Untaming the Frontier

I had a very pleasant MLK day reading through “Untaming The Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History”:http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/books/bid1624.htm. The concept of ‘frontier’ is deep background for my own research, and I try to keep my hand in on the work done in this area. However, it has also been a while since I caught up on the topic, so this edited volume was a lot of fun for me — a lot of interesting papers from all over the place (from the Qing to the Inka) and a helpful bibliography as well as a lot of good contributors. I wasn’t aware of the work of editor “Lars Rodseth”:http://www.anthro.utah.edu/people/faculty/lars-rodseth.html but it looks quite good and now I am interested learning more about his work.

The other thing I like about this collection is the approach to social science that it espouses — each author combines a love of the details of their individual cases with an interest in comparison and generalization. Its sorta… Weberian in a pleasant sort of way. Anyway I had fun reading it so maybe you will too.

Alex Golub is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies mining and petroleum development in Papua New Guinea, as well as American culture in to the online game World of Warcraft. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org