Anthropology and Sociology – April 2013
- Frontiers and boundaries, encounters on China’s margins / edited by Zsombor Rajkai and Ildikó Bellér-Hann.
Explores processes of drawing, maintaining and transgressing spatial and conceptual boundaries on the margins of imperial and modern China. - Imaging and imagining Taiwan : identity representation and cultural politics / edited by Bi-yu Chang and Henning Klöter.
Read an abstract of this work. Co-written by a SOAS academic. - Searching for Zion / Emily Raboteau
Documents the author’s decade-long search for identity and a place of belonging as inspired by African-American and Jewish history as well as the exoduses of black communities that left ancestral homes in search of “promised lands.” - Spatial literacy : contemporary Asante women’s place-making / Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare.
This book makes a case for an urgent praxis of critical spatial literacy, especially for women of African descent. The first in Palgrave Macmillan’s new Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora series. - Korean families : continuity and change / edited by Korean Family Studies Association
- Crossing boundaries in Tokugawa society : Suzuki Bokushi, a rural elite commoner / by Takeshi Moriyama
- Evil / by Michel Wieviorka ; translated by Kristin Couper-Lobel.
English translation of Neuf leçons de sociologie.
“In this provocative and insightful book, Michel Wieviorka puts evil onto the agenda for the social sciences. He does this not by appealing to forces outside social life but by situating evil as an issue in social life. It is part of culturally informed understanding, sometimes directly linked to religion and sometimes not. And to ignore it in the name of objectivism is to lose touch with the world we inhabit.” Craig Calhoun, New York University - Urban youth in China : modernity, the internet and the self / Fengshu Liu
Also available as an ebrary e-book.
Gender
- The search for the beautiful woman : a cultural history of Japanese and Chinese beauty / Cho Kyo translated by Kyoko Selden
- Sex and the citadel : intimate life in a changing Arab world / by Shereen El Feki.
Receives good reviews from the Times Higher Education [Dr Shahidha Bari] and the Telegraph [Nicholas Blincoe]. - Gender, sexuality and mothering in Africa / edited by Toyin Falola & Bessie House-Soremekun.
- Gender relations in Cameroon : multidisciplinary perspectives / ed. by Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo.
- Gender, peace and security women’s advocacy and conflict resolution / Fredline AO M’Cormack-Hale.
Tourism
- Kurokawa Nō : Shaping the Image and Perception of Japan’s Folk Traditions, Performing Arts and Rural Tourism / by Eike Grossmann
- Culinary tourism / edited Lucy M. Long.
Reviewed in the Journal of American folklore here.
Food
- Food and identity in the Caribbean / edited by Hanna Garth.
“Offering fascinating insights into the relationships between Caribbean identities and foodways at home and in the diaspora, this volume contributes new understandings of how people manipulate food practices and meanings to stay grounded in their continuously changing and globalizing worlds.” Carole Counihan, - Food security in Asia / Amitava Mukherjee.
Reviewed here by Dr. Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal in the Tribune (India) - Curry : a tale of cooks and conquerors / Lizzie Collingham.
Reviewed here in the New York Times.
Migration
- Workers of the world : African and Asian migrants in Italy in the 1990s / by Steven Colatrella.
- Moving subjects, moving objects : transnationalism, cultural production and emotions / ed. by Maruska Svasek.
“This is a timely volume that moves the study of material culture in interesting directions by providing intimate portrayals of the varied significance that objects hold in the emotional lives of migrants…[It]effectively explores the many roles of objects in the lives of migrants as repositories for memory, technologies for communication, and catalysts to symbolize new relationships and identities.” Morgan Perkins, SUNY