New Books in Anthropology
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
2526
Cabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warr...
The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists (University of California Press,
91 min
2527
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland, “Handbook o...
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland‘s bookHandbook of Anthropology in Business (Left Coast Press, 2014) isa groundbreaking collection of essays all related to Business Anthropology. As with all interdisciplinary subjects,
36 min
2528
Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Spe...
Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
61 min
2529
S. Lochlann Jain, “Malignant: How Cancer Become...
Cancer pervades American bodies–and also habits of mind. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013) is a sharp, adventurous book by the established legal anthropologist, S. Lochlann Jain.
31 min
2530
Matt Tomlinson, “Ritual Textuality: Pattern and...
Religious ritual has been a staple of anthropological study. In his latest monograph, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance (Oxford University Press 2014), cultural anthropologist Matt Tomlinson takes up the topic anew through a set of f...
62 min
2531
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leathe...
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock,
68 min
2532
Alex Nading, “Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health ...
Dengue fever is on the rise globally. Since it is transmitted by mosquitoes which reside and reproduce in human environments, eradication efforts involve households and the people who keep them clean as well as moral and persuasive campaigns of surveil...
53 min
2533
Daniel Cloud, “The Domestication of Language” (...
One of the most puzzling things about humans is their ability to manipulate symbols and create artifacts. Our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom–apes–have only the rudiments of these abilities: chimps don’t have language and,
55 min
2534
Thom Scott-Phillips, “Speaking Our Minds” (Palg...
I hope I’m not being species-centric when I say that the emergence of human language is a big deal. John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary rate it as one of the “major transitions in evolution”, placing it in exalted company alongside the evolution of m...
54 min
2535
Jamie Cross, “Dream Zones: Anticipating Capital...
Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India (Pluto Press, 2014), the excellent new book by Jamie Cross, explores the ways in which dreams of the future shape the present. Centring in and around a large Special Economic Zone in south I...
52 min
2536
Lisa L. Gezon, “Drug Effects: Khat in Biocultur...
Khat, the fresh leaves of the plant Catha edulis, is a mild psycho-stimulant. It has been consumed in Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia for over one thousand years. Khat consumption is an important part of Yemeni social and political life.
6 min
2537
Pamela Klassen, “Spirits of Protestantism: Medi...
Liberal Protestants are often dismissed as reflecting nothing more than a therapeutic culture or viewed as a measuring rod for the decline of Christian orthodoxy. Rarely have they been the subjects of anthropological inquiry. Pamela Klassen,
50 min
2538
Amrita Pande, “Wombs in Labor: Transnational Co...
Amrita Pande‘s Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) is a beautiful and rich ethnography of a surrogacy clinic. The book details the surrogacy process from start to finish,
62 min
2539
Marcia Ochoa, “Queen for a Day: Transformistas,...
Marcia Ochoa‘s book Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2014) is a detailed ethnography of Venezuelan modernity and nationhood that brings two kinds of feminine performa...
61 min
2540
Amy Evrard, “The Moroccan Women’s Rights Moveme...
Amy Evrard‘s first book, The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2014), examines women’s attempts to change their patriarchal society via their movement for equality and rights. At the center of Evrard’s book is the 2004 reform...
63 min
2541
Barbara Harriss-White, “Dalits and Adivasis in ...
Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy: Three Essays and an Atlas (Three Essay Collective, 2013) is a wonderful new book by Barbara Harriss-White and small team of collaborators – Elisabetta Basile, Anita Dixit, Pinaki Joddar,
67 min
2542
Katherine Frank, “Plays Well in Groups: A Journ...
Dr. Katherine Frank‘s book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), is a fascinating look at the taboo of group sex. Her robust research spans historical references to modern day accounts throughou...
30 min
2543
Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Differenc...
Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the modern world. The book uses the example of the ‘gap year’,
40 min
2544
Shabana Mir, “Muslim American Women on Campus: ...
In the post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses imagined, performed,
51 min
2545
Alice Conklin, “In the Museum of Man: Race, Ant...
Host Jonathan Judaken and author Alice Conklin discuss the thorny relationship between science, society, and empire at the high water mark of French imperialism and European fascism, as well as this neglected chapter in the international history of the...
29 min
2546
Tine M. Gammeltoft, “Haunting Images: A Cultura...
Tine Gammeltoft‘s new book explores the process of reproductive decision making in contemporary Hanoi. Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam (University of California Press,
66 min
2547
Kevin Schilbrack, “Philosophy and the Study of ...
Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this set of concerns has been left to philosophers of religion.
59 min
2548
Benjamin Lieberman, “Remaking Identities: God, ...
What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new book Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History (Rowman and Littlefield,
51 min
2549
William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon, “The S...
What brings us together as scholars in Religious Studies? Are the various social phenomena commonly grouped together as religion really that similar? The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature of “Religion” (Oxford University Press,
68 min
2550
Morris B. Hoffman, “The Punisher’s Brain: The E...
Why do we feel guilty–and sometimes hurt ourselves–when we harm someone? Why do we become angry–and sometimes violent–when we see other people being harmed? Why do we forgive ourselves and others after a transgression even though “the rules” say we rea...
59 min