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Crafting a Tibetan Terroir

Winemaking in Shangri-La

By Brendan A. Galipeau. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How wine has transformed Tibetan land and lives

Set in the Sino-Tibetan border region renamed "Shangri-La" by the Chinese government for tourism promotion, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir considers how the deployment of the French notion of...

Viable Ecologies

Conservation and Coexistence on the Galápagos Islands

By Paolo Bocci. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How humans living amid an abundance of diverse flora and fauna help us rethink conservation

Famous for their geographic isolation and high proportion of endemic species, the Galápagos Islands have long been promoted as the premier...

China's Camel Country

Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier

By Thomas White. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

How animal conservation became a defense against cultural erasure

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing...

Mumbai on Two Wheels

Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility

By Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria

Cyclists from India reimagine transportation infrastructure for all

Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic...

Amphibious Anthropologies

Living in Wet Environments

By Alejandro Camargo, Luisa Cortesi, Franz Krause, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Muddying the divide between land and water

This interdisciplinary collection delves into the experiences and meanings of life in environments where water levels and availability are in constant flux. Amphibious Anthropologies brings together a global set...

Sustaining Natures

An Environmental Anthropology Reader

By Sarah R. Osterhoudt, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Highlights new directions in the field and topics of interest to undergraduate students

Environmental anthropology is at its best when firmly grounded in respectful and systematic ethnographic research and writing that spotlights uncommon perspectives on widely...

Fukushima Futures

Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape

By Satsuki Takahashi. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

A probe of the environmental and sociocultural effects of industrialization and nuclear disaster on coastal livelihoods

Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear...

Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400-1900

By Sumit Guha. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Reveals how imperial power and local resistance have shaped landscapes

The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this sweeping examination of a pivotal five...

The Camphor Tree and the Elephant

Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia

By Faizah Zakaria. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Uncovers a spiritual dimension in the transition to the Anthropocene

What is the role of religion in shaping interactions and relations between the human and nonhuman in nature? Why are Muslim and Christian organizations generally not...

Lahore Cinema

Between Realism and Fable

By Iftikhar Dadi

A pioneering analysis of exemplary feature films

Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between...

Upland Geopolitics

Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush

By Michael B. Dwyer. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Cold War legacies in Southeast Asia enable new geographies of enclosure

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...

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...

Spawning Modern Fish

Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon

By Heather Anne Swanson. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Winner of the Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize from the Society for East Asian Anthropology

Multispecies ethnography turns its attention to the bodies of fish

Since the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural development and fisheries management in northern Japan have...

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

An unexpected story of climate change initiatives that threaten a complex waterscape

Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for...

Mumbai Taximen

Autobiographies and Automobilities in India

By Tarini Bedi

Best Read for the General Public: IBP 2023 Accolades in the Humanities by the International Institute for Asian Studies

2nd Prize Winner of the 2022 Victor Turner Prize sponsored by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology

Brings...

Adivasi Art and Activism

Curation in a Nationalist Age

By Alice Tilche

The uneasy alliance of tribal art and the museum movement

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...

Ordering the Myriad Things

From Traditional Knowledge to Scientific Botany in China

By Nicholas K. Menzies. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Longlisted for the 2024 SHNH Natural History Book Prize

An exploration of plant wisdom, from the Southern Mountain Tea Flower to the Dawn Redwood

China’s vast and ancient body of documented knowledge about plants includes horticultural...

Timber and Forestry in Qing China 

Sustaining the Market

By Meng Zhang. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Winner of the 2022 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for best book on forest and conservation history, sponsored by the Forest History Society

Honorable Mention for the 2022 ISCLH First Biennial Book Prize, sponsored by the International...

Outcaste Bombay

City Making and the Politics of the Poor

By Juned Shaikh

Caste, class, and development converge in a booming metropolis

Over the course of the twentieth century, Bombay’s population grew twentyfold as the city became increasingly industrialized and cosmopolitan. Yet beneath a veneer of modernity, old prejudices...