Anthropology and Development Studies publications

Bainton, A., McDougall, D. and Alexeyeff, K. (eds.,). Unequal Lives: Gender, Race and Class in the Western Pacific. Australian National University Press, 2021.

This collection is a major contribution to academic and political debates about the perverse effects of inequality, which now ranks among the greatest challenges of our time. The inspiration for this volume derives from the breadth and depth of Martha Macintyre’s remarkable scholarship. The contributors celebrate Macintyre’s groundbreaking work, which exemplifies the explanatory power, ethical force and pragmatism that ensures the relevance of anthropological research to the lives of others and to understanding the global condition. More information...

Dawson, Andrew. “Driving into the nation-state: Driving, roads, and selfhood in a post-socialist milieu,” in Dundon, Alison and Vokes, Richard (eds.,). Shifting states: New perspectives on security, infrastructure, and political affect. Routledge – Taylor & Francis, 2021.

Shifting States draws on a rich history of anthropological theorising on all kinds of states – from the pre- to the post- industrial – and explores topics as diverse as bureaucracy, infrastructure, surveillance, securitisation, and public health... Based on ethnographic case studies from all over the world, this timely volume forges new ways of thinking about how state power manifests, and is imagined, and about the effects it has on ordinary people’s lives. More information…

Djohar, Zubaidah and Wolf, Lesley. “Intergenerational feminist peace: global research and a case study from Aceh, Indonesia,” in Väyrynen, Tarja et al (eds.,). Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research. Routledge, 2021.

The volume argues that critical feminist thinking is necessary to analyse core peace and conflict issues and is fundamental to thinking about solutions to global problems and promoting peaceful conflict transformation. Contributions to the volume consider questions at the intersection of feminism, gender, peace, justice, and violence through interdisciplinary perspectives. The handbook engages with multiple feminisms, diverse policy concerns, and works with diverse theoretical and methodological contributions. More information…

Fernandez, Bina. Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers: Migrant Agency and Social Change. Springer International Publishing, 2020.

This book tells the stories of the Ethiopian women who migrate to work as domestic workers in the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative research in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Kuwait, the author reveals how women’s aspirations to migrate are constituted within unequal gendered structures of opportunity in Ethiopia and asks us to consider how gender, race, class and nationality intersect in the construction of migrant subjectivities and agency. By analysing the impact of migration on social reproduction both in Ethiopia and the destination countries, the book offers fresh empirical and theoretical insights into the largest stream of women’s autonomous international migration from Africa. More information...

Fitz-Henry, Erin and Rodriguez, Denisse. “What is in the ‘People’s Interest’?” Discourses of Egalitarianism and ‘Development as Compensation’ in Contemporary Ecuador,” in Gold, Marina and Zagato, Alessandro (eds.,). After the Pink Tide: Corporate State Formation and New Egalitarianisms in Latin America. Berghahn Books, 2020.

The left-wing Pink Tide movement that swept across Latin America seems now to be overturned, as a new wave of free-market thinkers emerge across the continent. This book analyses the emergence of corporate power within Latin America and the response of egalitarian movements across the continent trying to break open the constraints of the state. Through an ethnographically grounded and localized anthropological perspective, this book argues that at a time when the regular structures of political participation have been ruptured, the Latin American context reveals multiple expressions of egalitarian movements that strive (and sometimes momentarily manage) to break through the state’s apparatus. More information...

Hoang, Lan Anh. Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty. Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at Moscow’s wholesale markets from 2013 to 2016, this book provides original insights into how uncertainty shapes social practice, identity and belonging in the context of irregular migration from Vietnam to Russia. The uncertainties examined here are not just social, economic, and political, but also psychological and moral. The study speaks to various debates in migration and mobility studies – particularly those focused on brokerage networks, the political economy of sexuality, and social belonging – deepening our knowledge of how the core social values and cultural logics that underpin Vietnamese personhood are challenged and reconstituted by the ethos of the market economy. More information...

Kikon, Dolly and McDuie-Ra, Duncan. Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Ceasefire City aims to capture the dynamics of Dimapur by bringing together the fragmented sensibilities granted and contested in particular spaces in the city and the embodied experiences of the city by its residents. The first part of the book talks about military presence, capitalist growth, and urban expansion in Dimapur through an analysis of its spatial politics, and the second part, through collaborative ethnographic exercises, focuses on the relationship between the lived realities and the meanings that are forged around the city. More information…

Mattioli, Fabio. Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe. Stanford University Press, 2020.

Dark Finance offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of financial expansion and its political impacts in Eastern Europe. Following workers, managers, and investors in the Macedonian construction sector, Fabio Mattioli shows how financialisation can empower authoritarian regimes – not by making money accessible to everyone, but by allowing a small group of oligarchs to monopolise access to international credit and promote a cascade of exploitative domestic debt relations.

Dark Finance chronicles how, one bad deal at a time, Macedonia’s authoritarian regime rode a wave of financial expansion that deepened its reach into Macedonian society, only to discover that its domination, like all speculative bubbles, was teetering on the verge of collapse. More information...

Plueckhahn, Rebekah. Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia – Ulaanbaatar, Dynamic Ownership and Economic Flux. UCL Press, 2020.

What can the generative processes of dynamic ownership reveal about how the urban is experienced, understood and made in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia? Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia provides an ethnography of actions, strategies and techniques that form part of how residents precede and underwrite the owning of real estate property – including apartments and land – in a rapidly changing city. In doing so, it charts the types of visions of the future and perceptions of the urban form that are emerging within Ulaanbaatar following a period of investment, urban growth and subsequent economic fluctuation in Mongolia’s extractive economy since the late 2000s. More information...

Schubert, Violeta. Modernity and the Unmaking of Men. Berghahn Books, 2020.

Responding to the renewed emphasis on the significance of village studies, this book focuses on ageing bachelorhood as a site of intolerable angst when faced with rural depopulation and social precarity. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Macedonian society, the book explores the intersections between modernity, kinship and gender. It argues that as a critical consequence of demographic rupture, changing values and societal shifts, ageing bachelorhood illuminates and challenges conceptualisations of performativity and social presence. More information...

Wolf, Lesley Pruitt. “Youth, Peace, and Security: Global Trends and a Colombian Case Study,” in Byrne, Sean et al (eds.,). Routledge Companion to Peace and Conflict Studies. Routledge, 2020.

This Companion examines contemporary challenges in Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) and offers practical solutions to these problems. Bringing together chapters from new and established global scholars, the volume explores and critiques the foundations of Peace and Conflict Studies in an effort to advance the discipline in light of contemporary local and global actors. More information...

de Solier, Isabelle. “Globalized Eating Cultures,” in Dürrschmidt, Jörg, Kautt, York (eds.,). Globalized Eating Cultures: Mediation and Mediatization. Springer International Publishing, 2019.

This innovative volume explores the link between local and regional eating cultures and their mediatization via transnational TV cooking shows, glocal food advertising and social media transfer of recipes. Pursuing a global and interdisciplinary approach, it brings together research conducted in Latin America, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe, from leading scholars in sociology and political science, media and cultural studies, as well as anthropology. More information...

Kikon, Dolly and Karlsson, Bengt. Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in India. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

During the last decade, indigenous youth from Northeast India have migrated in large numbers to the main cities of metropolitan India to find work and study... Leaving the Land traces the migratory journeys of these youths and engage with their new lives in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram. More information...

Kikon, Dolly. Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India. University of Washington Press, 2019.

The nineteenth-century discovery of oil in the eastern Himalayan foothills, together with the establishment of tea plantations and other extractive industries, continues to have a profound impact on life in the region. Anthropologist Dolly Kikon uses in-depth ethnographic accounts to address the complexity of Northeast India, a region between Southeast Asia and China where boundaries and borders are made, disputed, and maintained. More information...

Kohn, T., Gibbs, M., Ryn, L.V. and Nansen, B. Residues of Death: Disposal Refigured. Routledge, 2019.

This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. More information...

de Solier, Isabelle. “Tasting the Digital: New Food Media,” in Lebesco, Kathleen and Naccarato, Peter (eds.,) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

The influence of food has grown rapidly as it has become more and more intertwined with popular culture in recent decades. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture offers an authoritative, comprehensive overview of and introduction to this growing field of research. Bringing together over 20 original essays from leading experts, including Amy Bentley, Deborah Lupton, Fabio Parasecoli, and Isabelle de Solier, its impressive breadth and depth serves to define the field of food and popular culture. More information...

Mustapha, Abdul Raufu, Ehrhardt, David and Diprose, Rachael. “Historical Contexts of Muslim-Christian Encounters in Northern Nigeria,” in Mustapha, Abdul Raufu and Ehrhardt, David (eds.,). Creed & Grievance: Muslim-Christian Relations and Conflict Resolution in Northern Nigeria. Boydell & Brewer, 2018.

Refuting a “clash of civilizations” between Muslims and Christians, the authors of this new study highlight the multiplicity of Muslim and Christian groups contending for influence and relevance, and the doctrinal, political and historical drivers of conflict and violence between and within them. They analyse three of the most contentious issues: the conflicts in Jos; the Boko Haram insurgency; and the challenges of legal pluralism posed by the declaration of full Sharia law in 12 Muslim majority states. More information...

Fernandez, Bina. “Queer Border Crossers: Pragmatic Complicities, Indiscretions and Subversions,” in Otto, Diane (ed.,). Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities. Routledge, 2018.

This ground-breaking collection reflects the growing momentum of interest in the international legal community in meshing the insights of queer legal theory with those critical theories that have a much longer genealogy - notably postcolonial and feminist analyses... The contributors to the book use queer legal theory to critically analyse the basic tenets and operations of international law, with many surprising, thought-provoking and instructive results. More information...

Fitz-Henry, Erin. “Domesticating the U.S. Air Force: The Challenges of Anti-Military Activism in Manta, Ecuador,” in McGranahan, Carole and Collins, John F. (eds.,). Ethnographies of U.S. Empire. Duke University Press, 2018.

From the Mohawk Nation, Korea, and the Philippines to Iraq and the hills of New Jersey, the contributors show how a methodological and theoretical commitment to ethnography sharpens all of our understandings of the novel and timeworn ways people live, thrive, and resist in the imperial present. More information...

Alexeyeff, Kalissa. "Entangled Traditions: Beth Dean and Victor Carell and the 1972 South Pacific Festival of Arts," in Stevenson, K. and Taiwan, K.M. (eds.,). The Festival of Pacific Arts: Celebrating over 40 years of Cultural Heritage. University of the South Pacific Press, 2017.

The Festival of Pacific Arts, initially known as the South Pacific Arts Festival, has grown from the 1st edition with 1000 participants from 20 countries to the Festival of Pacific Arts with close to 3000 delegates from 27 countries. The concept for a regional festival originated from the Fiji Arts Council in 1965. They envisioned a festival put on by and for Pacific peoples; a festival built upon the tradition of both sharing and passing cultural knowledge from one generation to the next.

Fernandez, Bina. “Irregular Migration from Ethiopia to the Gulf States,” in Fargues, Philippe and Shah, Nasra M. (eds.,). Skilful Survivals: Irregular Migration to the Gulf. Gulf Research Centre, 2017.

The overall objective of this volume is to advance existing knowledge about irregular migration to the Gulf, a subject about which huge research gaps remain. The report focuses on the role that legislation, policies and practices play in enabling and sustaining irregular, or undocumented, migration. Case studies highlighting these elements are presented on all the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, namely: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Hage, Ghassan. Le Loup et le Musulman. Wildproject Éditions, 2017.

Dans un monde régi par la domestication, le loup et le musulman apparaissent comme deux grandes figures fantasmatiques menaçant la “civilisation”. Ils ne respectent pas les frontières nationales, qui garantissent le maintien de l’ordre colonial. Pour Hage, le crime écologique et le crime racial reposent sur la même volonté de “gouverner l’ingouvernable”. Parce qu’on ne gouverne ni les âmes, ni le climat, islamophobie et géoingénierie sont deux avatars de la même illusion domesticatrice - aux conséquences également funestes. More information...

Belojevikj, B. and Mattioli, F. “Etnografia di una Crisi Normale. Crisiscape, Vrski, e Riflessione Antropologica a Skopje, Macedonia,” in Lofranco, Z. T. and Pusceddu, A. M. (eds.,). Oltre Adriatico e ritorno. Percorsi antropologici tra Italia e Sudest Europa. Meltemi, 2017.

The last twenty years has seen the rebirth, within Italian anthropology, of an interest in South-Eastern Europe, in line with a widespread public attention, stimulated by the dramatic events following the end of the Cold War. The volume is an unprecedented attempt to reflect on the reasons for this renewed interest, through research paths that explore the mobile scenario in which relations and balances between the two shores of the Adriatic are redefined. More information...

Arnold, M., Gibbs, M., Kohn, T., Meese, J. and Nansen, B. Death and digital media. Routledge, 2017.

Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. More information...