New Books in Anthropology

Mar 31 2025 1000 ep. 55 mins 4.1k
New Books in Anthropology Podcast artwork

Interviews with Anthropologists about their New Books

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Hemangini Gupta, "Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India" (U California Press, 2024)

Mar 31 2025 41 mins  
Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India (U California Press, 2024) is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of "backend" IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. The book journeys alongside the migrant workers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who shape and survive the dreams of a "S

Azmeary Ferdoush, "Sovereign Atonement: Citizenship, Territory, and the State at the Bangladesh-India Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Mar 29 2025 82 mins  
The former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India existed as extra-territorial spaces since 1947. They were finally exchanged and merged as host state territories in 2015. Sovereign Atonement: Citizenship, Territory, and the State at the Bangladesh-India Border (Cambridge UP, 2024) focuses on the protracted territorial exchange and experiences of the newly accepted Bangladeshi cit

Syaifudin Zuhri, "Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition" (Leiden UP, 2022)

Mar 28 2025 70 mins  
Syaifudin Zuhri’s book Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition (Leiden, 2022) is a detailed examination of the recent emergence of the Wali Pitu (“Seven Saints”) tradition in Bali, Indonesia. The study is a multi-sited ethnography of pilgrimage traditions to the grave sites of the Wali Pitu, which is a part of a larger context of risin

V. Chitra, "Drawing Coastlines: Climate Anxieties and the Visual Reinvention of Mumbai's Shore" (Cornell UP, 2024)

Mar 23 2025 64 mins  
Drawing Coastlines: Climate Anxieties and the Visual Reinvention of Mumbai's Shore (Cornell UP, 2024) reveals the ways that technical images such as weather infographics, sea-level projections, and surveys are fast remaking Mumbai's coasts and coastal futures. They set in place infrastructural interventions, vocabularies of development and conservation, and their lines and dots ins

Tracie Canada, "Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football" (U California Press, 2025)

Mar 22 2025 74 mins  
Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different reality, facing dangerous injuries, few pro-career opportunities, a free but devalued college education, and future financial instability. In one of the first ethnographies about Black college football players, anthropologist Tracie

Ben Bowles, "Boaters of London: Alternative Living on the Water" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Mar 21 2025 70 mins  
Boaters of London is an ethnography that delves into the process of becoming a boater, adopting an alternative lifestyle on the water and the political impact that this travelling population has on the state. London and the Southeast of England in general is home to many people and families who live on narrowboats, cruisers and barges, along a network of canals and rivers. Many of

Mia Consalvo et al., "Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch" (MIT Press, 2025)

Mar 14 2025 43 mins  
The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) Dr. Mia Consalvo, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse, and Dr. Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to understand. Unlike the esports ath

Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall, "Ain't I an Anthropologist: Zora Neale Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

Mar 11 2025 75 mins  
Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what socio-cultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall considers the polar receptions t

Brendan A. Galipeau, "Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Winemaking in Shangri-La" (U Washington Press, 2025)

Mar 06 2025 79 mins  
Aiming to explore the Sino-Tibetan border region, which is renamed “Shangri-La” by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir (U Washington Press, 2025) examines how the deployment of the French notion of terroir creates new forms of ethno-regional identities and village landscapes through the production of Tibetan wine as a commodity. In Shangri-L

Vera Tiesler, "Ancient Maya Teeth: Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2024)

Mar 05 2025 47 mins  
Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or pointy, polished and drilled them, and crafted decorative inlays of jade and pyrite. Unusually, Maya of all social classes, ages, and professions engaged in dental modification. What did it mean to them? Ancient Maya Teeth: Dental Modi