Books by Alpa Shah
“In The Incarcerations, she looks at 16 people who were arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case, in which a Dalit commemoration was seized upon as a national security threat. These activists and intellectuals were then targeted and imprisoned. Alpa goes into their stories in great detail, and how they have been caught in a dragnet that is increasingly worrying and disturbing in its reach. We can see how Alpa’s story of the perils of Indian democracy map onto many other parts of the world where dissent is repressed with cybersecurity or where policing power has been greatly increased.” Read more...
The best books on Political Anthropology
Ruben Andersson, Social Scientist
“The health—or otherwise—of India’s democracy is about as big as political questions get. By telling sprawling stories of some of India’s bravest campaigners and activists, Alpa Shah reveals an awful lot that’s worrying about India today—but also gives us ample reason to believe that a brighter future may lie ahead” Read more...
The Best Politics Books of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing
Interviews where books by Alpa Shah were recommended
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1
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
by Nathan Thrall -
2
Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
by Cat Bohannon -
3
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence
by Yaroslav Trofimov -
4
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
by Steve Coll -
5
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain
by Matthew Longo
The Best Politics Books of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing
The Best Politics Books of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing
The Orwell Prizes are the UK’s most prestigious prizes for writing about politics, awarded annually to books and articles that best meet George Orwell’s own ambition “to make political writing into an art.” The nonfiction books that made the 2024 shortlist ranged from evolution to political philosophy, from memoir to the Middle East.
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1
Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS
by Emily Martin -
2
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
by Mary Douglas -
3
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection
by Anna Tsing -
4
The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho
by James Ferguson -
5
The Incarcerations: BK16 and the Search for Democracy in India
by Alpa Shah
The best books on Political Anthropology, recommended by Ruben Andersson
The best books on Political Anthropology, recommended by Ruben Andersson
Anthropologists look for cultural and political currents reflected in everyday behaviours, says Ruben Andersson, the Oxford academic and author of a new book about the contemporary obsession with self-protection, Age of Security. Here, he recommends five anthropology books that have influenced his work and writing—and reflects on the difficulties of recognising patterns in our own thinking.
