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PODCAST

New Books in Anthropology

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

48:10

Susannah Crockford, "A Perturbed System: Religion and...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/29

Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we’ve built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but the end of the world, an apocalypse with all its biblical trappings. Why? In A Perturbed System: Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World, anthropologist Susannah Crockford argues that we must understand the climate emergency as a spiritual crisis, a result of Christian colonialism that we

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69:40

Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/29

This episode features a conversation with Carnatic vocalist, T.M. Krishna, who is also the author of two books on this musical tradition. We began with his first book’s account of the modernization of Carnatic music through a set of social, technical, and spatial processes that transformed it from a more socially diverse practice into a predominantly Brahmin performative genre. We moved on to discuss a figure who is at the heart of his second book: the maker of the Carnatic percussion instrument,

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48:29

Gina M. Pérez, "Sanctuary People: Faith-Based...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/26

In her latest book, Sanctuary People: Faith Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities (NYU Press, 2024), Dr. Gina Perez explores sanctuary practices in Ohio, locating them in broader local and national efforts to provide refuge and care in the face of the challenges facing Latina/o communities in a moment of increased surveillance, migrant detention, displacement, and economic and social marginalization. Pérez argues for a conceptualization of sanctuary that is capacious, placing support of Puerto

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35:54

Carola E. Lorea, "Communities of Sound: Religion,...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/25

Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) brings together insights from religion, anthropology, sound, and migration studies to explore the sonic traces of untouchability and forced migration across the Bay of Bengal. Based on an immersive, multi-sited ethnography with Matua devotees—a low-caste, Bengali-speaking Dalit religious community fragmented by Partition, war, and postcolonial displacement—the book explores how sound

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73:19

Marta Dominguez Diaz, "Tunisia's Andalusians: The...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/25

Tunisia’s Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority (Edinburgh UP, 2025) tells the captivating story of those Andalusians, descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century, who sought refuge in Tunisia. Rather than simply replicating Iberian traditions, Andalusian culture in Tunisia stands as a vibrant and evolving phenomenon, shaped by complex dynamics of interaction and adaptation over four centuries. The book dismantles the romanticised view of Andalusian

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77:59

Alena Ledeneva, "Russian Pendulum: Paradoxes,...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/20

Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project. Her research focuses on informal practices, and she has written several Russia-focused books, including Russia’s Economy of Favours, How Russia Really Works and Can Russia Modernise. The Global Informality has also published 3 volumes of its Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. Alena is here today to talk about her new book Russian Pendulum: Paradoxes, Practices

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0:00

Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/20

In her recent publication, Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age, scholar Ayala Fader tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women in twenty-first-century New York who lead “double lives” in order to protect those they love. Drawing on five years of fieldwork with those living double lives and the rabbis, life coaches, and religious therapists who minister to, advise, and sometimes excommunicate them, Fader investigates religious

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86:12

Karl Whittington, "Queer Making: On Artists and...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/15

Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Press,2025). What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art historians typically answer this question by referring to historical evidence about an artist's sexual identity or to particular kinds of imagery. But what about anonymous artists? Or works whose subject matter is mainstream? We know little about the identities and

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36:17

Marielle Risse, "Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/15

In this episode of the New Books Network, we explore Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman (Anthem Press, 2026), with anthropologist Dr Marielle Risse. Drawing on nearly two decades of ethnographic fieldwork, Dr Risse offers a nuanced examination of marriage practices among Sunni Muslim communities in southern Oman, challenging many of the assumptions that often underpin Western discussions of gender, family, and personal autonomy. Rather than portraying marriage as either

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43:03

John Longhurst, "Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? A...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/14

One of the things that stood out in my conversation with John Longhurst about his book Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? A Journalist Reports on Faith (CMU Press, 2024) was his seriousness about journalism itself. Longhurst understands the journalist's vocation not as providing definitive answers but as asking good questions, paying close attention, and engaging thoughtfully with the people and events that shape our world. Our discussion focused on a theme that runs throughout the book: if

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74:09

Jeffrey Hoelle, "Cultivated: Plants, Hair, and the...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/13

An exploration of the concept of cultivation, as conducted on both the land and the body, which expands our understanding of it as practice, aesthetic, and ideology. In Cultivated: Plants, Hair, and the Aesthetic of Control (Yale University Press, 2026), Jeffrey Hoelle traces the imprint of cultivation across the naturally growing covers of the land and body—plants and hair. The book builds from research in the agricultural fields and cattle pastures at the edge of the Amazon rainforest to

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75:08

Patrick Brodie, "Wild Tides: Media Infrastructure and...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/13

In Wild Tides: Media Infrastructure and Financial Crisis in Ireland (Duke University Press, 2026), Patrick Brodie maps the shifting fortunes of the Irish economy before the 2008 financial crisis up to 2020, outlining how the Irish state moved from rampant and irresponsible financialized development to incentivizing private media infrastructure and policy as instruments for economic recovery. Brodie contends that while the Irish state’s investment in creative and technological sectors of media

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59:32

Mardi Reardon-Smith, "Making Do: Conservation Ethics...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/10

Modern environmentalism often frames conservation as moral, humans damage nature, and conservation protects it. But Mardi Reardon-Smith’s Making Do: Conservation Ethics and Ecological Care in Australia, published by Stanford University Press in 2025, dismantles that comforting narrative and replaces it with something far more complex and candid.Set on the Cape York Peninsula, the book explores how Aboriginal traditional owners, pastoralists, conservation workers, and government institutions

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60:28

Ladan Rahbari and Olga Burlyuk eds., "From the...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/08

In this episode of the New Books Network, I spoke with Dr Olga Burlyuk and Dr Ladan Rahbari about their new edited volume, From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity (Open Book Publishers, 2026). The book is open access. As universities promote internationalisation while maintaining labour systems that leave many migrant scholars vulnerable, this volume builds on the editors’ 2023 collection (also featured on New Books Network) by incorporating global perspectives. Through

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83:46

Eileen Otis, "Walmart: Made in China" (Stanford UP,...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/06

Walmart: Made in China(Stanford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Eileen Otis tells the story of Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Dr. Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew at unprecedented rates

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30:00

Romani Grassroots Language Learning

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/03

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with Dr Santiago Betancor Falcón (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) about his 2025 paper, Autonomous language learning as political activism: Roma autodidacts as catalysts of the nascent Romani language revitalisation movement in Spain. The conversation focuses on minoritised languages, autonomous language learning, and language activism.Reference: Betancor-Falcon, S. (2025). Autonomous language learning as

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45:34

Dougald O’Reilly, "Empires of the Southern Ocean:...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/06/01

From about the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era through to the fifteenth century, Southeast Asian societies underwent a political transformation that produced the first, early states that were the forerunners of the countries we know today as Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Dougald O’Reilly’s Empires of the Southern Ocean: Early Civilizations of Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), tells the complicated story of the development of

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49:11

Christos Lynteris, "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/05/30

Today, rats are nearly synonymous with plague, but this association is surprisingly recent. For centuries, plague devastated populations without being linked to animals. So how did the rat become the symbol of one of history's deadliest diseases? In How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Christos Lynteris unravels this story by focusing on the Third Plague Pandemic, a global outbreak that began in China in the 1850s and claimed an

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63:48

Radio ReOrient 14:9: Racializing the Ummah, with Rhea...

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/05/29

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan were in conversation with Rhea Rahman to discuss her new book ‘Racializing the Ummah - Muslim Humanitarians: Beyond Black, Brown and White’. Through this, the discussion drew on issues of ‘doing good’, racial capitalism and the struggles faced by Islamic NGOs in a time when Islamophobia is on the rise. Rhea Rahman is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College CUNY, working primarily on global racial formations in relation to histories

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0:00

Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski

New Books in Anthropology ·

2026/05/29

Sh. An-ski (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) was a writer in Russian and Yiddish, a revolutionary, a wartime relief worker, and an ethnographer who studied the Jews of the Russian Empire. During his 1911-1914 expeditions to shtetls in Ukraine—he would report—he and his co-workers took 1000 photographs, recorded 1000 Yiddish songs and 1500 stories, and purchased 400 objects for a Jewish museum. The expedition also inspired An-ski to write his signature play, The Dybbuk. Although East European Jews

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