As the predominantly Muslim Chinese who claim ancestry from Persian and Arabic-speaking regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, the Hui people in China have received relatively little attention in anthropology. According to the 2010 census, the Hui are the largest Muslim group in China and its third largest ethnic minority with a total population of 10. ... Show More
Today
Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ... Show More
44m 53s
Yesterday
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialized death machines—by racialized premature death. If this haunting is not adequatel ... Show More
58m 24s
Oct 2024
Xiaoming Wang, "Muslim Chinese: The Hui in Rural Ningxia" (de Gruyter, 2019)
As the predominantly Muslim Chinese who claim ancestry from Persian and Arabic-speaking regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, the Hui people in China have received relatively little attention in anthropology. According to the 2010 census, the Hui are the largest Muslim gro ... Show More
46m 25s
Apr 2024
Philipp Demgenski, "Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
In Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City (U Michigan Press, 2024), Philipp Demgenski examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the ... Show More
1h 20m
Dec 2023
June Hee Kwon, "Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers" (Duke UP, 2023)
Migration is a theme intertwined with hopes and dreams. In Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers (Duke UP, 2023), June Hee Kwon explores the trajectory of the “Korean dream” that has fueled the massive migration of Korean Chinese workers from the Ya ... Show More
1 h
May 2023
Shenila Khoja-Moolji, "Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In her moving, sophisticated, and analytically groundbreaking new book Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality (Oxford UP, 2023), Shenila Khoja-Moolji recounts and engages critical narratives of displacement and migration to examine ... Show More
36m 38s
Oct 2022
Political Deification in South Asia
How can we understand the processes through which political leaders, god-men, stars of all kinds, and big or small deities mingle together in the public sphere? And what are the consequences of deifying politicians, or opening politics to the gods?
In this episode, we discuss Sou ... Show More
33m 50s
Mar 2024
Fran Martin, "Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West" (Duke UP, 2021)
Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West (Duke UP, 2021) explores the significance of transnational educational mobility in the life aspirations of young, middle-class Chinese women. Based on extensive, long-term ethnographic research, Fran Martin explore ... Show More
1h 31m
Jan 2024
Maryam Kashani, "Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival" (Duke UP, 2023)
From the Black Power movement and state surveillance to Silicon Valley and gentrification, Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival (Duke UP, 2023) examines how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive and flourish within and against raci ... Show More
1h 9m
Apr 2025
Becky Yang Hsu, "The Extraordinary in the Mundane: Family and Forms of Community in China" (Columbia UP, 2024)
How do individuals address serious challenges in a context where organized gatherings are subject to strict government control? This new edited volume brings together a diverse group of scholars to explore the many ways people in China self-organize and create varied forms of coo ... Show More
47 m
Nov 2023
Konstantinos Retsikas, "A Synthesis of Time: Zakat, Islamic Micro-finance and the Question of the Future in 21st-Century Indonesia" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
In A Synthesis of Time: Zakat, Islamic Micro-finance and the Question of the Future in 21st-Century Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Konstantinos Retsikas has anthropological investigation into the different forms the economy assumes, and the different purposes it serves, wh ... Show More
1h 4m
Sep 11
Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and racial logics in Albania. Chelsi West Ohueri examines how race is made, remade, produced, and reproduced through constructions of whi ... Show More
51m 10s