Anthropology in Action is always happy to hear from potential reviewers at all stages in their academic careers for books, films or other media.
We currently have a number of books and video resources awaiting review. If you are interested in reviewing anything from the list below, please contact the reviews editor David Orr (d.orr@sussex.ac.uk). We welcome reviews of around 800 words for a single book, but we are also keen to include review articles comparing two or more works, for which the word length is negotiable. Please also be aware that we can request recent publications (within the last year) from publishers, so do feel free to let us know of any books that you would like to review within the field of applied anthropology, and we will do our best to get them for you. Also note that many publishers routinely send pdf or e-copies of publications rather than hard copies.
Beyond books, we are particularly keen to broaden reviews to other topical content with relevance to applied anthropology including exhibitions, films, websites, blogs and events. Furthermore, in addition to regular reviews, we feature occasional reviews under the title ‘To see ourselves as others see us’. In these, non-anthropologists review anthropological books and other works, and discuss the contribution they make in the light of their own perspectives and fields. The impetus for this feature lies in the challenges that applied anthropologists often face in explaining and promoting the value of anthropological knowledge outside the discipline. We hope that this invitation to reviewers from outside the discipline will prove stimulating and informative to readers about the responses that anthropological insights receive in the wider world, and will suggest how wider communication of our research could be enhanced.
If you would like to contribute to the occasional reviews feature, or if there is something that you would especially like to review (including content other than books), please do get in touch with us to discuss!
Books and documentaries currently available and awaiting review include:
Alatas, I. F. (2021), What Is Religious Authority? Cultivating Religious Communities in Indonesia (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Armbrust, W. (2019), Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Bernstein, A. (2019), The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Bessire, L. (2021), Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Blin, A. (2019), War and Religion: Europe and the Mediterranean from the First through the Twenty-First Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Boeri, M., and R. K. Shukla (eds.) (2019), Inside Ethnography: Researchers Reflect on the Challenges of Reaching Hidden Populations (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Booher, A., and K. Oths (2018), The Last Bonesetter (Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources). Video Resource.
Chorev, N. (2019), Give and Take: Developmental Foreign Aid and the Pharmaceutical Industry in East Africa (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Danielsen, T. (2020), Making Warriors in a Global Era: An Ethnographic Study of the Norwegian Naval Special Operations Commando (Lanham, MD: Lexington).
De La Piedra, M., B. Araujo and A. Esquinca (2018), Educating across Borders: The Case of a Dual Language Program on the US–Mexico Border (Tucson: University of Arizona Press).
Dewey, M. (2020), Making It at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace (Austin: University of Texas Press).
Dunbar-Hester, C. (2019), Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Fader, A. (2020), Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Flaherty, M. G., L. Meinert and A. L. Dalsgard (2020), Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency (Oxford: Berghahn).
Folch, C. (2019), Hydropolitics: The Itaipu Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Graham, J.E., C. Holmes, F. McDonald and R. Darnell (eds.) (2021), The Social Life of Standards: Ethnographic Methods for Local Engagement (Vancouver: UBC Press).
Härter, K., C. Hillemanns and G. Schlee (2020), On Mediation: Historical, Legal, Anthropological and International Perspectives (Oxford: Berghahn).
Hicks, D. (2020), Oral Literature, Gender, and Precedence in East Timor: Metaphysics in Narrative (Copenhagen: NIAS Press).
Hinojosa, S. Z. (2020), Maya Bonesetters: Manual Healers in a Changing Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press).
Killias, O. (2018), Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia (Copenhagen: NIAS Press).
Langlitz, N. (2020), Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Lansing, J. S., and M. P. Cox (2019), Islands of Order: A Guide to Complexity Modelling for the Social Sciences (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Lemelson, R., and A. Pasquino (2017), Tajen (Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources). Video Resource.
Luna, S. (2020), Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border (Austin: University of Texas Press).
McIvor, M. (2020), Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
McNally, M. D. (2020), Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Mortimer, L. (2019), Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology: Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential, and the Possible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Nygaard-Christensen, M. and A. Bexley (2017), Fieldwork in Timor-Leste: Understanding Social Change through Practice (Copenhagen: NIAS Press).
Osanloo, A. (2020), Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims’ Rights in Iran (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Penny, H. G. (2021), In Humboldt's Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Porath, N. (ed.) (2019), Hearing Southeast Asia: Sounds of Hierarchy and Power in Context (Copenhagen: NIAS Press).
Rosen, E. (2020), The Voucher Promise: “Section 8” and the Fate of an American Neighborhood (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Shepherd, C. (2019), Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860–1975 (Copenhagen: NIAS Press).
Sørensen, B. R., and E. Ben-Ari (2019), Civil–Military Entanglements: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford: Berghahn).
Widerquist, K., and G. S. McCall (2021), The Prehistory of Private Property: Implications for Modern Political Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).
Wu, K. and R. P. Weller (eds.) (2020), It Happens among People: Resonances and Extensions of the Work of Fredrik Barth (Oxford: Berghahn).
Wuthnow, R. (2020), What Happens When We Practice Religion? Textures of Devotion in Everyday Life (Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Yano, C. R., and N. K. A. Akatsuka (eds.) (2018), Straight A's: Asian American College Students in their own Words (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).