Call for Papers: The Illicit Global Economy Discourse

Special Issue of Public Anthropologist Guest Editors: Luigi Achilli and Gabriella Sanchez (European University Institute) In the contemporary literature on transnational organized crime it is common to find references to how criminal actors – from migrant smugglers to drug traffickers to weapons dealers – have hijacked the global economy, creating in the process a criminal …

Launch Conference – Public Anthropologist

With the publication of the first issue of the journal, we are happy to announce that on May 3, 2019 the Chr. Michelsen Institute and Bergen Global will host the first conference of Public Anthropologist. In this launch conference, leading anthropologists share their research on current crucial issues like asylum, migration and human organs trafficking. Antonio De Lauri (CMI), the …

Call for Reviews

Public Anthropologist publishes reviews of recent books, films and documentaries related to current debates that are socially and politically challenging. Public Anthropologist is now looking for reviewers of books, films and documentaries on issues related to war, rights, poverty, security, access to resources, new technologies, freedom, human exploitation, health, humanitarianism, violence, racism, migration and diaspora, …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Ungovernable Life

Our suggested reading today is Ungovernable Life. Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq by Omar Dewachi. As both an anthropologist and an Iraqi medical doctor, Dewachi skilfully links the trajectory of Iraqi’s medicine and health infrastructure to processes of state formation under conditions of war and invasion. The book is a major contribution in understanding how …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Nightmarch

The new book “suggested by Public Anthropologist” is Nightmarch. Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas by Alpa Shah. In this vibrant piece of anthropological work, Shah takes us into one of the most unreported rebellions in contemporary India with wisdom and courage. Her analysis of the motivations, modalities of implementation and failures of Naxalites’ struggle shapes a new history of both the exploitation they suffered and their fight for liberation. …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Searching for a Better Life

Searching for a Better Life. Growing Up in the Slums of Bangkok by Sorcha Mahony is an engaging but highly readable ethnography of youth in Thailand’s capital. What does searching for a better life mean for those struggling to get by in a rapidly developing and globalizing economy? How do they try to fulfil their dreams? And how …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – A World of Babies

Today’s suggested book is A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Eight Societies, edited by Alma Gottlieb and Judy DeLoache. With a first edition published in 2000 and widely read, the almost entirely new, updated edition of A World of Babies confirms the authors capacity to merge ethnography and informed research with original and accessible writing. Simply put it, the editors …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Private Oceans

Today we suggest the reading of Private Oceans. The Enclosure and Marketisation of the Seas by Fiona McCormack. What does neoliberalization of oceans mean? What implications does it have on fishing communities and endangered fish species? How does the privatization of ecosystem services work? And what long term effects does it have? Through fieldwork conducted in New …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Against Charity

This time’s “everybody must read” book is Against Charity by Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark. The book is both a critique of institutional charity as based on the unequal relationship between giver and receiver and a defense of kindness, understood as a call for equality and fraternity. Raventos, a Spanish economist, and Wark, an Australian/Spanish human rights activist, …

Suggested by Public Anthropologist – Contrarian Anthropology

Once in a while Public Anthropologist will suggest a new or recent book that we believe “everybody must read”. We start the “Suggested by Public Anthropologist” series with Laura Nader’s Contrarian Anthropology. The Unwritten Rules of Academia, which is a call to reinvigorate anthropology’s principal attitude: crossing boundaries.  As Nader puts it in the introduction of …