We invite queries about writing single book reviews or multi-book review essays. Contact Leo Coleman at polar.reviews@gmail.com for more information, or to propose a book for review. PoLAR expects potential reviewers to have received their PhD in Anthropology or a related field, or to have evidence of relevant publications or expertise.

During the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, most publishers are providing e-book review copies; physical books can be requested but availability is limited.

This list of books received is updated periodically. Scroll down for previous monthly lists. NB: Titles marked with an asterisk are already assigned to a reviewer (updated 25 September 2020)

PoLAR: Books Received

August-September 2020

Alexy, Allison. 2020. Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bannerjee, Dwaipayan. 2020. Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bens, Jonas. 2020. The Indigenous Paradox: Rights, Sovereignty, and Culture in the Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bhandar, Brenna and Rafeef Ziadah, eds., 2020. Revolutionary Feminisms. New York: Verso.

Billé, Franck. 2020. Voluminous States: Sovereignty, Materiality, and the Territorial Imagination. Durham: Duke University Press.

Greenhouse, Carol J. and Christina L. Davis, eds., 2020. Landscapes of Law: Practicing Sovereignty in Transnational Terrain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Harkness, Geoff. 2020. Changing Qatar: Culture, Citizenship and Rapid Modernization. New York: NYU Press.

Hodžić, Saida. 2017. The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Malatino, Hil. 2020. Trans Care. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Nadkarni, Maya. 2020. Remains of Socialism: Memory and the Futures of the Past in Postsocialist Hungary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Patton-Imani, Sandra. 2020. Queering Family Trees: Race, Reproductive Justice, and Lesbian Motherhood. New York: NYU Press.

Pike Sarah M., Jone Salomonsen and Paul-Francois Tremlett, eds. 2020. Ritual and Democracy: Protests, Publics, and Performances. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing.

Rodriguez, Juan Luis. 2020. Language and Revolutionary Magic in the Orinoco Delta. New York: Bloomsbury.

Ventsel, Aimar. 2020. Punks and Skins United: Identity, Class, and the Economics of an Eastern German Subculture. New York: Berghahn.

Watson, Matthew C. 2020. Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit. Durham: Duke University Press.

Zavella, Patricia. 2020. The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism. New York: NYU Press.

April – June 2020

Besky, Sarah. 2020. Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea. Oakland: University of California Press.

Chriss, James J. 2020. Law and Society: A Sociological Approach. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Grama, Emanuela. Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kuru, Ahmet T. 2020. Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Peletz, Michael. 2020. Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary. Oakland: University of California Press.

Redding, Jeffrey A. 2020. A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Scott-Smith, Tom. 2020. On An Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Strathern, Marilyn. 2020. Relations: An Anthropological Account. Durham: Duke University Press.

*Telesca, Jennifer. 2020. Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Thompson, Gardner. 2020. Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism, and the Creation of Israel. London: Saqi Books.

Wiegratz, Jörg, Giuliano Martiniello, and Elisa Greco, eds. 2020. Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation. London: Zed Books, 2020.

Wydra, Harald, and Bjørn Thomassen. 2020. Handbook of Political Anthropology. Cheltanham: Edward Elgar.

Yang, Mayfair. 2020. Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual, Economy, and Society in Wenzhou, China. Durham: Duke University Press.

March 2020

Armytage, Rosita. 2020. Big Capital in an Unequal World: The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan. New York: Berghahn.

Brunnegger, Sandra, ed. 2019. Everyday Justice: Law, Ethnography, Injustice. Cambridge UP.

Diaz-Barriga, Miguel and Margaret E. Dorsey. 2020. Fencing in Democracy: Border Walls, Necropolitics, and the Security State. Durham: Duke UP.

Göpfert, Mirco. 2020. Policing the Frontier: An Ethnography of Two Worlds in Niger. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

*Haenn, Nora. 2020. Marriage After Migration: An Ethnography of Money, Romance, and Gender in Globalizing Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press.

*Kline, Nolan. 2019. Pathogenic Policing: Immigration Enforcement and Health in the US South. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Koch, Gabriele. 2020. Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy. Stanford UP.

Lakkimsetti, Chaitanya. 2020. Legalizing Sex: Sexual Minorities, AIDS, and Citizenship in India. New York: NYU Press.

Lombard, Louisa. 2020. Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic. Cambridge UP.

Vogel, Erica. 2020. Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections between Peru and South Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press.

February 2020

*Baruah, Sanjib. 2020. In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast. Stanford UP.

*Berta, Peter. 2019. Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity Among Romanian Roma. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

*Ghertner, D. Asher, Hudson McFann, and Daniel M. Goldstein, eds. 2020. Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life. Durham: Duke UP.

Reed-Danahay, Deborah. 2020. Bourdieu and Social Space: Mobilities, Trajectories, Emplacements. New York: Berghahn.

Yamin, Alicia Ely. 2020. When Misfortune Becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

January 2020

*Appel, Hannah. 2019. The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Ecuatorial Guinea. Durham: Duke UP.

*Braverman, Irus and Elizabeth R. Johnson, eds. 2020. Blue Legalities: The Life and Laws of the Sea. Durham: Duke UP.

Etzioni, Amitai. 2018. Law and Society in a Populist Age: Balancing Individual Rights and the Common Good. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Firat, Bilge. 2019. Diplomacy and Lobbying during Turkey’s Europeanisation: The Private Life of Politics. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

Fischer, Johan and Jérémy Jammes, eds. 2019. Muslim Piety as Economy: Markets, Meaning and Morality in Southeast Asia. New York: Routledge.

*Li, Darryl. 2020. The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

McCargo, Duncan. 2019. Fighting For Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Sigal, Pete, Zeb Tortorici, and Neil L. Whitehead, eds. 2019. Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knoweldge. Durham: Duke UP.

*Skinner, Daniel. 2019. Medical Necessity: Health Care Access and the Politics of Decision Making. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

December 2019

Açıksöz, Salih Can. 2019. Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey. Berkeley: University of California Press.

*Dick, Hilary Parsons. 2018. Words of Passage: National Longing and the Imagined Lives of Mexican Migrants. Austin: University of Texas Press.

*Dickinson, Maggie. 2020. Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dua, Jatin. 2019. Captured At Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goodale, Mark. 2019. A Revolution in Fragments: Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology, and Practice in Bolivia. Durham: Duke UP.

Griffiths, Anne. 2019. Transformations on the Ground. Space and the Power of Land in Botswana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hodges, Adam. 2019. When Words Trump Politics: Resisting a Hostile Regime of Language. Stanford: Stanford Briefs.

*Kleinman, Julie. 2019. Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Malmström, Maria Frederika. 2019. The Streets are Talking to Me: Affective Fragments in Sisi’s Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mugler, Johanna. 2019. Measuring Justice: Quantitative Accountability and the National Prosecuting Authority in South Africa. New York: Cambridge UP.

Peters, Rebecca Warne. 2020. Implementing Inequality: The Invisible Labor of International Development. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

*Subramanian, Ajantha. 2019. The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

October 2019, part II

Applebaum, Rachel. 2019. Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Bajoghli, Narges. 2019. Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic. Stanford UP.

Constable, Marianne, Leti Volpp, and Bryan Wagner, eds. 2019. Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places: Justice Beyond and Between. New York: Fordham UP.

Eltringham, Nigel. 2019. Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. New York: Cambridge University Press.

LeBrón, Marisol. 2019. Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lopez, William D. 2019. Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

McMahon, Richard, ed. 2019. National Races:  Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity, 1840-1945. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Moore, Adam. 2019. Empire’s Labor: The Global Army that Supports US Wars. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Park, Kyeyoung. 2019. L.A. Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest. New York: Lexington Books.

Speed, Shannon. 2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Srinivas, Tulasi. 2018. The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder. Durham: Duke University Press.

Waring, Alan, ed., 2019. The New Authoritarianism: Vol. 2: A Risk Analysis of the European Alt-Right Phenomenon. Stuttgart/New York: Ibidem-Verlag/Barbara Budrich Publishers.

Weiss, Hadas. 2019. We Have Never Been Middle-Class. New York: Verso.

Westermeyer, William H. 2019. Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wills, David. 2019. Killing Times: The Temporal Technology of the Death Penalty. New York: Fordham UP.

October 2019

Jegathesan, Mythri. 2019. Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka. Washington: University of Washington Press.

Livingston, Julie. 2019. Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as told from Southern Africa. Durham: Duke UP.

Nikolakis, William, Stephen Cornell and Harry W. Nelson, eds. 2019. Reclaiming Indigenous Governance: Reflections and Insights from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Ross, Robert. 2018. These Oppressions Won’t Cease: An Anthology of Political Thought of the Cape Khoesan, 1777-1879. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press.

Tejani, Riaz. 2019. Law and Society Today. Berkeley: University of California Press.

September 2019

Cooper, Davina. 2019. Feeling Like a State: Desire, Denial, and the Recasting of Authority. Durham: Duke UP.

Guilbault, Jocelyne and Timothy Rommen, eds. 2019. Sounds of Vacation: Political Economies of Caribbean Tourism. Durham: Duke UP.

Kravel-Tovi, Michal. 2017. When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel. New York: Columbia UP.

Nicholls, Walter J. 2019. The Immigrant Rights Movement: The Battle over National Citizenship. Stanford UP.

Nugent, David. 2019. The Encrypted State: Delusion and Displacement in the Peruvian Andes. Stanford UP.

*Parla, Ayse. 2019. Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey. Stanford UP.

August 2019

*Ambrust, Walter. 2019. Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

*Chowdhury, Nusrat Sabina. 2019. Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh. Stanford UP.

Fukushima, Annie Isabel. 2019. Migrant Crossings: Witnessing Human Trafficking in the US. Stanford UP.

Gascón, Luis Daniel and Aaron Roussell. The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles. New York: NYU Press.

Leadbeater, Marie. 2018. See No Evil: New Zealand’s Betrayal of the people of West Papua. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press.

Samet, Robert. 2019. Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

*Zani, Leah. 2019. Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos. Durham: Duke UP.

The following two books are published separately, but form a joint project or “duo-graph”; both books may be reviewed together or individual reviewers may request one for review.

Boyer, Dominic. 2019. Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene. Durham: Duke UP.

Howe, Cymene. 2019. Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene. Durham: Duke UP.

June 2019

Besteman, Catherine and Hugh Gusterson, eds. Life By Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Remaking our World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Deverell, Rita Shelton. 2019. American Refugees: Turning to Canada for Freedom. Regina: University of Regina Press.

Harvey, Penny, Christian Krohn-Hansen, and Knut G. Nustad, eds. Anthropos and the Material. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hass, Bridget M. and Amy Shuman, eds. 2019. Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum. Athens: Ohio University Press.

May 2019

Anderson, Mark. 2019. From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism, and American Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Finkelstein, Maura. 2019. The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press.

April 2019

Coe, Cati. 2019. The New American Servitude: Political Belonging Among African Immigrant Home Care Workers. New York: NYU Press.

Copeland, Nicholas. 2019. The Democracy Development Machine: Neoliberalism, Radical Pessimism, and Authoritarian Populism in Mayan Guatemala. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2019.

Gibson, Christopher L. Movement-Driven Development: The Politics of Health and Democracy in Brazil. Stanford: Stanford UP.

James, Erica Caple. 2019. Governing Gifts: Faith, Charity, and the Security State. Albuquerque: SAR Press/University of New Mexico Press.

Miller, Ethan. 2019. Reimagining Livelihoods: Live Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Shore, Cris and David V. Williams, eds. 2019. The Shapeshifting Crown: Locating the State in Postcolonial New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the UK. New York: Cambridge University Press.

March 2019  

Arnason, Johann P. and Chris Hann, eds. 2019. Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis: Eurasian Explorations. Albany: SUNY Press.

Destrooper, Tine and Sally Engle Merry, eds. 2018. Human Rights Transformation in Practice. UPenn.

Grisaffi, Thomas. 2019. Coca Yes, Cocaine No: How Bolivia’s Coca Growers Reshaped Democracy. Duke UP.

Mezzdra, Sandro and Brett Nielson. 2019. The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP.

Padios, Jan M. 2018. A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines. Durham: Duke UP.

Turner, Bertram and Guther Schlee, eds., 2017. On Retaliation: Towards an Interdisciplinary Understanding of a Basic Human Condition. New York: Berghahn.

Books Available – Backlist

• Alexander, Catherine and Andrew Sanchez, eds. 2018. Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination. New York: Berghahn.
• Alves, Jaime Amparo. 2018. The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Berda, Yael. 2018. Living Emergency: Israel’s Permit Regime in the Occupied West Bank. Stanford UP.
• Caglar, Ayse and Nina Glick Schiller, eds. 2018. Migrants and City-Making: Dispossession, Displacement, & Urban Regeneration. Durham: Duke UP.
• Carrier, James G., ed. 2018. Economy, Crime, and Wrong in a Neoliberal Era. New York: Berghahn.
• Cepek, Michael. 2018. Life in Oil: Cofan Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia, photographs by Bear Guerra. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Chance, Kerry Ryan. 2018. Living Politics in South Africa’s Urban Shacklands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Chua, Lynette J. 2018. The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilization and Human Rights as a Way of Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Cox, John 2018. Fast Money Schemes: Hope and Deception in Papua New Guinea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Dominguez, Virginia and Jasmin Habib, eds. America Observed: On An International Anthropology of the United States. New York: Berghahn.
• Doxiadis, Evdixios and Aimee Placas, eds.. 2018. Living Under Austerity: Greek Society in Crisis. New York: Berghahn.
• Dubal, Sam. 2018. Against Humanity: Lesson’s from the Lord’s Resistance Army. Berkeley: U California Press.
• Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2018. The Justice Façade. Trials of Transition in Cambodia. Oxford UP.
• Jimenez, Luis F. 2018. Migrants and Political Change in Latin America. U Florida Press.
• Jusionyte, Ieva. 2019. Threshold: Emergency Responders at the US-Mexico Border. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Martins, Rosana and Massimo Canevacci, eds. 2018. Lusophone Hip-Hop: “Who We Are” and “Where We Are”: Identity, Urban Culture, and Belonging. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing.
• McGranahan, Carole and John Collins, eds. Ethnographies of US Empire. Duke UP.
• McKay, Ramah. 2018. Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique. Duke UP.
• Mendoza, Marcos. 2018. The Patagonian Sublime: The Green Economy and Post-Neoliberal Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.
• Mikus, Marek. 2018. Frontiers of Civil Society: Government and Hegemony in Serbia. New York: Berghahn.
• Millar, Kathleen M. 2018. Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio’s Garbage Dump. Durham: Duke UP.
• Powell, Dana E. 2018. Landscapes of Power: The Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation. Durham: Duke UP.
• Renfrew, Daniel. 2018. Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay. Berkeley: U California Press.
• Shulist, Sarah. 2018. Transforming Indigeneity: Urbanization and Language Revitalization in the Brazilian Amazon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Solomon, Harris. 2017. Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India. Duke UP.
• Sumich, Jason. 2018. The Middle Class in Mozambique: The State and the Politics of Transformation in Southern Africa. Cambridge UP.
• Tousignant, Noemi. 2018. Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal. Durham: Duke UP.
• Vetta, Theodora. 2018. Democracy Struggles: NGOs and the Politics of Aid in Serbia. New York: Berghahn.
• Wright, Fiona. 2018. The Israeli Radical Left: An Ethics of Complicity. U Penn.
• Yeh, Rian. 2018. Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City. Chicago.