New Book Celebrations

A well attended book launch was held on Thursday 27th May to celebrate the recent publication of three books by current and former Anthropology staff.

Senior Lecturer, Dr Eli Elinoff had a double celebration having authored one book and co-edited another. Eli's book, Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand explores how democratic urban planning projects intersect with emerging political aspirations among squatters living in the northeastern Thai city of Khon Kaen.

His book, Disastrous Times: Beyond Environmental Crisis in Urbanizing Asia, which he co-edited with Tyson Vaughan has been described as "a welcome contribution to the critical social science of the anthropocene" and explores how people across Asia live through and make sense of the environmental ruptures that now shape the region and asks how we might analyze this moment of disruption and risk. Both of Eli's publications were the result of research undertaken for his 2018 Marsden Grant.

Eli was joined by two former Anthropology staff members, one in person and one via Zoom. Dr Nayantara Sheoran Appleton (now with the Centre for Science and Society here at Te Herenga Waka) and Dr Caroline Bennett (now based in London and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Anthropology programme). Nayan and Caroline's edited book Methods, Moments, and Ethnographic Spaces in Asia discusses tensions and opportunities arising in ethnographic fieldwork in light of a changing Asia.

The enormous amount of work that goes into writing and editing a book was intensified over the last year with the stresses and pressures of the Covid pandemic which saw fieldwork research disrupted and teaching workloads increase substantially. To have these three books published in such times is an enormous achievement and we warmly congratulate Eli, Nayan and Caroline.