New Books in Anthropology

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 and Patterns (UCL Press, 2026), which has been shortlisted for the 2026 Pushkin House Book Prize. Adam Quinn is a Glasgow-based researcher whose work focuses on activism, social movements and state-society relations in the Post-Soviet space. Alena’s new book: art, music, text in a new UCL Press book in open access: Russian Pendulum: here The accompanying music: Delphian Records classical album The System Made Me Do It composed by Benjamin Woodgates: here And a brilliant review of the music: here Plus, a nice mention in the BBC sounds for dark: here Enjoy the podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

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 personalities of most premodern artists, but this should not hold us back from thinking about their embodied experience. In this book, Karl Whittington contends that we can "queer" the works of anonymous makers by thinking about their embodied experiences creating art. Considering issues of touch, pressure, and gesture across substances such as wood, stone, ivory, wax, cloth, paint, and metal, Whittington argues for an erotics of artisanal labor, in which the actions of hand, body, and breath interact in intimate ways with materials. Whittington takes seriously the agency of materials and technical processes, arguing that they necessarily placed the bodies of artists and artisans into physical situations and psychological states that can be read through the lens of desire. Combining historical evidence with speculative description, this evocative set of essays broadens our understanding of the motivations and experiences of premodern artists. It will appeal to scholars and students of art history, medieval studies, gender studies, queer studies, and anthropology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

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 religion's enduring strength lies not in providing final answers but in sustaining meaningful questions, then what sustains belief amid suffering, doubt, and uncertainty? Longhurst's work suggests that faith often emerges not from certainty but from ongoing engagement with life's deepest mysteries. Rather than offering simple conclusions, Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? invites readers into conversations about faith, technology, culture, politics, and everyday life. It reminds us that religious questions remain central to how many people understand themselves and the world around them. In an age increasingly shaped by AI and our histories, these questions may become even more important, not less so. My thanks to John Longhurst for joining me on the New Books Network and for sharing insights drawn from a lifetime of careful observation, thoughtful reporting, and persistent questioning. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research examines the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, particularly within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

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 domestic landscapes and hair salons and shops in the frontier cities of Brazil and beyond. In spaces where the tangled forest once stood, clean pastures and ordered rows of crops now sit on properties with geometric edges. From rural spaces to immaculate lawns and cemeteries in the city, the imprint leads to the body, where hair, like plant growth, is cut, trimmed, and otherwise managed. Seemingly separate domains of agriculture, landscaping, and personal grooming are governed by a similar aesthetic of control. This unique pairing of land and body expands our understanding of cultivation as a practice and as an ideology that operates in frontier Amazonia—but also closer to home, influencing how we conceptualize and interpret the covers that grow on and around us, and our imagined relations with nature in the future. Hoelle argues that we must understand this system of thought and the overlooked role it plays in environmental destruction and social inequality. Jeffrey Hoelle is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research explores the social, cultural, and political-economic dimensions of environmental transformation and deforestation in frontier Amazonia. He is the author of Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia (UT Press, 2015) Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In Rainforest Radio: Language Reclamation and Community Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon (U Arizona Press, 2025), Dr. Georgia C. Ennis provides a comprehensive ethnographic exploration of Amazonian Kichwa community media, offering a unique look at how Indigenous broadcast and performance media facilitate linguistic and cultural reclamation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This work offers a critical analysis of how standardized language revitalization efforts, like the imposition of Unified Kichwa, can inadvertently perpetuate linguistic oppression. Dr. Ennis follows producers, performers, and consumers to understand the role of media in language reclamation. Through extensive fieldwork, she provides vivid portrayals of community efforts to sustain the language and cultural practices of their elders amid environmental and social upheaval. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Rainforest Radio is an essential work for anthropologists, linguists, and social scientists interested in language revitalization, Indigenous media, and environmental justice. This book showcases the transformative potential of community-driven media initiatives, highlighting the innovative responses of Napo Kichwa activists to the unique challenges they face. It serves as a powerful model for those working on similar issues worldwide, demonstrating the critical role of community media in language reclamation and cultural sustainability. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Temptations in Ruin: S overeign Accumulation and the Making of Post-Genocide Turkey (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines the political-economic afterlife of the Armenian genocide in present-day Turkey, focusing on the region of Muş (Moush). Anthropologist Alice von Bieberstein explores how the 1915 genocide and dispossession of Armenians shaped property regimes, citizenship, and economic logics that continue to reverberate today.By combining ethnography with historical context and diverse perspectives, Temptations in Ruin generates new insights into how past violence shapes contemporary economic practices and social relations. To tell this history, von Bieberstein introduces the concept of “sovereign accumulation” to describe the ways in which the state and other actors mobilize histories of sovereign violence for present-day economic benefit. This framework illuminates the legacy of violence and resource extraction present in such practices as urban renewal projects, treasure hunting for “Armenian gold,” and heritage tourism and identifies these practices’ very existence as manifestations of the economic aftermath of the genocide.Temptations in Ruin uncovers the ways in which the genocide gave rise to a racialized property regime and a recursive movement of sovereign accumulation that builds on and re-animates the Armenian genocide as generative of wealth in the present. And it demonstrates the complex interplay between genocide denial, destruction, and valorization in post-genocide contexts. Highlighting the enduring resonance of genocide, von Bieberstein enhances our understanding of political violence’s long-term impacts on society and on the economy. Alice von Bieberstein is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Humboldt University, Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology