We invite queries about writing single book reviews or multi-book review essays about books published in the last three years. Contact Matt Canfield and Smoki Musaraj 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.

PoLAR receives regular announcements about new books as well as physical review copies from scholarly presses, and shares these announcements here. We can also request a review copy of a book not listed here, if a review of it would be relevant to the readership of the journal. If your book is not listed below, please contact us. 

Most books below can be provided for review in either e-book or hard copy formats. Titles marked with a ✏︎ (pencil icon) have been received at the review office. Titles marked with an *(asterisk) have been requested for review. 

PoLAR: Books Received

January 2023

Hayden, Cory. 2023. The Spectacular Generic: Pharmaceuticals and the Simipolitical in Mexico. Duke University Press.

Heath, Melanie. 2023. Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Robben, Antonius C.G.M and Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2023. Perpetrators: Encountering Humanity’s Dark Side. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

Uehling, Greta. 2023. Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine. Cornell University Press.

Wiltshire, Ashley. 2023. Everyday Justice: A Legal Aid Story. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 

 

September – December 2022 – Books Received

Bishara, Amahl. 2022. Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Expression.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Buyandelger, Manduhai. 2022. A Thousand Steps to Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Constable, Nicole. 2022. Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care and Precarious Migrations. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dankwa, Serena Owusua. 2022. Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

De Jong, Ferdinand. 2022. Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fabricant, Nicole. 2022. Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore.Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gwen, Burnyeat. 2022. The Face of Peace: Government Pedagogy amid Disinformation in Columbia.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kernaghan, Richard. 2022. Crossing the Current: Aftermaths of War along the Huallaga River. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Kopper, Moisés. 2022. Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil’s Public Housing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Krohn-Hansen. Christian. Jobless Growth in the Dominican Republic: Disorganization, Precarity, and Livelihoods. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lindburg, Annika. 2022. Deportation Limbo: State Violence and Contestations in the Nordics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lombard, Louisa. 2022. Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Loperena, Christopher. 2022. The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

*Mikdashi, Maya. 2022. Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Prentice, Michael M. 2022. Super Corporate: Distinction and Participation in Post-Hierarchy South Korea.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Raj, Jayaseelan. 2022. Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit Life in the Indian Tea Belt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Reece, Koreen M. 2022. Pandemic Kinship: Families, Intervention, and Social Change in Botswana’s Time of AIDS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seaver, Nick. 2022. Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Singer, Elyse Ona. 2022. Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Syversten, Jennifer Leigh. 2022. Dangerous Love: Sex Work, Drug Use, and the Pursuit of Intimacy in Tijuana, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Theidon, Kimberly. 2022 Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin. Durham: Duke University Press.

Winchell, Marieke. 2022. After Servitude: Elusive Property and the Ethics of Kinship in Bolivia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Zamora, Sylvia. Racial Baggage: Mexican Immigrants and Race Across the Border. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

August 2022 – Books Received

Minn, Pierre. 2022. Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

Offit, Anna. 2022. Imagined Juror: How Hypothetical Juries Influence Federal Prosecutors. New York: New York University Press.

Puccio-Den, Deborah. 2021. Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Science. Chicago: Hau Books. 

Scanlan Lyons, Colleen M. 2022. Running After Paradise: Hope, Survival, and Activism in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.✏︎

Trosper, Ronald L. 2022. Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and their Lands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.✏︎

July 2022 – Books Received

Kim, Eleana J. 2022. Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

June 2022 – Books Received

Bens, Jonas. 2022. The Sentimental Court: The Affective Life of the Criminal Justice System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Friedner, Michele Ilana. 2022. Sensory Futures:  Deafness and Cochlear Implant Infrastructures in India. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 

April 2022 – Books Received

Das, Veena. 2022. Slum Acts. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. 

March 2022 – Books Received

Bock, Jan-Jonathan. 2022. Citizens Without a City: Destruction and Despair after the L’Aquila Earthquake. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Hirshmann, Nancy J. and Deborah A. Thomas. eds. 2022. Citizenship on the Edge: Sex/Gender/Race. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kim, Jodi. 2022. Settler Garrison: Debt Imperialism, Militarism, and Transpacific Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Marcatelli, Michela. 2021. Naturalizing Inequality: Water, Race, and Biopolitics in South Africa. Tuscon, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.

Moses, Joshua, 2022. Anxious Experts: Disaster Response and Spiritual Care from 9/11 to the Climate Crisis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Navarro, Yael, Zerrin Özlem Biner, Alice von Biebersteinm and Seda Altug, eds. 2022. Reverberations: Violence across Time and Space. Philadelphia, Pa: Pennsylvania University Press.

Pratt, Mary Louise. 2022. Planetary Longings. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Razack, Sherene H. 2022. Nothing Has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy through Anti-Muslim Racism. Minneapolis: MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Sharma, Nitasha Tamar. 2021. Hawai’i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the West Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Schuller, Mark. 2021. Humanity‘s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

*Wright, Andrea. 2021. Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

*Canfield, Matthew C. 2022. Translating Food Sovereignty: Cultivating Justice in an Age of Transnational Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Decker, Scott. H., David C. Pyrooz, and James A. Densley. 2022. On Gangs. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Demir, Ipek. 2022. Diaspora as Translation and Decolonization. Manchester University Press. Manchester University Press.

van Dooren, Thom, and Matthew Chreulew (eds.) Kin: Thinking with Deborah Bird Rose. Durham: Duke University Press. 

Twigt, Mirjam. 2022. Mediated Lives: Waiting and Hope among Iraqi Refugees in Jordan. London: Berghahn Books.

*Yonucu, Deniz. 2022. Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Jan 2022 – Books Received

Alexandrakis, Othon. 2022. Radical Resilience: Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Byler, Darren. 2022. Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chrostowska, S. D. 2021. Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.✏︎

Del Nido, Juan M. 2022. Taxis vs. Uber: Courts, Markets, and Technology in Buenos Aires. Stanford: Stanford University Press.✏︎

 

Books Received in 2021 (listed alphabetically)

Adebanwi, Wale and Rogers Orock, eds. 2021. Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Bähre, Erik. 2020. Ironies of Solidarity: Insurance and Financialization of Kinship. London: Zed Books.

Bartlett, Nicholas. 2020. Recovering Histories: Life and Labor after Heroin in Reform-Era China. Oakland: University of California Press.

Bhabha, Jacqueline, Margareta Matache, and Caroline Elkins, eds., 2021. Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bickford, Andrew. 2021. Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bjork-James, Sophie. 2021. The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Bjorkman, Lisa, ed. 2021. Bombay Brokers. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bolotta, Guiseppe, Philip Fountain, and R. Michael Feener, eds. 2020. Political Theologies and Development in Asia: Transcendence, Sacrifice, and Aspiration. Manchester: Manchester UP.✏︎

Brandel, Andrew and Marco Motta, eds. 2021. Living With Concepts: Anthropology in the Grip of Reality. New York: Fordham University Press.

Briggs, Charles L. 2021. Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge. Louisville, CO: Utah State University Press.

Campbell, Howard. 2021. Downtown Juarez: Underworlds of Violence and Abuse. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Carney, Megan A. 2021. Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean. Oakland: University of California Press.

Carruth, Lauren. 2021. Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work in Ethopia’s Somali Region. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chaplin, Chris. 2021. Salafism and the State: Islamic Activism and National Identity in Contemporary Indonesia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

Crane, Ken R. 2021. Iraqi Refugees in the United States: The Enduring Effects of the War on Terror. New York: NYU Press.

Douglas-Jones, Rachel and Justin Shaffner, eds., 2021. Hope and Insufficiency: Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison. New York: Berghahn.

Elinoff, Eli and Tyson Vaughan, eds. 2020. Disastrous Times: Beyond Environmental Crisis in Urbanizing Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennyslvania Press.

Feldman, Joseph P. 2021. Memories before the State: Postwar Peru and the Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 

Fiskesjo, Magnus. 2021. Stories from an Ancient Land: Perspectives on Wa History and Culture. Berghahn Books.

Flores, Andrea. 2021. The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth are Transforming What it Means to Belong in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gaudillière, Jean-Paul, Claire Beaudevin, Christoph Gradmann, Anne M. Lovell, and Laurent Pordié. 2020. Global Health and the New World Order: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to a Changing Regime of Governance.Manchester: University of Manchester Press.✏︎

Gonick, Sophie L. 2021. Disposession and Dissent: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

Gonzales, Phillip B., Renato Rosaldo, and Mary Louise Pratt, eds. 2021. Trumpism, Mexican America, and the Struggle for Latinx Citizenship. Santa Fe/Albequerque: School for Advanced Research Press/University of New Mexico Press. ✏︎

*Gribaldo, Alessandra. 2021. Unexpected Subjects: Intimate Partner Violence, Testimony, and the Law. Chicago: Hau Books.✏︎

Harker, Christopher. 2021. Spacing Debt: Obligations, Violence, and Endurance in Ramallah, Palestine. Durham: Duke University Press.

Haynes, Nell, Eero Laine, Heather Levi, and Sharon Mazer, eds. 2020. Professional Wrestling: Politics and Populism. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Howlett, Zachary M. 2021. Meritocracy and its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

*Humphrey, Caroline and Franck Billé. 2021. On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

*Ibrahim, Farhana. 2021. From Family to Police Force: Security and Belonging on a South Asian Border. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Issa, Perla. 2021. The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions: An Everyday Perspective from Nahr el-Bared Camp. Oakland: University of California Press/LUMINOS.

Kalman, Ian. 2021. Framing Borders: Principle and Practicality in the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.✏︎

Karam, John Tofik. 2020. Manifold Destiny: Arabs at an American Crossroads of Exceptional Rule. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Kim, Nadia Y. 2021. Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

Kumar, Radha. 2021. Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900-1975. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kuru, Ahmet T. 2019. Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment. A Global and Historical Comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, Andrew and Stephen J. Collier. 2021. The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2021. Wild Thought: A New Translation of La Pensée Sauvage. Jeffrey Mehlman and John Leavitt, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Longazel, Jamie and Miranda Cady Hallett, eds. 2021. Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Disposession, and Survival in the Americas. Philadephia: Temple University Press.

Luna, Zakiya. 2020. Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice.New York: NYU Press.✏︎

Marius, Philippe-Richard. 2021. The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society. Oxford, MS: University of Mississippi Press.

Massoud, Mark Fathi. 2021. Shari’a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

*Mignolo, Walter D. 2021. The Politics of Decolonial Investigations. Durham: Duke University Press.

*Niezen, Ronald. 2020. #HumanRights: The Technologies nad Politics of Justice Claims in Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

O’Neill, Kevin Lewis and Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela. 2020. Art of Captivity/Arte del Cautiverio. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.✏︎

Østebø, Marit. 2021. Village Gone Viral: Understanding the Spread of Policy Models in a Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

Özden-Schilling, Canay. 2021. The Current Economy: Electricity Markets and Techno-Economics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

Panella, Cristiana and Walter E. Little. 2021. Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.✏︎

Pugliese, Joseph. 2020. Biopolitics of the More than Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence. Durham: Duke University Press.

Richland, Justin B. 2021. Cooperation without Submission: Indigenous Jurisdictions in Native Nation–US Engagements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ✏︎

Rodriguez, Leila. 2021. Culture as Judicial Evidence in Latin America. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press.

Roller, Heather F. 2021. Contact Strategies: Histories of Native Autonomy in Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

*Sahlins, Marshall. 2021. The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Schulz, Philipp. 2020. Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda. Oakland: Luminos/University of California Press.

Scott, Rachel M. 2021. Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Stein, Rebecca L. 2021. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press.✏︎

Stephen, Lynn. 2021. Stories That Make History: Mexico through Elena Poniatowska’s Crónicas. Durham: Duke University Press.

Swamy, Raja. 2021. Building Back Better in India: Development, NGOs, and Artisanal Fishers after the 2004 Tsunami. NGOgraphies. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press.

Talesh, Shauhin, Elizabeth Mertz and Heinz Klug, eds. 2021. Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism. Surrey, UK: Edward Elgar.

Taylor, Mary N. 2021. Movement of the People: Hungarian Folk Dance, Populism, and Citizenship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ✏︎

Thorpe, Amelia. 2020. Owning the Street: The Everyday Life of Property. Cambridge: MIT Press.

van Oorschot, Irene. 2021. The Law Multiple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vauchez, Antoine and Pierre France. 2020. The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France. Meg Morley, trans., with a forward by Samuel Moyn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Vilaça, Aparecida. 2021. Paletó and Me: Memories of my Indigenous Father. David Rodgers, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ✏︎

*Verheul, Susanne. 2021. Performing Power in Zimbabwe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Vrǎbiescu, Ioana. 2020. Deporting Europeans: The Racialized Mobility of Romanians in France. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.