Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different reality, facing dangerous injuries, few pro-career opportunities, a free but devalued college education, and future financial instability. In one of the first ethnographies about Black college football players ... Show More
Aug 28
Maan Barua, "Plantation Worlds" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Plantation Worlds (Duke UP, 2024), Maan Barua interrogates debates on planetary transformations through the histories and ecologies of plantations. Drawing on long-term research spanning fifteen years, Barua presents a unique ethnography attentive to the lives of both people a ... Show More
58m 49s
Aug 26
Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood" (Duke UP, 2020)
While Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020), anthropologist Vanessa Díaz examines the raced and gend ... Show More
50m 1s
Aug 12
Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that East African decolonization was not coterminous with political sovereignty but rather consisted of a longer process of reorganizing h ... Show More
1h 2m
Aug 2024
Carole Ammann, "Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea: Silent Politics" (Routledge, 2020)
Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea: Silent Politics (Routledge, 2020) examines how women in Guinea articulate themselves politically within and outside institutional politics. It documents the everyday practices that local female actors adopt to deal with the continuous econo ... Show More
1h 32m
Nov 2023
Charles S. Maier, "The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" (Harvard UP, 2023)
We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intell ... Show More
50m 49s
Oct 2024
Fazil Moradi, "Being Human: Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
In the contemporary world, political violence has been an unavoidable issue for everyone. It is therefore essential to criticize political violence in a textured way. The Iraqi Ba’th state’s Anfāl operations (1987-1991) is one of the twentieth century’s ultimate acts of destruct ... Show More
1h 24m
Mar 2024
Noah L. Nathan, "The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
States are often minimally present in the rural periphery. Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact. Isolated state actions in regions where the state is otherwise scarce can have outsize, long-lasting effects on society. The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Po ... Show More
52m 9s
May 2023
J. Daniel Elam, "World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics" (Fordham UP, 2020)
World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham UP, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers en ... Show More
56m 16s
Mar 2024
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study appro ... Show More
50 m
Nov 2024
Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-B ... Show More
37m 13s
Jul 2024
Alexander Sasha Kondakov, "Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia" (UCL Press, 2022)
Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia (UCL Press, 2022) by Alexander Sasha Kondakov uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer vi ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 2024
Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)
Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and ... Show More
55m 18s
Feb 2025
Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Dr. ... Show More
1h 11m