New Books in Anthropology

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Andrew McDowell, "Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India" (Stanford UP, 2024) Jun 10, 2024

Show notes

Each year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly lung disease. The country accounts for almost 30 percent of all TB cases worldwide and well above a third of global deaths from it. Because TB’s prevalence also indicates unfulfilled development promises, its control is an important issue of national concern, wrapped up in questions of postcolonial governance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with a village in North India and its TB epidemic, anthropologist Andrew McDowell tells the stories of socially marginalized Dalit (“ex-untouchable”) farming families afflicted by TB, and the nurses, doctors, quacks, mediums, and mystics who care for them. Each of the book’s chapters centers on a material or metaphorical substance - such as dust, clouds, and ghosts - to understand how breath and airborne illness entangle biological and social life in everyday acts of care for the self, for others, and for the environment.

From this raft of stories about the ways people make sense of and struggle with troubled breath, McDowell develops a philosophy and phenomenology of breathing that attends to medical systems, patient care, and health justice. He theorizes that breath - as an intersection between person and world - provides a unique perspective on public health and inequality. Breath is deeply intimate and personal, but also shared and distributed. Through it all, Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India (Stanford UP, 2024) traces the multivalent relations that breath engenders between people, environments, social worlds, and microbes.

Andrew McDowell is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. He has a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Harvard University. His research interests focus on care, contagion, pharmaceuticals, diagnosis, and inequality in North and Western Indian social worlds entangled with tuberculosis. His work has appeared in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Ethos, and The Lancet among other venues.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Mónica M. Salas Landa, "Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico's Revolution" (U Texas Press, 2024) Jun 09, 2024

Show notes

The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) introduced a series of state-led initiatives promising modernity, progress, national grandeur, and stability; state surveyors assessed land for agrarian reform, engineers used nationalized oil for industrialization, archaeologists reconstructed pre-Hispanic monuments for tourism, and anthropologists studied and photographed Indigenous populations to achieve their acculturation. Far from accomplishing their stated goals, however, these initiatives concealed violence, and permitted land invasions, forced displacement, environmental damage, loss of democratic freedom, and mass killings.

In Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico's Revolution (University of Texas Press, 2024), Mónica M. Salas Landa uses the history of northern Veracruz to demonstrate how these state-led efforts reshaped the region's social and material landscapes, affecting what was and is visible. Relying on archival sources and ethnography, she uncovers a visual order of ongoing significance that was established through postrevolutionary projects and that perpetuates inequality based on imperceptibility.

Mónica M. Salas Landa is an Associate Professor of anthropology and sociology at Lafayette College.

Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Alan H. McGowan, "The Political Activism of Anthropologist Franz Boas, Citizen Scientist" (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2024) Jun 07, 2024

Show notes

Alan McGowan delves into Franz Boas’s dual identity as both a scientist and a political activist, shedding light on how his work transcended academic boundaries to make a profound impact on society. In The Political Activism of Anthropologist Franz Boas, Citizen Scientist(Cambridge Scholars Press, 2024), McGowan provides a comprehensive overview of Boas’s career, from his groundbreaking research on cultural relativism to his advocacy for social justice and racial equality. By drawing on a wealth of primary sources and historical documents, he paints a vivid portrait of Boas as a multifaceted figure whose work was deeply intertwined with his political beliefs. Uncovering the intricate connection between his scientific endeavors and political beliefs, McGowan illuminates how Boas used his platform as an anthropologist to challenge societal norms and advocate for those on the fringes. Furthermore, the book offers valuable insights into the broader implications of Boas’s legacy. By emphasizing Boas’s commitment to antiracism, cultural relativism, and social justice, the author underscores the enduring relevance of Boas’s ideas in contemporary discussions on race, identity, and inequality. McGowan’s insightful analysis and engaging narrative style make this book a valuable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the intersection of science, politics, and social change.

Alan H. McGowan is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at The New School. Prior to coming to The New School, he founded and was president of the Gene Media Forum, an arm of the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University. Previously, he was for twenty years the president of the Scientists’ Institute for Public Information, a major bridge between the scientific community and the media. His research interests focus on the intersection between science and technology and social issues, including ethics, politics, and the economy.

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Wendy Pearlman, "The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora" (Liveright, 2024) Jun 05, 2024

Show notes

In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions.

The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria’s refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted across more than a decade, it probes a question as intimate as it is universal: What is home? With gripping immediacy, Syrians now on five continents share stories of leaving, losing, searching, and finding (or not finding) home. Across this tapestry of voices, a new understanding emerges: home, for those without the privilege of taking it for granted, is both struggle and achievement. Recasting “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives.

Wendy Pearlman is professor of political science at Northwestern University. She speaks Arabic and is the author of five books on the Middle East, including We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.

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Jennifer Hart on African Mobility and Infrastructure Jun 03, 2024

Show notes

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks to Jennifer Hart, Professor and Chair of the History Department at Virginia Tech, about her work on the history and ethnography of mobility and infrastructure in Ghana. Hart’s newest book, Making an African City: Technopolitics and the Infrastructure of Everyday Life in Colonial Accra (Indiana University Press, 2024), examines how technocrats enforced restrictions around public health, housing, mobility, and other domains in Ghana in the name of modernization. Vinsel and Hart also discuss how humanistic and technical inquiry can be brought together to improve outcomes around everyday human problems around the world.

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Richard E. Ocejo, "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City" (Princeton UP, 2024) Jun 02, 2024

Show notes

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.

Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City(Princeton UP, 2024) tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.

As New York City’s housing market becomes too expensive for even the middle class, many urbanites are bypassing the suburbs and moving to smaller cities like Newburgh, where housing is affordable and historic. Richard Ocejo takes readers into the lives of these newcomers, examining the different ways they navigate racial difference and inequality among Newburgh’s much less privileged local residents, and showing how stakeholders in the city’s revitalization reframe themselves and gentrification to cast the displacement they cause to minority groups in a positive light.

An intimate exploration of the moral dilemma at the heart of gentrification, Sixty Miles Upriver explains how progressive White gentrifiers justify controversial urban changes as morally good, and how their actions carry profound and lasting consequences for vulnerable residents of color.

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Margot Weiss, "Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, and Departures" (Duke UP, 2024) Jun 01, 2024

Show notes

This field-defining volume of queer anthropology foregrounds both the brilliance of anthropological approaches to queer and trans life and the ways queer critique can reorient and transform anthropology.

Consisting of fourteen original essays by both distinguished and new voices, Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, and Departures(Duke UP, 2024) advances a vision of queer anthropology grounded in decolonial, abolitionist, Black feminist, transnational, postcolonial, Indigenous, and queer of color approaches. Critically assessing both anthropology’s queer innovations and its colonialist legacies, contributors highlight decades of work in queer anthropology; challenge the boundaries of anthropology’s traditional methodologies, forms, and objects of study; and forge a critical, queer of color, decolonizing queer anthropology that unsettles anthropology’s normative epistemologies. At a moment of revitalized calls to reckon with the white supremacist and settler colonial logics that continue to shape anthropology, this volume advances an anthropology accountable to the vitality of queer and trans life.

Contributors. Jafari Sinclair Allen, Tom Boellstorff, Erin L. Durban, Elijah Adiv Edelman, Lyndon K. Gill, K. Marshall Green, Brian A. Horton, Nikki Lane, Martin F. Manalansan IV, Shaka McGlotten, Scott L. Morgensen, Kwame Otu, Juno Salazar Parreñas, Lucinda Ramberg, Sima Shakhsari, Savannah Shange, Anne Spice, Margot Weiss, Ara Wilson

Margot Weiss is Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she directs the cluster in Queer Studies. Her research, teaching, and writing move between queer theory and anthropology. She is the author of the award-winning Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality and editor of Queer Then and Now and Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, and Departures. Past president of the Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA), she serves on the board of CLAGS: The Center for LGBT/Queer Studies and the Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA). She is a founding member of the Wesleyan University Chapter of the AAUP.

Clayton Jarrard is an incoming graduate student at NYU's XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement program and a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of Cultural Anthropology, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Religious Studies. Clayton is also a host for the Un/Livable Cultures podcast.

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Anthony Heath and Yaojun Li, "Social Mobility" (Polity Press, 2024) May 31, 2024

Show notes

What is social mobility? In Social Mobility (Polity Press, 2023), Anthony Heath, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and Yaojun Li, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, explore and explain this concept, setting out why the idea matters for both social scientists and the general reader. The book draws on a huge range of research, outlining the history of social mobility research, discussing central theories and approaches in sociology and economics, and detailing international comparisons and trends. The book highlights how social mobility is shaped by gender and ethnicity, along with the role of social class. Ultimately the book helps to explain who gets ahead in society and why; as a result the book will be essential reading across the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in how society works.

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Aslı Zengin, "Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World" (Duke UP, 2024) May 31, 2024

Show notes

In Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World(Duke UP, 2024), Aslı Zengin traces how trans people in Turkey creatively negotiate and resist everyday cisheteronormative violence. Drawing on the history and ethnography of the trans communal life in Istanbul, Zengin develops an understanding of cisheteronormative violence that expands beyond sex, gender and sexuality. She shows how cisheteronormativity forms a connective tissue among neoliberal governmentality, biopolitical and necropolitical regimes, nationalist religiosity and authoritarian management of social difference. As much as trans people are shaped by these processes, they also transform them in intimate ways. Transness in Turkey provides an insightful site for developing new perspectives on statecraft, securitization and surveillance, family and kin-making, urban geography, and political life. Zengin offers the concept of violent intimacies to theorize this entangled world of the trans everyday where violence and intimacy are co-constitutive. Violent intimacies emerge from trans people’s everyday interactions with the police, religious and medical institutions, street life, family and kinship, and trans femicides and funerals. The dynamic of violent intimacies prompts new understandings of violence and intimacy and the world-making struggles of trans people in a Middle Eastern context.

Aslı Zengin is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University.

Alize Arıcan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The City College of New York (CUNY). Her work has been featured in Environment and Planning D, Current Anthropology, and City & Society, among other journals and public-facing platforms. You can find her on Twitter @alizearican.

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Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, "Disability Worlds" (Duke UP, 2024) May 30, 2024

Show notes

In Disability Worlds(Duke UP, 2024), Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp chronicle and theorize two decades of immersion in New York City’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. They situate their disabled children’s lives among the experiences of advocates, families, experts, activists, and artists in larger struggles for recognition and rights. Disability consciousness, they show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions. Chapters consider dilemmas of genetic testing and neuroscientific research, reimagining kinship and community, the challenges of “special education,” and the perils of transitioning from high school. They also highlight the vitality of neurodiversity activism, disability arts, politics, and public culture.

Disability Worlds reflects the authors’ anthropological commitments to recognizing the significance of this fundamental form of human difference. Ginsburg and Rapp’s conversations with diverse New Yorkers reveal the bureaucratic constraints and paradoxes established in response to the disability rights movement, as well as the remarkable creativity of disabled people and their allies who are opening pathways into both disability justice and disability futures.

A transcript of this discussion is available here.

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