Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)
A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective. Technological affordances mediate between the feature...
20 Dec 202234min
Richard Brian Miller, "Why Study Religion?" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that mo...
20 Dec 202243min
Munira Khayyat, "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (U California Press, 2022)
What worlds take root in war? In A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (U California Press, 2022), anthropologist Munira Khayyat describes life along the southern b...
18 Dec 202257min
Efram Sera-Shriar, "Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)
Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022) examines British anthropology's engagement with the modern spirit...
18 Dec 202254min
Amal Sachedina, "Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern: The Politics of Time in the Sultanate of Oman" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern: The Politics of Time in the Sultanate of Oman (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation s...
17 Dec 202254min
Kelly I. Aliano, "The Performance of Video Games: Enacting Identity, History and Culture Through Play" (McFarland, 2022)
When viewed through the context of an interactive play, a video game player fulfills the roles of both actor and spectator, watching and influencing a game's story in real time. This book presents vid...
17 Dec 202241min
Philippe Peycam, "Cultural Renewal in Cambodia: Academic Activism in the Neoliberal Era" (Brill and ISEAS, 2020)
How far did post-UNTAC Cambodia exemplified an expanded Habermasian public sphere? What happened when a range of aid agencies, private donors, activists and academics showed up with all sorts of compe...
16 Dec 202229min
Samuel J. Redman, "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums" (Harvard UP, 2022)
In Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2022 for paperback edition), Samuel J. Redman, Associate Professor of History at the University of Massa...
15 Dec 202243min
