New Books in Anthropology Podcast By New Books Network cover art

New Books in Anthropology

New Books in Anthropology

By: New Books Network
Listen for free

About this listen

 Interviews with Anthropologists about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropologyNew Books Network Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Jul 3 2025
    Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in need of control, or 'mad' women not to be trusted. Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Daanika Kamal explores why the subjectivities of women victims are constructed in particular ways, and how these subjectivities are captured and negotiated in the Pakistani legal system.Drawing on feminist poststructuralist accounts relating to the use of gendering strategies in institutional and disciplinary settings and based on an analysis of over a hundred case files and judgements, seventy-two interviews, and court observations in three cities of Pakistan, this book shadows the experiences of women victims of domestic violence in both criminal law and family law proceedings. It captures and offers empirical insights in relation to gendered subject formation in discursive spaces; ranging from the use of societal narratives that minimise and silence women's harms, to the deployment of police mechanisms that assist in maintaining the 'secrecy' of familial violence, and the application and enactment of boilerplate lawyerly strategies to present alternative legal 'truths.'Amidst regulations of the public versus the private and understandings of rights versus duties, Domestic Violence in Pakistan explores how these practices construct the victim-subject of domestic violence in a way that not only subjectivise her, but also secure her within the field of that subjectification; setting her up to be viewed by the judiciary through the lens of the allegations applied to her. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
    Show more Show less
    53 mins
  • Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)

    Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)
    Jun 27 2025
    A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of being Syrian in the 21st century Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research, Shayna M. Silverstein shows how dabke dance music embodies the fraught dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state. Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria (Wesleyan UP, 2024) situates dabke politically, economically, and historically in a broader account of expressive culture in Syria's recent (and ongoing) turmoil. Silverstein shows how people imagine the Syrian nation through dabke, how the state has coopted it, how performances of masculinity reveal--and play with--the tensions and complexities of the broader social imaginary, how forces opposed to the state have used it resistively, and how migrants and refugees have reimagined it in their new homes in Europe and the United States. She offers deeply thoughtful reflections on the ethnographer's ethical and political dilemmas on fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Silverstein's study ultimately questions the limits of authoritarian power, considering the pleasure and play intrinsic to dabke circles as evidence for how performance cultures sustain social life and solidify group bonds while reproducing the societal divides endemic to Syrian authoritarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
    Show more Show less
    59 mins
All stars
Most relevant  
It's a common belief that if you can't explain something simpl, you don't understand it. That doesn't naturally lead us to deliver all knowledge for the lowest common denominator, but most maybe all, sources of information are being written for the person who won't understand it. This podcast has breaks from that bad habit. In a week I've heard ideas, sharpened from experience and repetition, delivered with thrust I've never met elsewhere.

mostly a podcast by experts for experts

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.