The "Modern Sovereign", a notion indebted both to Hobbes's Leviathan and Marx's conception of capital, refers to the power that governed the African multitudes from the earliest colonial days to the post-colonial era. It is an internalized power, res...

For centuries, humans have excelled at mimicking nature in order to exploit it. Now, with the existential threat of global climate change on the horizon, the ever-provocative Michael Taussig asks what function a newly invigorated mimetic faculty migh...

"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I have never seen it". So said Mommo Piromalli, a Ndrangheta crime boss, to a journalist in the seventies. In "Mafiacraft", Deborah Puccio-Den explores the...

Growing out of the collaborative research of an American ethnomusicologist and Zimbabwean musician, Paul F. Berliner and Cosmas Magaya's "Mbira's Restless Dance" documents the repertory for a keyboard instrument known generally as mbira. At the heart...

In 1931 Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his famous "Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough", published posthumously in 1967. At that time, anthropology and philosophy were in close contact – continental thinkers drew heavily on anthropology's theoretical terms,...

When thinking of indigenous music, many people may imagine acoustic instruments and pastoral settings far removed from the whirl of modern life. But, in contemporary Peru, indigenous chimaycha music has become a wildly popular genre that is even hear...

In "Magic's Reason", Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two areas are not as separate as they may at first seem. As Jones shows, the endeavors not only matured around the same time, but they also s...

Trust occupies a unique place in contemporary discourse. Seen as both necessary and virtuous, it is variously depicted as enhancing the social fabric, lowering crime rates, increasing happiness, and generating prosperity. It allows for complex politi...

We often invoke the "magic" of mass media to describe seductive advertising or charismatic politicians. In "The Mana of Mass Society", William Mazzarella asks what happens to social theory if we take that idea seriously. How would it change our under...

Drive the streets of Nairobi and you are sure to see many matatus – colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed o...