“This is America” Reviewed

Introduction by Rylan Higgins On May 5, 2018, when actor and musical artist Donald Glover released “This is America” under his musical performance name Childish Gambino, it garnered an astonishing amount of attention. Soon after its release, the powerful and, for some, controversial music video became a global sensation. Its impact was especially explosive in […]

An Immigrant’s View of “Amrika”

books & arts Deepak Singh. 2017. How May I Help You? An Immigrant’s Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage. Oakland: University of California Press. 305 pages. I am in an electronics store in the shopping mall near my house. While staring perplexedly at a display of cell phone accessories, I am approached by a store […]

Facing the Future

books & arts John Urry. 2016. What is the Future? Malden, MA: Polity Press. 226 pages. One of the greatest rewards of reading John Urry’s latest and, unfortunately, last solo-authored book, is that it so vividly reflects the kinds of concerns and commitments that led him to become one of the most influential sociologists of […]

Elusive Caimans and the Anthropologist as Devil

books and arts Lucas Bessire. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 296 pages. Dust In this poignant and insightful ethnography, Lucas Bessire invites the reader to enter a world of shame, violence and all-consuming dust. Haunting descriptions of the vast plains of the South American […]

Thinking with Bats, Forests and the Cosmos

Thomas Nagel. 2012. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. New York: Oxford University Press. 128 pages. Eduardo Kohn. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Oakland: University of California Press. 288 pages. The philosopher Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception […]

NAFTA’s Highway of Death

Books and Arts: Reviews of Books, Articles, the Arts, and More! Shaylih Muehlmann. 2014. When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Oakland: University of California Press. Anna Ochoa O’Leary, Colin M. Deeds and Scott Whiteford, eds. 2013. Uncharted Terrains: New Directions in Border Research Methodology, Ethics, and Practice. Tucson: University of […]