Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2021 -

Historical archaeology has been touted as the place where a field otherwise dominated by the world of materiality and things necessarily gives voice to the voiceless, thereby compelling readers to reflect on what it truly means to "bear witness." Even so, recent archaeological studies have taken to interrogating the undocumented heritage of African American, Chinese, and other communities of color predominantly excluded from the American realm of academic and narrative privilege that fosters an ongoing dynamic of "intellectual deforestation." Even so, where the social violence visited on such communities is concerned, archaeologists have inadvertently contributed to the objectification of such violence by way of its exclusive interpretation and reification through the eyes of the perpetrator, rather than through the subjective experience of the victim. Here, Matthews (Montclair State Univ.) and Phillippi (Hofstra Univ.) assemble a group of scholars to examine forms of violence. Collectively, their stellar contributions stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best works concerned with the otherwise mercurial nature of social violence and its manifold manifestations, including those relegated to direct, interpersonal, discursive, subjective, structural, racial, spatial, ritual, and symbolic systems both past and present.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Neoliberalism prioritizes and protects property rights and the privatization of public assets, and promotes free markets and trade, under the assumption that these are the best routes to human well-being, despite contrary evidence. Applied to higher education, neoliberalism devalues disciplines and studies deemed irrelevant to its goals, putting the human sciences, arts, and humanities at risk. Anthropology is especially vulnerable, as its remit includes the understanding of human societies, past and present, that function well on quite different principles. The contributors to this volume seek ways to adjust anthropology to the new dispensation and apply their knowledge to pressing problems outside the range of markets and privatization. The first part of the book treats the adaptive practices of anthropology within the managerial and audit culture of the neoliberal university. The second part focuses on ethnographic research that demonstrates how anthropologists, in collaborating with specialists in other disciplines, apply their expertise to pressing social problems such as peacemaking, housing, public health, and public care services. This excellent collection shows that anthropology can and must thrive within and beyond the university without forgoing its identity and values.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Authors Nieto, Massa, and Bonfanti (all, Univ. of Trento, Italy) have undertaken this comparative research project based on in-depth interviews and life histories to convey the perspectives on home and mobility, as well as the home-making strategies, of immigrants from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America living in European cities. The text explores various dimensions of the ways home is located and reproduced. Focused on home-making within and beyond dwelling spaces, the authors argue that the idea of home makes up a scalable set of relationships. They further demonstrate how the material culture at home influences inhabitants' subjectivities, while examining the mobility patterns, daily routines, and aspirations of immigrants. This study highlights the intimate relationship between time and space and depicts how immigrants' ethnic, gender, and class backgrounds impact their private and public lives, demonstrating how inequalities among immigrants influence their process of home-making. This theoretically oriented empirical study contributes outstandingly to the social anthropology of migration.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

To what degree and in what ways can the set of disparate texts known as the Hebrew Bible interest the non-religious? To what degree can archaeology illuminate and act as a check on propagandistic Biblical texts? Despite its sensationalist title, this short, superb generalist book by Dever (emer., Univ. of Arizona), a respected and prolific archaeologist of Iron Age Palestine, demonstrates how archaeological discoveries triangulated with textual evidence illuminate the lives and attitudes of Hebrews and Canaanites between the earliest Hebrew ethnogenesis (c. 1400 BC) to about 500 BC. Although aimed at both believers and skeptics, this book happily contains no supernatural causation and will fascinate non-believers who want an up-to-date, informed scholarly account, using all evidence available, of a formative period of this troubled area of the world. It addresses the history of Holy Land archaeology, the migration history of the proto-Hebrews, Hebrews in Egypt, the conquest in the Holy Land, Hebrew state formation, military interaction with surrounding powers, Hebrew polytheism, and divine kingship. The sections on the early Patriarchs, Judges, and Josiah are especially brilliant. This is an expert complement to comparative works like Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (CH, Jan'09, 46-2607), edited by John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.