The Secret Identities of Postsocialism in Contemporary Russia
Soviet Self-Hatred examines the imaginary Russian identities that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Eliot Borenstein shows how these identities are best understood as balanced on a simple axis between pride and shame, shifting in response to Russia's standing in the global community, its anxieties about internal dissension and ......
Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border
Stalemate reveals the history and contemporary politics of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Asia's strongest insurgent army on Myanmar's border with China. This ethnographic tale recounts how a highland group, often dismissed as rebels or narcotraffickers, maintains a relational autonomy between two powerful lowland states. The Wa polity engages ......
For Putin and for Sharia examines what it means to support sharia in twenty-first-century Dagestan, where calls for an Islamic state coexist with nostalgia for the days of Stalin's rule and Mecca calendars hang alongside portraits of Putin. Confronting existing narratives about sharia, terrorism, and anti-terrorism through ethnographic fieldwork, ......
For Putin and for Sharia examines what it means to support sharia in twenty-first-century Dagestan, where calls for an Islamic state coexist with nostalgia for the days of Stalin's rule and Mecca calendars hang alongside portraits of Putin. Confronting existing narratives about sharia, terrorism, and anti-terrorism through ethnographic fieldwork, ......
Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War
At War with Women reveals how post-9/11 politics of gender and development have transformed US military power. In the mid-2000s, the US military used development as a weapon as it revived counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military assembled all-female teams to reach households and wage war through development projects in the battle ......
Non-State Welfare, Inequality, and Resistance in Myanmar
Outsourcing the Polity offers a new account of social outsourcing in post-independence Myanmar, demonstrating how the bankrupt post-socialist junta mediated market reform in the 1990s and 2000s and forced private and non-state actors to take the burden for social welfare. Informed by research during Myanmar's decade of partial civilian rule ......
Robots Won't Save Japan addresses the Japanese government's efforts to develop care robots in response to the challenges of an aging population, rising demand for eldercare, and a critical shortage of care workers. Drawing on ethnographic research at key sites of Japanese robot development and implementation, James Wright reveals how such devices ......
In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy A. Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes ......
Under Stalin's Shadow examines the history of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1918 to 1956, showing how closely national Communism was related to international developments. The history of the KKE reveals the role of Moscow in the various Communist parties of Southeastern Europe, as Nikos Marantzidis shows that Communism's international ......