Making Sense of the Global, ed. Raúl Acosta, Sadaf Rizvi, and Ana Santos, is now going to press at Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP).

I have a lot of affection for this book, having been copyediting it on and off over the last four months. Its papers apply anthropological concepts and methods to the understanding of global issues, neither simplifying the issues to fit theory, nor retreating from the normative and political in the face of overwhelming empirical complexity.

The editors succeed in their goal of bringing “thick” anthropological descriptions to bear on significant social issues. I see such “thick” descriptions as being like sandwiches: the top layer is the descriptive realm, the bottom the normative/political. The inside of the sandwich is “spread” with anthropology, holding the sandwich together against the superdisciplinary forces which would tear it apart.

Making Sense of the Global: Anthropological Perspectives on Interconnections and Processes, ed. Raúl Acosta, Sadaf Rizvi, and Ana Santos (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).