Routledge Studies in Anthropology
The Trouble With Art: An Anthropology Beyond Philistinism
1st Edition
Edited
By Roger Sansi, Jonas Tinius
May 22, 2026
Art troubles anthropology. Anthropologists have often taken a philistine, sceptical position of distance towards art and aesthetics as a predominantly Western bourgeois institution. But art, not only as a Western institution, generated its own philistine and iconoclastic revisions and undoings, its...
UFOs, the Absurd, and the Limit of Anthropological Knowledge: Imagining the Impossible in Chile
1st Edition
By Diana Espírito Santo
May 22, 2026
This book offers an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of contemporary UFO phenomena, focusing specifically on Chilean ufology and the ufological “absurd”, nonsensical instances for their experiencers in which there is no conceptual way out. It asks how anthropology can come to terms with what is...
Jungian Perspectives on Santa Muerte Devotees in Mexico: Worshipping Death
1st Edition
By Wendy Risteska
April 15, 2026
This groundbreaking ethnography offers a deep psychological framework for understanding the Santa Muerte (Saint Death) phenomenon in Mexico. Emerging from a social landscape marked by ultra-violent criminality, government corruption, soaring rates of femicide, forced disappearances, and pervasive ...
Balkan Vampires: Society, Politics, Representation
1st Edition
By Danilo Trbojević
November 13, 2025
Balkan Vampires examines how vampire motifs from Balkan folklore have permeated modern sociocultural and political realms, exploring their role in rural traditions and transformation under global influences. The book builds on extensive fieldwork conducted in village communities across Serbia, the ...
Dangerous Technologies: Crime and Digital Divides in (South) Africa
1st Edition
By Brandaan Huigen
November 10, 2025
Dangerous Technologies focuses on the prevalent theft of consumer electronics in post-Apartheid South Africa. Through a material culture perspective, it explores why these objects have commonly been targeted by bandits and subsequently circulated through the criminal underground. The author traces ...
Change and the Internet: An Ethnographic Exploration of Remote Working
1st Edition
By Jens Kjaerulff
September 23, 2025
This book explores the significance of new information technology for socio-cultural change and provides ethnographic insight into the early days of remote working. It draws on long-term anthropological fieldwork among people in rural Denmark working from home via the internet. Going back to the ...
Street Youth in Canada: An Ethnography of Adversity and Artifice
1st Edition
By Mark S. Dolson
July 31, 2025
This book provides an ethnographic examination of the everyday lives and struggles of street-involved youth in Canada. Based on fieldwork conducted throughout downtown London, Ontario, it features rich ethnographic data as well as theoretical insights informed by continental philosophy. The ...
Diasporic Consciousness in the Material Culture of Brazilian Candomblé
1st Edition
By Zainabu Jallo
June 27, 2025
This book examines Candomblé's material culture and its relationship with the evolving cultural politics of Brazil. It employs artefacts as analytical tools to trace the emergence of a diasporic consciousness. By followiing the movements of artefacts historically, the study reveals how Candomblé ...
Beyond Perception: Correspondences with Tim Ingold's Work
1st Edition
Edited
By Caroline Gatt, Jan Peter Laurens Loovers
June 25, 2025
This book showcases the way a range of scholars have engaged with Tim Ingold’s opus since the publication of his ground-breaking The Perception of the Environment in 2000. Ingold’s work has become key for a variety of disciplines ranging from anthropology, archaeology, and human geography to art, ...
Rethinking Relation-Substance Dualism: Submutances and the Body
1st Edition
By Aurélie Névot
May 27, 2025
This book analyses anthropological debates on “relationism” (referring to methodological and theoretical issues) and sets out to reconsider these discussions with regards to the notion of “substance” (generally associated with the body). Reflecting on the philosophical origins and implications of ...
Cosmopolitan Moment, Cosmopolitan Method
1st Edition
Edited
By Nigel Rapport, Huon Wardle
April 14, 2025
In conversation, and in the company of a new generation of scholars working in the field, Nigel Rapport and Huon Wardle re-explore the terrain and meaning of cosmopolitan studies now. This book offers a new survey and theorisation of cosmopolitan research, a burgeoning topic responding to ...
Fair Trade Enclaves: Labour and Livelihoods in Costa Rica’s Banana Industry
1st Edition
By Layla Zaglul Ruiz
April 01, 2025
Fair Trade Enclaves tells the story of exploitation and inequality in the production of Fair Trade bananas. It draws on immersive fieldwork in Costa Rica, which was the original testing ground for US-owned plantations and is today the world’s third-largest exporter of bananas. The book offers an ...