Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Anthropology

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles about Anthropology

Posted on January 16, 2025 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on anthropology. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Feathered gods and fishhooks: the archaeology of ancient Hawai’i
by Patrick Vinton Kirch with Mark D. McCoy Hawai’i, 2023

The first edition of this book was once the definitive guide to Hawaiian prehistory, but since its publication nearly 40 years ago, things have changed. Numerous archaeological projects have been undertaken in Hawai‘i, and innovations in techniques and methodologies in both archaeology and associated fields have advanced knowledge, demanding a fresh synthesis. This long-awaited revision skillfully brings this pioneering work up to date. Kirch (Univ. of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; emer. Univ. of California, Berkeley) and McCoy (Florida State Univ.) make good use of data from collateral fields such as linguistics, biological anthropology, and ethnohistory to support archaeological interpretations. The book discusses the history of archaeology in Hawai‘i and assesses contemporary methods and techniques. It reviews the broad ecological and cultural history of Oceania before taking up topics such as material culture, agricultural systems, population size, ritual architecture, landscape, and transformations following European contact, and it updates the Polynesian settlement of Hawai‘i with a more recent chronology. The final chapters survey major sites and early settlement patterns. Written in an accessible style, this book will appeal to both professional archaeologists and an interested public. View on Amazon

2. In the land of the unreal: virtual and other realities in Los Angeles
Messeri, Lisa. Duke, 2024

In this noir-like ethnography, Messeri (Yale Univ.) takes readers into the world of virtual reality, along with its creators and proponents, in Los Angeles. She critically observes how the push for “VR for Good” frames virtual reality as a liberal progressive tool to engender empathy in its users, introducing a new, high-tech form of civic engagement. Intersecting with Hollywood and filmmakers, virtual reality itself becomes a cinematic experience that at once affects the elite, as Messeri details, the rationale being that such impact would slowly “trickle down” to others. As she further illustrates, virtual reality is good to think with as it enables contemplation into what she terms “the unreal”—the fracturing of reality in a post-truth, alternative-facts context of a Trump presidency, the backdrop to her ethnography. Parsing through the construction, management, and use of virtual reality, this accessible and innovative ethnography expertly weaves anthropology, science, and technology studies in nuanced ways that will leave readers asking after their own realities. View on Amazon

3. Forced out: migrant mothers in search of refuge and hope
Terrio, Susan J. New York University, 2024

Terrio (emer., Georgetown Univ.) has masterfully penned a poignant, powerful, and insightful book focused on undocumented mothers who escape detention and try to build lives in the US. This ethnographic study of immigrant women and their children presents authentic testimonials revealing challenging and complicated lives and simultaneously highlighting their resiliency and agency. It is an emotional book that shows what women will do for their own survival and to make a future for their children. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 (“Leaving Home”) explains conditions in home countries that lead women to migrate, such as competing gangs, extortions, violence, poverty, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Part 2 (“Border Trouble”) depicts the travesty of crossing into Mexico and the US, highlighting financial negotiations with coyotes (i.e., smugglers) and the often violent encounters women face in transit. Part 3 (“Living in the United States”) presents the hardship of working in low-paying jobs, sending money back home, trying to bring children to the US, and, if successful, dealing with painful and difficult reunifications after mothers and children have not seen each other in years. View on Amazon

4. Truly human: Indigeneity and Indigenous resurgence on Formosa Simon, Scott. Toronto, 2023

Simon (Univ. of Ottawa, Canada) draws on two decades of experience to assess the sacred, customary law of Indigenous people in Taiwan and why their way of life remains a crucial alternative to standard Western ways of thinking and doing. The central ethnological topics provide a contemporary updating of hunting as a way of life, headhunting (now banned of course) as a framework for collective action, the life of the spirit and of the heart, and the way memory is intertwined with actual, documented history. These topical discussions are detailed and strongly grounded in lived experience, historical records, the broader context of Taiwan, and recent debates in anthropology. Simon’s analysis is also extremely well grounded in linguistic details as he traces ideas that oscillate among Indigenous languages, different versions of Chinese, and Japanese from the colonial period. His comparative comments about Indigenous people in Canada are an added bonus. Overall, the book provides an excellent path for rethinking Indigenous peoples, Taiwan, and anthropology itself. View on Amazon.

5. Sensory anthropology: culture and experience in Asia Low, Kelvin E. Y. Cambridge, 2023

This volume is fascinating in its unique subject and presentation, presenting a truly new idea in cross-cultural studies. Yow (National Univ. of Singapore) explores how the senses are envisioned and used in a variety of historical and cultural contexts in Asia. His examination is so wide ranging it is difficult to condense. The book also attempts to create a new “modality” for the study of the senses (p. 13). The first section discusses sensory practices and moral positionings. The second section discusses what happens when the modalities are in flux and cultural comparison. The overall goal is to understand key anthropological themes through the prism of the senses and sensory relations. The groundbreaking nature of this well-documented, delightful study cannot be overstated. View on Amazon.

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