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Living with Uncertainty: The Potency of ‘Maybe’ on the Mekong
Get PDFMekong Dreaming is an ethnography of a town on the Mekong river that has undergone rapid change in the last two decades, not only in the town itself but also in national and transnational circuits. The book is clearly written, presenting a compelling narrative of daily life and also delving into complex topics without drowning in academic jargon. As such it is accessible for both students and experts
Interrogating non-innocent kinship
Get PDFThis is a review of Kathryn Mariner's 'Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States'
On the cusp of ‘modernity’: Ayurveda’s tryst with ‘development’ in Nepal
Get PDFMARY CAMERON, 2019, Three Fruits: Nepali Ayurvedic Doctors on Health, Nature, and Social Change. Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 264 ISBN 978-1-4985-9423-3
Thinking Against the Blackmail of Democracy
Get PDFBarely two years into being a student/scholar of “post-socialism,” and an immigrant in the USA, two sources of human histories have grown intertwined within me. Narratives of post-socialism reveal conflicts between the idea of collectivized justice and human dignity, and that of state as an institution whose irreducible goal is to control and govern. Whereas the experience of immigration, in relation to “Americanness,” has helped me to ask the question “for whom?” concerning liberty, representative democracy, and entrepreneurial values. Seemingly paradoxical yet curiously, echoing impacts of narratives of post-socialist transitions, as well as constantly curated histories of socialist pasts can be deciphered from the current predicament of capitalism and authoritarianism. Is it possible to historicize the times that are after the end of this history? Red Hangover offers insights concerning these intellectual and ideological sensibilities by using a variety of writing, in both fiction and non-fiction genres
Leisurely enjoying death
Get PDFDeath has been a subject of study for anthropologists from the very start of the discipline. Being both universal (we all die one day, and almost all of us are confronted with the death of loved ones during our lives) and particular (the meanings we ascribe to death are cultural and therefore different across the world), death is one of those subjects that lends itself well for cross-cultural comparison. The book ‘Leisure and death: An anthropological tour of risk, death, and dying’ (edited by Adam Kaul and Jonathan Skinner) therefore stands in a long tradition of anthropological enquiry into the topic of death, dying and bereavement. At the same time, however, it takes a different approach than many of the ‘anthropology of death’ publications, as the book does not put death centre stage, but takes death as a lens to delve into another topic, namely leisure
The Failed Potentials of Masdar City: Renegotiating the Present and Future through Climate Change Technologies in the United Arab Emirates
Get PDFGökçe Günel's Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi discusses how citizens and experts of Masdar City, a construction upon the empty space of the desert, negotiates imaginations of the future through technologies that aim to mitigate climate change. Although a failed experiment, it stimulates discussions of how the relationship between the human, technologies, and capitalism are constantly being built, maintained, and rebuilt in the Anthropocene
Peoples, Place and Performing Arts of the Riau Islands
Get PDFDispersed from the Straits of Malacca across the South China Sea, from Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore to west Kalimantan, the 2,408 Riau Islands or Kepri (Kepulauan Riau) comprise Indonesia’s largest province. For a millennia, these islands have formed linkages in trade routes between the Sumatra, Java, south western Borneo, Singapore, Malaya and beyond. The Riau Islands have a long and complex political history going back to at least the Srivijaya Empire (7th to 14th centuries). After Indonesia attained Independence in 1949, Riau experienced various national governments, each with their own policies of development and the arts. Following the end of Suharto’s authoritarian New Order era, which promoted the Javanisation of cultures throughout this vast nation, the Reformasi era saw communities and provinces looking back to their older traditions for inspiration in contemporary times. Riau was granted provincial autonomy in 2004. This book investigates today’s cultural situation in Riau, through focussing on the state of the performing arts of the main indigenous inhabitants of the Riau Islands—the Malays and the Orang Suku Laut (“sea peoples”)
Famished for Care: A Clinical Anthropology of Eating Disorders
Get PDFLester, Rebecca. (2019).Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America. University of California Press. ISBN: 9780520303935 pp. 41