shaman and activist Davi Kopenawa, translated with some prefatory remarks, appendixes, notes, and additional biographical comments by anthropologist Albert, offers a valuable insider perspective on a much-studied Amazonian society, with rich details on myth and religious practices, including shamanic initiation. Albert frames this story with a half-century-long history of exploitation by Westerners, ranging from anthropologists to government officials and developers. Kopenawa’s direct experiences with, and assessment of, his white interlocutors is often charged with a well-justified anger, but through the course of his personal history the need for mutual respect and, where appropriate, collaboration is likewise made evident. The text offers a trenchant critique of the characterization of the Yanomami as humanity’s primordial ‘fierce people,’ highlighting the beauty and virtues of these people while reminding readers of Western cultural and ecological destruction in the Amazon (an exceptionally virulent brand of fierceness). -- C. J. MacKenzie * Choice *Anthropologists and other specialists will find much to relish in this beautifully crafted evocation of Yanomami culture and philosophy. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews taped in native language, it is enriched by almost a hundred pages of footnotes, ethnobiological and geographic glossaries, bibliographical references, detailed indexes and, last but not least, an essay by Bruce Albert on how he wrote the book. While the book resonates with current Western metaphysical angst about finitude, it is written principally as a long shamanic chant that opens up a multitude of interior journeys and provides a new consciousness of the world as a whole… The Yanomami have suffered the effects of deadly epidemics, land dispossession and aggressive missionary evangelism. The resulting break in the flow of knowledge between older and younger generations, a lack of communication between indigenous and nonindigenous interlocutors, and a general loss of connection with the natural environment, are common problems. Despite remarkable political gains in the past thirty years, including the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2007, a health and social crisis is deepening within many indigenous communities. As The Falling Sky makes plain, this crisis is rooted in the symbolic violence exercised by the dominant society, which fails to recognize the value (rather than just the right) of being different and of living in a distinct human collectivity… It is, above all, a splendid story told by an exceptional man, who barely knows how to read and write. That the story was written down by an ethnographer who elected not to adjust his research to the canons of academia adds to its importance. The use of the first-person singular to tell the tale involves a fusion of authorial voices, a sign of mutual recognition and true friendship if ever there was one; it lends a musical quality to the resulting ‘heterobiography.’ Through their sonorous presence, the numerous beings evoked in the shamanic chant usher in the fertility of life as shamans see and feel it. What better way to entice readers away from everyday forgetfulness than to invite them to hear the forest’s vast and timeless symphony? -- Laura Rival * Times Literary Supplement *The Falling Sky is several things. It is the autobiography of Davi Kopenawa, one of Brazil’s most prominent and eloquent indigenous leaders. It is the most vivid and authentic account of shamanistic philosophy I have ever read. It is also a passionate appeal for the rights of indigenous people and a scathing condemnation of the damage wrought by missionaries, gold miners, and white people’s greed. The footnotes alone harbor monographs on Yanomami botany and zoology, mythology, ritual, and history. Most of all, The Falling Sky is an elegy to oral tradition and the power of the spoken word… Kopenawa’s elaboration of shamanic concepts goes beyond ethnography and becomes a new genre of native philosophical inquiry. When an indigenous narrator this articulate produces an original exegesis of his own worldview, anthropology and anthropologists have become almost obsolete… Like his ancestors, whose voices will continue to echo in shamans’ songs after his death, Davi Kopenawa has made sure that his own powerful words will be preserved. -- Glenn Shepard, Jr. * New York Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisAmerica's most renowned social philosopher John Dewey shines his powerful intellect on the serious public and cultural issues surrounding the place of the individual in a technologically advanced society. In this penetrating study, he addresses the fear that personal creative potential will be trampled by assembly-line monotony, political bureaucracy, and an industrialized culture of uniformity. Armed with his pragmatic approach and his belief in the power of critical intelligence, Dewey argues that individualism has in fact been offered a uniquely higher plane of technological development upon which to grow, mature, and redefine itself.

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