We’re delighted to offer a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Anthropology, Archaeology, Environmental Studies, and Theory & Methodology in Anthropology, along with our New in Paperback titles.
GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Edited by Carl A. Maida and Sam Beck
Collaboration between experts and the public is vital for effective community engagement aimed at improving the lives of the most vulnerable in society, whether at the local or global level. Using case-based and theoretical chapters that examine rural and urban communities of practice, this volume illustrates how participatory researchers and students, as well as policy and community leaders, find ways to engage with the broader public when it comes to global sustainability research and practice.
Read Introduction: Towards Global Sustainability and Communities of Practice
URBAN DREAMS
Transformations of Family Life in Burkina Faso
Claudia Roth†
Edited by Willemijn de Jong, Manfred Perlik, Noemi Steuer, and Heinzpeter Znoj
Claudia Roth’s work on Bobo-Dioulasso, a city of half a million residents in Burkina Faso, provides uniquely detailed insight into the evolving life-world of a West African urban population in one of the poorest countries in the world. Closely documenting the livelihood strategies of members of various neighbourhoods, Roth’s work calls into question established notions of “the African family” as a solidary network, documents changing marriage and kinship relations under the impact of a persistent economic crisis, and explores the increasingly precarious social status of young women and men.
Read Introduction: Claudia Roth’s Work on Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso
BACK TO THE POSTINDUSTRIAL FUTURE
An Ethnography of Germany’s Fastest-Shrinking City
Felix Ringel
Volume 33, EASA Series
How does an urban community come to terms with the loss of its future? The former socialist model city of Hoyerswerda is an extreme case of a declining postindustrial city. Built to serve the GDR coal industry, it lost over half its population to outmigration after German reunification and the coal industry crisis, leading to the large-scale deconstruction of its cityscape. This book tells the story of its inhabitants, now forced to reconsider their futures. Building on recent theoretical work, it advances a new anthropological approach to time, allowing us to investigate the postindustrial era and the futures it has supposedly lost.
Read Introduction: Anthropology and the Future: Notes from a Shrinking Fieldsite
MONEY AT THE MARGINS
Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion, and Design
Edited by Bill Maurer, Smoki Musaraj, and Ivan Small
Volume 6, The Human Economy
Mobile money, e-commerce, cash cards, retail credit cards, and more—as new monetary technologies become increasingly available, the global South has cautiously embraced these mediums as a potential solution to the issue of financial inclusion. How, if at all, do new forms of dematerialized money impact people’s everyday financial lives? In what way do technologies interact with financial repertoires and other socio-cultural institutions? How do these technologies of financial inclusion shape the global politics and geographies of difference and inequality? These questions are at the heart of Money at the Margins, a groundbreaking exploration of the uses and socio-cultural impact of new forms of money and financial services.
Read Introduction: Money and Finance at the Margins
INDUSTRIAL LABOR ON THE MARGINS OF CAPITALISM
Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject
Edited by Chris Hann and Jonathan Parry
Afterword by Michael Burawoy
Volume 4, Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy
Bringing together ethnographic case studies of industrial labor from different parts of the world, Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism explores the increasing casualization of workforces and the weakening power of organized labor. This division owes much to state policies and is reflected in local understandings of class. By exploring this relationship, these essays question the claim that neoliberal ideology has become the new ‘commonsense’ of our times and suggest various propositions about the conditions that create employment regimes based on flexible labor.
Read Introduction: Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject
WORLD HERITAGE CRAZE IN CHINA
Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory
Haiming Yan
There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.
Read Introduction
THE SOUTHEAST ASIA CONNECTION
Trade and Polities in the Eurasian World Economy, 500 BC–AD 500
Sing C. Chew
The contribution of Southeast Asia to the world economy (during the late prehistoric and early historic periods) has not received much attention. It has often been viewed as a region of peripheral entrepôts, especially in the early centuries of the current era. Recent archaeological evidence revealed the existence of established and productive polities in Southeast Asia in the early parts of the historic period and earlier. This book recalibrates these interactions of Southeast Asia with other parts of the world economy, and gives the region its due instead of treating it as little more than of marginal interest.
Read Introduction: Southeast Asia in World History
HEADING FOR THE SCENE OF THE CRASH
The Cultural Analysis of America
Lee Drummond
Volume 3, Loose Can(n)ons
American anthropologists have long advocated cultural anthropology as a tool for cultural critique, yet seldom has that approach been employed in discussions of major events and cultural productions that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans. This collection of essays aims to refashion cultural analysis into a hard-edged tool for the study of American society and culture, addressing topics including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, abortion, sports doping, and the Jonestown massacre-suicides. Grounded in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays advance an inquiry into the nature of culture in American society.
Read Introduction
New in Paperback:
CREATING A NEW PUBLIC UNIVERSITY AND REVIVING DEMOCRACY
Action Research in Higher Education
Morten Levin and Davydd J. Greenwood
Volume 2, Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies
“In Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy, Morten Levin and Davydd Greenwood add their voices to the burgeoning catalogue of critiques of the impact of neoliberal policies on the quality of higher education in Europe and the US. But unlike many such contributions, this work draws heavily on the change management literature and offers a cornucopia of compelling and well-grounded ideas for reform of the academy.” · Times Higher Education
Read Introduction: Democracy and Public Universities
ECONOMIC CITIZENSHIP
Neoliberal Paradoxes of Empowerment
Amalia Sa’ar
“…a well-written, nuanced and interesting account of contradictions at work in contemporary non-profit projects supporting economic rights for women… an important analysis of the pragmatic difficulties feminists face in seeking meaningful social change in a neoliberal context of gendered, racialized economic inequality.” • Journal of Gender Studies
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TOURISM AND INFORMAL ENCOUNTERS IN CUBA
Valerio Simoni
Foreword by Nelson Graburn
Volume 38, New Directions in Anthropology
“Simoni’s approach is innovative and still little explored in the anthropology of tourism, both in terms of content and method… With a dynamic and enjoyable narrative style, the author presents us a gallery of characters and feelings … a true human laboratory in which all the protagonists face a challenge: to find new vocabularies to define the nature of their relationships… the book is intended as a gradual journey: each chapter achieves a deeper understanding of the encounters, and “relational idioms” mutually enrich one another with meaning through convergences, contrasts and oppositions.” • Quaderns
Read Introduction: Relating through Tourism
STARS AND STARDOM IN BRAZILIAN CINEMA
Edited by Tim Bergfelder, Lisa Shaw and João Luiz Vieira
“The volume embraces diverse and nuanced approaches to stardom…; all [contributors] succeed in putting their findings into readable prose. A thorough scholarly apparatus is included. The volume represents a major contribution to star studies.” · Choice
Read Introduction
NEW USES OF BOURDIEU IN FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES
Edited by Guy Austin
“This is a really useful contribution to our understanding of the various ways in which the work of Bourdieu can be used in film and media studies, adding to and revising existing uses but also bringing his key ideas to bear on new areas such as online film reviewing and the landscapes of social and mobile media. These chapters are strong and well argued.” · Geoff King, Brunel University
Read Introduction: Bourdieu on Media and Film
WAR AND WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS
Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences
Edited by Shirley Ardener, Fiona Armitage-Woodward, and Lidia Dina Sciama
Drawing on family materials, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, this book shows the impact of war on individual women caught up in diverse and often treacherous situations. It relates stories of partisans in Holland, an Italian woman carrying guns and provisions in the face of hostile soldiers, and Kikuyu women involved in the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. A woman displaced from Silesia recalls fleeing with children across war-torn Germany, and women caught up in conflicts in Burma and in Rwanda share their tales. War’s aftermath can be traumatic, as shown by journalists in Libya and by a midwife on the Cambodian border who helps refugees to give birth and regain hope. Finally, British women on active service in Afghanistan and at NATO headquarters also speak.
Read Introduction: Women’s Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences of War across Continents: An Introduction
WAR STORIES
The War Memoir in History and Literature
Edited by Philip Dwyer
“The articles… all provide insights and are all engaging, a trait not often found in edited volumes. The topics range over time (from 17th-century European wars to present-day Afghanistan) and over continents (Europe, North America, Asia, Africa)… Dwyer’s own introductory article incisively orients readers not only to the memoir field, but also to the various perspectives and approaches inherent in war memoir presentation.” · Choice
Read Chapter 1. Making Sense of the Muddle: War Memoirs and the Culture of Remembering
MIGRATION BY BOAT
Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival
Edited by Lynda Mannik
Volume 35, Forced Migration
“This book is highly original in its emphasis on representations of enforced sea journeys and their memorialisations. Many, including myself, would like it on their shelf for teaching and reference.” · Michael Pugh, University of Bradford
Read Introduction