Hi there, it’s time for the latest round up of interviews from by New Books in Anthropology. Long and luxurious discussions with authors about their new books can be found below!
Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter by Natasha Myers
(Duke University Press, 2015)
An ethnography of protein crystallographers, Natasha Myers’s new book explores the scientific culture at a US research university. Rendering Life Molecular analyses the ways in which scientific knowledge can be both embodied and gestural – something performed – and emerges through the ‘rendering’ work undertaken by scientists in the course of their research.
Interview by Carla Nappi
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Rice: Global Networks and New Histories by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black, and Dagmar Schafer
(Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Interdisciplinary and multi-sited, Rice, edited by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is 15 chapters worth of the history of rice. Interrogating both the ‘black rice’ and the ‘agricultural involution’ debates, the discussion, with Francesca Bray and Dagmar Schafer, also touches on the challenges and rewards of scholarly collaboration. Interview by Carla Nappi
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Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People by Arlene Dávila
(University of California Press, 2012)
Latinos Inc. by Arlene Davila analyses the role of the Hispanic-Latina/o marketing industry in the production of Latina/o identity and culture. Critiquing the role of race, class, culture and nation in Latina/o identity formation, the book teases out the key tenants of a safe and consumable Latina/o culture.
Interview by David-James Gonzales
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Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty by Erica Weiss
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
The choices and lives of Israeli conscientious objectors are explored in Erica Weiss’ new book. Conscientious Objectors in Israel analyses two generations of those who have refused military service within a state fermented ‘economy of sacrifice’ and, in doing so, opens up fresh questions about contemporary citizenship.
Interview by Jason Schulman
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Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment by Yarimar Bonilla
(University of Chicago Press, 2015)
It is non-sovereignty rather than sovereignty that characterises the majority of Caribbean states according to Yarimar Bonilla in her new book Non-Sovereign Futures. Through an ethnography of labour activists in Guadeloupe, the book analyses the ways in which political claims can reach beyond the confines of demands for sovereignty in one of France’s ‘overseas departments’. Interview by Alejandra Bronfman
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Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report by Saba Mahmood
(Princeton University Press, 2015)
In this new book by Saba Mahmood, it is argued that political secularism and modern secular governance are drivers of the Middle East’s religious tensions. Religious Difference in a Secular Age critically examines the commonly held belief that majority-minority violence is produced by religious fundamentalism and, through a focus on the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, argues that majority/minority conflict emanates from secular politics and discourses.
Interview by SherAli Tareen
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The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna L. Tsing
(Princeton University Press, 2015)
A mushroom-centred analysis of what lives on in spite of capitalism, The Mushroom at the End of the World is Anna Tsing’s latest book. Based on research over seven years, across the US, Japan, Canada, China, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey and with foresters, traders and scientists, the book has grown out of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group and makes a powerful case for the ‘arts of noticing’.
Interview by Carla Nappi
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The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East by Marcia C. Inhorn
(Princeton University Press, 2012)
The New Arab Man by Marcia C. Inhorn is an exploration into the lives of Middle Eastern men as they attempt to overcome infertility through assisted reproduction. Through ethnography of these men’s lives as they self-consciously rethink previously prevailing patriarchal masculinity, the book challenges Western stereotypical images of the Arab man.
Interview by Banafsheh Madaninejad
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Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South by Anderson Blanton
(University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Hittin’ the Prayer Bones is an attempt to feel and hear the Holy Ghost. Anderson Blanton’s new book explores – through an ethnography of Christian worship in southern Appalachia – how faith, healing and prayer are entangled with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture.
Interview by Hillary Kaell
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Featured image by Ky (flickr, CC BY 2.0)
