2020

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...