El. knyga: Edges of Global Transformation: Ethnographies of Uncertainty

The seesaw between inclusion and exclusion, between nativism and cosmopolitanism, is analyzed through the dual prisms of global neoliberalism and ontological uncertainty in this excellent and eminently readable book, where the universally human and the locally unique comes together through people uncomfortably wedged between the hopes and fears of an unpredictable world. The case studies, most of them African, demonstrate the strength of the ethnographic attention to flesh and blood, detail and context, while also indicating why anthropology must go multiscale and interdisciplinary to make a difference. -- Thomas Hylland Eriksen Edges of Global Transformation is a truly enlightening book. It brings together a wide variety of ethnographic studies of the neoliberal atmosphere of late capitalism and its effects in various locations in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, and provides a sharp and multidimensional analysis of heightened uncertainty. The contributing authors all demonstrate in minute detail how and why the intensification of uncertainty and vulnerability is generated, as well as how it is experienced, resisted, and absorbed in local worlds. Both the empirical and analytical insights emerging from the chapters deepen our understanding of contemporary global articulations. The book deserves a wide readership. -- Halvard Vike, University of South-Eastern Norway