Anthropology - New Books
XANANA: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste - launch of the new book by Sara Niner
Thursday 10th December 2009 (Human Rights Day) 6-8pm
Bella Union Trades Hall
crn Lygon, Russell and Victoria Sts, Carlton
Launched by Terry Bracks
Timorese and World Music by Zelda Da
For more information about the author and the book go to http://saraniner.blogspot.com/
To purchase the book go to http://www.scholarly.info/purchase.htm
Join Sara and Sian Prior for a Book Reading on Sunday, 13th December, from 2-4pm at St. Kilda Library.
Splashed by the saint: Ritual reading and Islamic sanctity in West Java - by Julian Millie
April 2009
Dr Julian Millie's new book Splashed by the saint: Ritual reading and Islamic sanctity in West Java has just been published by KITVL Press.
Sanctity is a concept recognized by Muslims throughout the Islamic world, and often motivates observances with highly localized characteristics. This first, book-length study of intercession through ritual reading in Indonesia will be of interest to scholars of Indonesian religions, Sufism and the anthropology of Islam. It expands our knowledge of Sufism and sanctity, and seriously considers the liturgical forms of village Islam, paying special attention to the use of Arabic supplications in localized ritual practice.
http://www.kitlv.nl/book/show/1261
In God's Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity - by Matt Tomlinson
April 2009
Dr Matt Tomlinson's new book In God's Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity has just been published by the University of California Press.
"In God's Image is at once a textured, consistently engaging, and revelatory ethnography; a significant contribution to our broader understanding of the complex intersections of religion, culture, and history within and beyond Fiji; and a subtle and provocative theoretical exploration of semiotics in and as social practice."
Donald L. Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
Read more about In God's Image
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11269.php
The book is available online at Amazon
Horizons of home: nation, gender and migrancy in island Southeast Asia - edited by Penelope Graham
July 2008
Mobility and migration, hardly new phenomena in Southeast Asia, raise intriguing questions about experiences of place, home and belonging. The term ‘homeland’ can refer to the modern nation of citizenship, but often ‘homelands’ may be places of origin socially memorialised in people’s lives in far-distant locations. ‘Homeland’ may even refer to a sense of belonging painfully re-worked with respect to these new locations. The essays in this volume contribute to developing an understanding of how ‘horizons of home’ —spatial, temporal and political— inflect home-making in the present and describe social processes of departure, displacement and emplacement in contemporary island Southeast Asia.
Link to publisher's website [http://ecommerce.arts.monash.edu.au/categories.asp?cID=48&c=24615]
Issues in Environmental Research: Politics, Anthropology and Sociology by Liam Leonard and Michael O' Kane
We welcome publication of this new e-book based on Dr Mick O'Kane's Monash Anthropology PhD.
The success of civil society groups and social movements in the Lisbon Treaty referendum has increased our focus on the relationship between activism and power. This, the third book in the Ecopolitics Series, presents a series of studies on activists in Ireland between the 1997 and 2007 general elections.
Here, the relationship between activism and research is explored through a series of case studies, interviews and articles. Activists with the Irish Green Party in working class areas of Dublin provide the ;focus for Irish-Australian anthropologist Michael O'Kane's in depth study on the 1997 election campaign. This is followed by a series of articles by Irish-American political sociologist Liam Leonard, based on his work as a researcher and journalist in Galway between 1999 and 2008.
Issues in Environmental Research: Politics, Anthropology and Sociology provides an chronological account of political events an activist's perspective, thereby creating further understandings of the motivations of those in society who are so often on outside of the mainstream, but who have influenced events both nationally and throughout Europe in recent political campaigns. As such, this book offers a significant record of activist's perspectives at a pivotal moment in the relationship between the grassroots and the political elite, both in Ireland and in the wider European Union.
The book is available to you to download for free at www.ecopoliticsonline.com
Re-envisioning sovereignty: the end of Westphalia? - co-edited by Trudy Jacobsen et al
May 2008
Sovereignty, as a concept, is in a state of flux. In the course of the last century, traditional meanings have been worn away while the limitations of sovereignty have been altered as transnational issues compete with domestic concerns for precedence. This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of conceptions of sovereignty. Divided into six overarching elements, it explores a wide range of issues that have altered the theory and practice of state sovereignty, such as: human rights and the use of force for human protection purposes, norms relating to governance, the war on terror, economic globalization, the natural environment and changes in strategic thinking. The authors are acknowledged experts in their respective areas, and discuss the contemporary meaning and relevance of sovereignty and how it relates to the constitution of international order.
More information [http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754672609]
Lost Goddesses: The Denial of Female Power in Cambodian History - by Trudy Jacobsen
January 2008
This is the first study ever to address the place of women in Cambodian history. A narrative and visual tour de force, it revises accepted perspectives in the history and geopolitical organization of Cambodia since c. 230 C.E. In so doing, the book examines the relationship between women and power and analyses the extent of female political and economic participation as revealed in historical sources, including the ways in which women were represented in art and literature.
More information [NIAS Press worldwide, link http://www.niaspress.dk/books/lost-goddesses]
The Limits of Meaning: case studies in the anthropology of Christianity
Dec 2006
Monash Anthropology lecturer, Dr Matt Tomlinson, has collaborated with Matthew Engelke, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at London School of Economics, to produce an important book challenging and exploring the theoretical context of "meaning" in Christian anthropology.
Their book draws on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the world to draw attention to meaning in a way that other volumes have for key terms like "culture" and "fieldwork".
The work offers one of the most comprehensive overviews of theories of meaning published in anthropology and examines case studies that challenge their theoretical and practical relevance.
Anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia, 1996-1999 - by Jemma Purdey
February 2006
In this first book-length study of anti-Chinese hostility during the collapse of Suharto's regime, Jemma Purdey presents a close analysis of the main incidents of violence during the transitional period between 1996 and 1999, and the unprecedented process of national reflection that ensued. The mass violence that accompanied the fall of the regime in May 1998 affected not only ethnic Chinese but also indigenous Indonesians. The author places anti-Chinese riots within this broader context, considering causes and agency as well as the way violence has been represented. While ethnicity and prejudice are central to the explanation put forward, she concludes that politics, economics and religion offer additional keys to understanding why such outbreaks occurred.
More information [http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress/subjects/ASAA/978-9971-69-332-9.html]
Iban Art - by Research Associate Dr Michael Heppell
December 2005
Dr Michael Heppell worked with Iban collaborators Limbang anak Melaka and Enyan anak Usen over many years to research their new book Iban art. Provocatively argued and richly illustrated, the book deals with weaving, sculpture and other arts of the Iban of Borneo. Published late in 2005 by Zwartenkot Art Books and KIT Publishers in Amsterdam.