Category Review
Review: Crumpled Paper Boat
By Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani ***Originally published in LSE Review of Books*** Writer James Agee, when commissioned to bring back an enticing story for Fortune magazine about impoverished farmers in the US South during the Great Depression, expressed a desire to ‘tear up a clump of earth with a hoe, put that on a page and […]
Review: The Anthropology of Corporate Social Responsibility
By Deniz Seebacher **Originally published on Anthropology Matters, 17(2)** Corporations, an omnipresent form of organisation in today’s society, are increasingly called to participate in tackling environmental and social issues such as climate change or refugee crises by ‘taking responsibility’ and supporting governments and civil society. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement can be seen as […]
Review: The Darjeeling Distinction
By Peter Luetchford ** Reprinted from Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies Sarah Besky’s informative monograph on tea plantations in the northern Indian district of Darjeeling fills a gap in the literature on Fair Trade commodities, and so complements ethnographic studies such as those on coffee, bananas, and chocolate . It plays a key […]
Review: Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities
by Fawzia Haeri Mazanderani ** Review first published on LSE Review of Books ** Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities. Donald J. Nicolson. Palgrave Pivot. 2017. While rarely interrogated for the role that they play, academic conferences form a significant part in the construction of an academic career. Any aspiring, or indeed expiring, academic has at […]
Review: Entrepreneurial Selves
by Rebecca Prentice **Reprinted from Journal of Latin American Studies.** The heroic figure of the entrepreneur is everywhere these days. She’s the small-scale ‘micro-entrepreneur’ at the centre of microfinance initiatives aimed at lifting millions out of poverty; she’s the grasping contestant on the worldwide television franchise, The Apprentice; she’s the occupational embodiment of the neoliberal directive […]
Review: The True Cost
by Rebecca Prentice **Originally published in Anthropology of Work Review (2016).** The global fashion industry is worth more than two trillion dollars, creating jobs, economic growth, tax earnings, and the products we wear every day. For consumers in the global North, the price of clothing has dropped steadily for two decades. But what does the industry […]
