Introducing Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest

In 2011 a global wave of protest changed the way in which people saw contention. January saw two revolutions: first, in Tunisia culminating in the overthrow of then president Ben Ali; and second in Egypt with protests that would end the Mubarak regime within eighteen days. This wave of protest spread to Libya, Syria, Yemen […]

Promoting ‘self-reliance’ for refugees: what does it really mean?

The following is a post by Naohiko Omata, author of The Myth of Self-Reliance: Economic Lives Inside a Liberian Refugee Camp. Promotion of ‘self-reliance’ for refugees has occupied a central seat in the policy arena of the international refugee regime in recent years. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) broadly defines self-reliance as ‘the social […]

SIMULATED SHELVES: BROWSE JULY 2017 NEW BOOKS

We’re delighted to offer a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Anthropology, Applied Anthropology, Film Studies, Gender Studies, History, and Media Studies, along with our New in Paperback titles.   EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS Ethnographies of Lack and Desire in Contemporary China Edited by Susanne Bregnbæk and Mikkel Bunkenborg Volume 2, Studies in Social Analysis   As critical […]

Recreating universities to help revive democracy

The following is a post by Davydd J. Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Cornell University The following are some management verities that abound in current university administrations: Good universities require highly-paid leaders hired by Boards of Trustees through executive search services. Good universities have large administrative staffs, often outnumbering the faculty. Good university […]

Book Launch for Stories Make the World

The following is a post about the book launch for Stories Make the World: Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary by Stephen Most. It’s odd to see the result of years of work contained within a small object, whether it is a book, a DVD, or a phone on which films are streaming. Stories Make the […]

Happy Bastille Day

Celebrated on July, 14, Bastille Day is the French national day and one of the most important bank holidays in France. The day commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille on the 14th July 1789, a medieval fortress and prison which was a symbol of tyrannical Bourbon authority and […]

At the Threshold of Modernity: Vienna’s pivotal years in the 1870s

by Ulrich E. Bach ... Continue reading on Tumblr →

If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research. —Wilson Mizner ... Continue reading on Tumblr →

New in Paperback

Vanished History

The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture

Tomas Sniegon

“Overall, this is an informative book [that]… may be especially useful for readers interested in the ongoing development of historical narratives in Europe generally, and in the Czech and Slovak Republics in particular.” · Holocaust and Genocide

New in Paperback

Anxious Histories

Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century

Jordana Silverstein

“What makes the book so important is that in investigating why the third generation hands on the knowledge of the Holocaust in the way that it does, and why it hands on the knowledge it does, Silverstein offers us an examination of what it is to be Jewish today, to live one’s everyday life in the lengthening shadow of the Holocaust and the trauma handed on through the generations… I strongly recommend this book.” · Australian Historical Studies

New in Paperback

Stories Make the World

Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary

Stephen Most

“Stories Make the World is an insightful look into the craft of documentary filmmaking that should be required reading for media students. Story and honesty are needed now more than ever in an era of ‘fake news,’ half-truths, and technical virtuosity.” · John de Graaf, Director of Affluenza and fifteen other national PBS documentaries

Featured Title

Transborder Media Spaces

Ayuujk Videomaking between Mexico and the US

Ingrid Kummels

“This important book is a welcome contribution to anthropological studies of media and should be carefully examined by scholars and students interested in indigenous media, film production as a technology of knowledge, and audiovisual decolonization.” · Ulla D. Berg, Rutgers University

Featured Title

The Myth of Self-Reliance

Economic Lives Inside a Liberian Refugee Camp

Naohiko Omata

“Excellent in every respect… The work fills a major gap in the refugee studies literature, as there has been no previous book-length account of this particular refugee population or the topic under review (how refugees cope in the absence of humanitarian assistance). Unlike some anthropological accounts of refugee situations, the study is a delight to read, bereft of unnecessary theory and maintains a consistent focus on the refugees themselves.” · Jeff Crisp, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

Featured Title

Indigeneity and the Sacred

Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in the Americas

Edited by Fausto Sarmiento and Sarah Hitchner

“This volume has multidisciplinary implications, and includes geographers, cultural anthropologists, and archaeologists, as well as the leader of an indigenous group as authors. This book will be an excellent complement to other existing texts in the field of ecological anthropology.” · William Balée, Tulane University

Featured Series

Series:

European Conceptual History

The result of extensive collaboration among leading scholars from across Europe, Conceptual History in the European Space represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. It brings together ambitious thematic studies that combine the pioneering methods of historian Reinhart Koselleck with contemporary insights and debates, each one illuminating a key feature of the European conceptual landscape.

Memory and Change in Europe

Eastern Perspectives

Edited by Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak
Foreword by Jeffrey Olick

In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region's experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.

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Topographies of Suffering

Buchenwald, Babi Yar, Lidice

Jessica Rapson

Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of "monument fatigue," a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic...

... Continue reading →