Category: Book review

Book reviews

The Government of Beans – [book review]

The Government of Beans – [book review]

Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger, V.M. Roberts, a PhD student at York University. He studies industrialization, agriculture, and the experience of machine operation from an interdisciplinary perspective. His current project focuses on the operators of mobile steam engines in historical Southern Ontario, but he can also be found firing modern, scale, and heritage steam engines with Ontario’s energetic community of hobbyists and aficionados. Hetherington, Kregg. 2020 The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops.  Duke University press.  Review {+}

Payments to the Poor as Development Instrument: Review of Olivier de Sardan & Piccoli’s Cash Transfers in Context, Berghahn Books (2018).

Payments to the Poor as Development Instrument: Review of Olivier de Sardan & Piccoli’s Cash Transfers in Context, Berghahn Books (2018).

Programs that give money to poor households are implemented across the global South as part of donor financed development assistance. Originally designed as a  short term ameliorative for the social impacts of structural adjustment in Latin America, they are now components of development oriented social policy in countries as diverse as Kenya, the Philippines, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. The details of these schemes vary, as do the amounts of money which beneficiaries receive. While Latin American schemes are relatively {+}

How Health Systems Hurt Women. Review of Fistula Politics by Alison Heller, Rutgers University Press (2018).

How Health Systems Hurt Women. Review of Fistula Politics by Alison Heller, Rutgers University Press (2018).

Medical anthropology has come a long way from its initial focus on the interpretive dimensions of health  and sickness. The Medical Anthropology series from Rutgers University Press provides a showcase for contemporary explorations of lives lived through the intersection of everyday practices, transnational health systems and global inequalities. Fistula Politics. Birthing Injuries and the Quest for Continence in Niger  by Alison Heller  is an ethnographic account of the experiences of women left incontinent by injuries they sustained through giving birth {+}

Designs for the Pluriverse — [book review]

Designs for the Pluriverse — [book review]

In Designs for the Pluriverse : Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, theorist and distinguished critic of development Arturo Escobar joins a chorus of works that seek to articulate the recent ontological turn with our shared global, ecological crisis. As I made my way through this challenging and well written work, I came to feel as if theoretical discourses on ontology, something I am curious about but which lies outside my area of expertise, sharpened into focus. Escobar {+}

Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.

Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.

By Erica Lorraine Williams I recently spent two weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the end of an incredibly busy semester, and I had recently finished reading Bianca Williams’ breathtaking ethnography, The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. I was reminded of how international travel offers an opportunity to fully immerse oneself in another environment. Despite being in Lisbon for work, I felt free and unencumbered. I was able to enjoy a temporary {+}

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Jan Chipchase is a leading design researcher. Some of you may have come across his work on the anthropology of mobile phones. I discovered it by chance while flicking through a copy of Wired magazine some years back. That Wired piece became a core reading for students when I taught a Business Anthropology module at Manchester. It opened my eyes to a wider world of anthropology. Jan has extensive experience of working with interdisciplinary teams to carry out field based {+}

The Dude Troll As Anthropologist: A Review of Peter Hempenstall’s “Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman and the War Over Cultural Anthropology”

The Dude Troll As Anthropologist: A Review of Peter Hempenstall’s “Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman and the War Over Cultural Anthropology”

The first time I read Coming of Age in Samoa was in my Intro to Anthro course. My teacher — and future mentor — was a social anthropologist and a social conservative of the Mary Douglas stripe. As we read the book she carefully pointed out passages where Mead seemed to contradict herself. Her impatience with the books was obvious, and at the end of the class she said “There, now you can say you’ve read something by Margaret Mead”. {+}