New Books in Anthropology

In Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Nikita Kaur Simpson examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.” This “tension” takes many forms: Kamzori, or weakness, in the bodies of elderly women; “Future tension” accumulating in the minds of young girls; or Opara, or black magic, afflicting whole families.

Through her long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Dr. Simpson follows the ways in which Gaddi people tie this distress to broader structural changes, such as land dispossession and caste, class, tribal and gender inequality, which are growing alongside modernity and prosperity. In doing so, she shows how “tension” acts as an everyday diagnostic of the problems of cultural, economic and environmental change as they shape intimate life. At once a lived historical account, a cartography of care relations, and a multi-sensory exploration of the intimate experiences of atmosphere and body, Tension puts forth a novel theory of distress, that inequality is often determined by who is made to feel, hold, and absorb distress.

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

In Precarious Accumulation: Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou (Duke UP, 2026), the cultural anthropologist Nellie Chu tells the story of the migrant entrepreneurs at the heart of Guangzhou’s fast fashion industry—one of the world’s most dynamic hubs of transnational commodity production. Chu shows how rural Chinese migrants, West African traders, and South Korean jobbers navigate the high-speed, low-margin world of just-in-time garment production that fuels the constant accumulation of wealth via global supply chains. Drawing on fieldwork in Guangzhou’s urban villages and household workshops, Chu outlines how these entrepreneurs’ dreams of economic freedom clash with the reality of precarity and the exclusions of emigre status. Migrant bosses operate within a highly competitive, informal economy where they are both agents and target of exploitation, as they must evade rent collectors, endure racialized policing, and mitigate extortion from security officers and competitors. Chu crucially demonstrates how their efforts generate novel forms of migratory labor, commodity production, and cross-cultural exchange in postsocialist China.

Nellie Chu (email here) is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research focuses on transnational and domestic migrant entrepreneurs across the global supply chains of fast fashion in southern China. She has papers published in leading academic journals, including positions: east asia critique, Modern Asian Studies, Culture, Theory, and Critique, and Journal of Modern Craft. Her work can also be found in Made in China Journal, Youth Circulations, and Noema Magazine.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In The Goddess in the Mirror: An Anthropology of Beauty (Duke UP, 2025), Tulasi Srinivas offers a pathbreaking ethnography of contemporary Indian beauty parlors in Bangalore. Exploring the gendered world of beauty in the intimate spaces of the salon, whose popularity has exploded amid an urban tech revolution, Srinivas invites us to consider what beauty is and what it does. Visiting diverse salons that cater to various classes, castes, and queer sexualities, she tracks the relationships between clients and workers, revealing the beauty industry's painful political, religious, and economic stakes. Embodiment, religion, and narrative intersect as clients and beauticians tell well-known stories of beautiful Hindu goddesses, heroines, queens, and apsaras, thereby weaving their own ethical subjectivities every day. Following the goddess' allure, radiance, woundedness, fluidity, and fertility, Srinivas situates ideas of beauty within a larger moral and political context where beauty is both a fleeting pursuit and a rich resource for navigating a patriarchal present.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them most. In The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America (Princeton UP, 2025), Melissa Burch sheds light on one of the most significant forces of social and economic marginalization of our time—discrimination on the basis of criminal records. Chronicling the daily interactions of hiring managers, workforce development professionals, and job-seekers with felony convictions in Southern California, Dr. Burch shows that this discrimination is not simply a matter of employer bias. Hiring is shaped by a set of institutions, organizations, and industries that promote the erroneous idea that people with criminal records are dangerous to employ. This “criminal record complex,” as Dr. Burch names it, encourages exclusion and undermines employers’ common-sense ways of assessing candidates. In vivid and intimate detail, Dr. Burch reveals both the futility and devastating human consequences of discriminatory policies.Dr. Burch places today’s routine practice of background screening within racialized notions of risk originating in early capitalist development, tracing how, over decades, criminal background checks became a convenient catch-all, leveraged by entities with a direct interest in growing the practice. Despite this reach, however, Dr. Burch discovers that small business owners tend to put less value on background checks, trusting their own judgment. Approaching the issue from both personal and policy perspectives, The Criminal Record Complex upends what we thought we knew about the causes of criminal record discrimination. It suggests that our best hope for creating safe workplaces lies not in the false promise of background screening, but in building the kinds of economies and communities that support true safety.

Our guest is: Dr. Melissa Burch, who is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and Director of the Afterlives of Conviction Project.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and editor for academics. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine

Carceral Apartheid

Freemans Challenge

Hands Up Don't Shoot

The Names of all the Flowers

The Journal of Higher Education in Prison

Black Boy Out of Time

Secrets of the Killing State

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

The Cultural Competence Collective welcomes Marika Duczynski onto the podcast to discuss cultural competence, decolonial practices, and community-led curation. Marika is a Gamilaraay and Mandandanji writer and curator and is the Indigenous Heritage Curator at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. Our conversation with Marika covers a range of crucial topics, delving into what it means to do decolonial work within colonial institutions, the importance of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), culturally respectful care of collections, and what self-determination and the right of response looks like in action. Together, we discuss what cultural competence looks like in supporting truth-telling, repatriation and building collaborative relationships with First Nations communities.

Show notes

This episode is hosted by Dr. Pooja Mittal Biswas. Pooja Mittal Biswas is an Academic Facilitator at the National Centre for Cultural Competence and an award-winning educator and author. She is the author of ten books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her ninth book, Hunger and Predation (Cordite Books, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and her tenth book, The Maker of Garlands, was published by Vagabond Press in 2024.

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Resources:

Learn more about Marika, her work at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, and her works across other art and cultural institutions below:

ACHAA IMAGinE Awards Celebrate Decades Long Cultural Work and Community-Led Curation: Marika Duczynski honoured for excellence in community-led curation

Chau Chak Wing Museum: Mungari

NSW State Library: Dyarubbin Exhibition

NSW State Library: Following the river Exhibition

Nakata Brophy Prize winner: Backa Bourke, Marika Duczynski

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327

First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432

LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874

Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465

Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337

Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543

Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399

Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435

www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

https://wellmob.org.au/

24-hour crisis hotlines

13 Yarn

Beyond Blue

LifeLine:

NSW Mental Health Line

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology