**Winner of the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for NonfictionLonglisted for the 2025 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardOne of The New Yorker's "Essential Reads" of 2024 • One of NPR's "Books We Love" for 2024"[An] epic exploration of human innovation and destruction." —Josie Glausiusz, NatureA brilliant, paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, over the l...

From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its watersAsia's history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas -- and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shap...

This set of essays analyses the work of Isabel Hofmeyr, globally recognised as one of South Africa’s foremost literary and Indian Ocean scholars. The essays elucidate Hofmeyr’s path-breaking studies of transnational histories of the book, African print cultures, and cultural circulations in the Indian Ocean world.This book draws together reflective and analytical essays by renowned intellectuals from around the world who critically engage with the work of one of the global South’s ...

If you want to know what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do. This Very Short Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology combines an accessible account of some of the disciplines guiding principles and methodology with abundant examples and illustrations of anthropologists at work. Peter Just and John Monaghan begin by discussing anthropologys most important contributions to modern thought: its investigation of culture as a distinctively human character...

What is anthropology? What can it tell us about culture and the world around us? And why do we need it?For well over one hundred years, social and cultural anthropologists have traversed the world from Melanesia to suburban England, Taipei to Wall Street, uncovering surprising facts, patterns, predilections and, sometimes, the inexplicable, in terms of how humans organize their lives and articulate their values. By weaving together theories and examples from around the world, Matth...

The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture.The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range ...

Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical, theoretical and political dimensions of colonial and postcolonial studies.This new edition includes a new introduction and conclusion as well as extensive updates throughout. Topics covered include globalization, new grassroots movements (including Occupy Wall Street), the environmental crisis, and the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial studies. Loomba also discusses how ongoi...

First Published in 1998. The so-called 'cultural tum' in contemporary geography has brought new ways of thinking about geography and culture, taking cultural geography into exciting new terrain to produce new maps of space and place. Cultural Geography introduces culture from a geographical perspective, focusing on how cultures work in practice and looking at cultures embedded in real-life situations, as locatable, specific phenomena. Definitions of 'culture' are diverse and complex, and C...

Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is the leading critical overview of and historical introduction to colonial and postcolonial literary studies. Highly praised from the time of its first publication for its lucidity, breadth, and insight, the book has itself played a crucial part in founding and shaping this rapidly expanding field. The author, an internationally renowned postcolonial critic, provides a broad contextualizing narrative about the evolution of colonial and postcolonial wri...

‘Remains among the most brilliant summaries of key ideas animating anthropology. In his famously accessible writing style, Eriksen introduces fundamental questions that shape human life, and provides an overview of the discipline’s contribution to the pressing issues of our times. A must-read’ Ursula Rao, Director, Anthropology of Politics and Governance, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology‘This is not just another book in the library of anthropolo...

South Asian History has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past thirty years. Its historians are not only producing new ways of thinking about the imperial impact and legacy on South Asia, but also helping to reshape the study of imperial history in general. The essays in this collection address a number of these important developments, delineating not only the complicated interplay between imperial rulers and their subjects in India, but also illuminating the economic, political, e...

The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature explores the interplay between the domination of nature and the oppression of women, as well as liberatory alternatives, bringing together essays from leading academics in the field to facilitate cutting-edge critical readings of literature. Covering the main theoretical approaches and key literary genres of the area, this volume includes:Examination of ecofeminism through the literatures of a diverse sampling of l...