David E. Sutton, "Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples" (Berghahn, 2021)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
16h ago
What defines cooking as cooking, and why does cooking matter to the understanding of society, cultural change and everyday life? Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples (Berghahn, 2021) by Dr. David E. Sutton explores these questions by proposing a new theory of the meaning of cooking as a willingness to put oneself and one’s meals at risk on a daily basis. Richly illustrated with examples from the author’s anthropology fieldwork in Greece, Bigger Fish to Fry proposes a new approach to the meaning of cooking and how the study of cooking can resh ..read more
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SunAh M. Laybourn, "Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants" (NYU Press, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
16h ago
Dr. SunAh M. Laybourn’s Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants (NYU Press, 2024) explores the experiences of Korean adoptees, the largest population of adult transnational adoptees in the United States. Over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted into primarily white US families since the 1950s, and despite being raised as US citizens, still experience both legal and social barriers to national belonging. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean adoptee adults, online surveys, and participant observation at Korean adoptee events across the US and in Korea,&nbs ..read more
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Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
16h ago
Sociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighborhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles (U Chicago Press, 2024), sociologist Neil M. Gong traces the divide between the haves and have-nots in the psychiatric treatment systems that shape the life trajec ..read more
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Rana AlMutawa, "Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai" (U California Press, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
3d ago
Everyday Life in the Spectacular City is a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the city's so-called superficial spaces to create meaningful social lives. Rana AlMutawa shows that inhabitants adapt themselves to top-down development projects, from big malls to megaprojects. These structures serve residents' evolving social needs, transforming Dubai's spectacular spaces into personally important cultural sites. These practices are significant because they expand our understanding of agency as not onl ..read more
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Cristina Rocha, "Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities" (Oxford UP, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
4d ago
When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expand into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches?  In her exciting new book, Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities (Oxford UP, 2023), anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyses the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in the history of Pentecostalism but which more recently have been at the forefront of new forms of global Pentecostalism. She shows how new ..read more
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Maarten Couttenier, "Anthropology and Race in Belgium and the Congo (1839-1922)" (Routledge, 2023)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
4d ago
Maarten Couttenier's Anthropology and Race in Belgium and the Congo (1839-1922) (Routledge, 2023) examines the history of Belgian physical anthropology in the long nineteenth century and discusses how the notion of 'race' structured Belgian pasts and presents as well as relations between metropole and empire. In a context of competing European nationalisms, Belgian anthropologists mainly used physical characters, like skull form and the color of hair and eyes, to delimitate 'races', which were believed to be permanent and existent. Their belief in a supposed racial superiority w ..read more
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Laura Menin, "Quest for Love in Central Morocco: Young Women and the Dynamics of Intimate Lives" (Syracuse UP, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
6d ago
Following the 2011 wave of revolutions and protests in North Africa and the Middle East, new discussions of individual freedoms emerged in the Moroccan public sphere and human rights discourse. A segment of the public rallied around the removal of an article in the penal code that punished sexual relationships outside of marriage. As debates about personal and sexual freedom gain momentum, love and intimacy remain complex issues.  Moving between public, clandestine, and online interactions, Quest for Love in Central Morocco: Young Women and the Dynamics of Intimate Lives (S ..read more
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Fran Martin, "Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West" (Duke UP, 2021)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
1w ago
Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West (Duke UP, 2021) explores the significance of transnational educational mobility in the life aspirations of young, middle-class Chinese women. Based on extensive, long-term ethnographic research, Fran Martin explores how young Chinese women negotiate competing pressures on their identity while studying abroad. On one hand, unmarried middle-class women in the single-child generations are encouraged to develop themselves as professional human capital through international education, molding themselves into independent, cosmopo ..read more
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Lisa Messeri, "In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles" (Duke UP, 2024)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
1w ago
In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), believing that it could remedy society’s ills. Lisa Messeri offers an ethnographic exploration of this community, which conceptualized VR as an “empathy machine” that could provide glimpses into diverse social realities. She outlines how, in the aftermath of #MeToo, the backlash against Silicon Valley, and the turmoil of the Trump administration, it was imagined that VR—if led by women and other marginalized voices—could bring about a better world ..read more
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Jonas Tinius, "State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
New Books in Anthropology
by New Books Network
1w ago
State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration (Cambridge UP, 2023) is a bold and wide-ranging account of the unique German public theatre system through the prism of a migrant artistic institution in the western post-industrial Ruhr region. State of the Arts analyses how artistic traditions have responded to social change, racism, and cosmopolitan anxieties and recounts how critical contemporary cultural production positions itself in relation to the tumultuous history of German state patronage, difficult heritage, and self-cultivation through the arts. Jonas ..read more
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