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Cold War Deceptions

The Asia Foundation and the CIA

By David H. Price

During the early Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency created dozens of funding fronts to support work that aligned with CIA goals, from clandestine operations and research to liberal anticommunist programs. While investigative journalists and...

Hacking the Underground

Disability, Infrastructure, and London's Public Transport System

By Raquel Velho

"Minding the gap" while using a wheelchair on the London Underground goes beyond a sharp eye and careful foot placement to avoid a fall: it can entail carrying and deploying a portable ramp to embark...

Tengautuli Atkuk / The Flying Parka

The Meaning and Making of Parkas in Southwest Alaska

By Ann Fienup-Riordan, Alice Rearden, and Marie Meade

Parkas are part of a living tradition in southwest Alaska. Some are ornamented with tassels, beads, and elaborate stitching; others are simpler fur or birdskin garments. Although fewer fancy parkas are sewn today, many people...

Regional Identities in Southeast Asia

Contemporary Challenges, Historical Fractures

By Jayeel Cornelio, Volker Grabowsky

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is a community of multiple identities. Over time, its citizens' loyalties were formed around national and transnational frameworks involving ethnic, religious, and ideological affinities. In the post-independence...

Sustaining Natures

An Environmental Anthropology Reader

By Sarah R. Osterhoudt, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Environmental anthropology is at its best when firmly grounded in respectful and systematic ethnographic research and writing that spotlights uncommon perspectives on widely recognized issues confronting the world. Intentionally crafted for undergraduate course use in...

Modified Bodies, Material Selves

Beauty Ideals in Post-Reform Shanghai

By Julie E. Starr

Thin body, white skin, and big eyes. Such beauty ideals are ubiquitous across Shanghai, where salons and weight-loss clinics offering an array of products and treatment options beckon city dwellers with promises of a "better...

Fukushima Futures

Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape

By Satsuki Takahashi. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, anthropologist Satsuki Takahashi visited nearby communities, collecting accounts of life and livelihoods along...

Surviving the Sanctuary City

Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York

By Tina Shrestha

Over the past several decades, the vibrant, multiethnic borough of Queens has seen growth in the community of Nepali migrants, many of whom are navigating the challenging bureaucratic process of asylum legalization. Surviving the Sanctuary...

Heritage Drinks of Myanmar

By Luke J. Corbin. Photographs by Shwe Paw Mya Tin

Heritage Drinks of Myanmar takes the reader on an anthropological journey through emerald mountains and rust-red valleys to showcase some of the myriad alcoholic drinks made in this unique and fascinating country. In Myanmar, freshly...

Spawning Modern Fish

Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon

By Heather Anne Swanson. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Since the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural development and fisheries management in northern Japan have been profoundly shaped by how people within and beyond Japan have compared Hokkaido's landscapes to those of other places, as part of efforts...

Upland Geopolitics

Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush

By Michael B. Dwyer. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

In the twenty-first century, land deals in the Global South have become increasingly prevalent and controversial. Transnational access to arable land in impoverished "land-rich" countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia highlights the...

Turning Land into Capital

Development and Dispossession in the Mekong Region

By Philip Hirsch, Kevin Woods, Natalia Scurrah, Michael B. Dwyer, K. Sivaramakrishnan

In Southeast Asia reversals of earlier agrarian reforms have rolled back "land-to-the-tiller" policies created in the wake of Cold War–era revolutions. This trend, marked by increased land concentration and the promotion of export-oriented agribusiness at...

Fixing the Image

Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh

By Jenna Grant

Introduced in Phnom Penh around 1990, at the twilight of socialism and after two decades of conflict and upheaval, ultrasound took root in humanitarian and then privatized medicine. Services have since multiplied, promising diagnostic information...

Community Movements in Southeast Asia

An Anthropological Perspective of Assemblages

By Ryoko Nishii, Shigeharu Tanabe

Derived from the terms community and social movement, Shigeharu Tanabe’s concept of community movements is the process by which people create alternative communities, practices, and worlds that resist the influence and imposition of hegemonic political...

New Lives in Anand

Building a Muslim Hub in Western India

By Sanderien Verstappen

In 2002 widespread communal violence tore apart towns and villages in rural parts of Gujarat, India. In the aftermath, many Muslims living in Hindu-majority villages sought safety in the small town of Anand. Following such...

Misreading the Bengal Delta

Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal​ Bangladesh

By Camelia Dewan. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. Yet to what extent do adaptation projects address...

Mumbai Taximen

Autobiographies and Automobilities in India

By Tarini Bedi

In this first book-length study of Mumbai’s taxi industry and of the livelihoods that surround it, Tarini Bedi draws from the lives and voices of chillia taxi drivers who have sustained a hereditary trade for...

Adivasi Art and Activism

Curation in a Nationalist Age

By Alice Tilche

As India consolidates an aggressive model of economic development, indigenous tribal people known as adivasis continue to be overrepresented among the country’s poor. Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India, with a...

Single Mothers and the State’s Embrace

Reproductive Agency in Vietnam

By Harriet M. Phinney

In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. A number of these women chose to pursue single motherhood by...

Making Livable Worlds

Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice

By Hilda Lloréns

When Hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, their destructive force further devastated an archipelago already pummeled by economic austerity, political upheaval, and environmental calamities. To navigate these multiple ongoing...