Two new podcasts: Charles King and Don Kulick

Posted on by Rex

It’s been a very busy time of year for me and so I’ve done a bad job publicising my podcasts for New Books Network, and this despite my how interesting the authors and book are which I’ve been talking about! So for the record go listen to:

My interview with Charles King on his new popular history of the Boas Circle, Gods of the Upper Air.

My interview with Don Kulick on his new popular ethnography of language loss and the perils of fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, A Death in the Rainforest.

Both authors were great to interview. King’s book is a fresh, accessible history of Boasian anthropology which is clear-eyed about the drawbacks of the discipline but ultimately is very supportive of it. Kulick’s book is a funny, sad, personal, and not too politically correct account of his work in the Sepik and the difficulties he faced there, including some pretty harrowing violence.

That’s it for now. More soon, and I hope you enjoy these interviews!

Published by Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is a political anthropologist who studies kinship, customary land tenure, and the mining and petroleum industry in Papua New Guinea. He also studies the video game World of Warcraft, and is an advocate for open access scholarly communications. His book "Leviathans at the Gold Mine" was published by Duke University Press.