Winner of IBP 2013 Social Sciences

Miriam Kahn, Tahiti. Beyond the Postcard. Power, Place, and Everyday Life. University of Washington Press, 2011.

The book is beautifully written which sensitively highlights the dark reality behind the picture-perfect postcard image the world holds of Tahiti. The author poignantly highlights the pillaging of the place through France’s 30-years nuclear testing programs which destroyed not just an environment of Mururoa but also a people and their sense of self in the land of their ancestors. Kahn weaves together Tahitians’ as well as social scientists’ ideas of space and place to provide a deeply moving reflection of the ills of colonialism and its current avatars of tourism, environmental degradation and political machinations. One of the finest books in anthropology to have been published in the last decade.

Shortlist IBP 2013 Social Sciences

C. Fred Blake, Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld. University of Hawai’i Press, 2011.

Dan Breznitz and Michael Murphree, Run of the Red Queen: Government, Innovation, Globalization, and Economic Growth in China. Yale University Press, 2011.

Farish A. Noor, Islam on the Move: The Tablighi Jama’at in Southeast Asia. Amsterdam University Press, 2012.

Johan Saravanamuttu, Malaysia’s Foreign Policy, the First Fifty Years: Alignment, Neutralism, Islamism. ISEAS Publishing, 2010.

Reading Committee Accolades IBP 2013 Social Sciences  

Publisher's Accolade for outstanding production value
Inge Daniels, The Japanese House, Material Culture in the Modern Home. Berg, 2011.

Most accessible and captivating work for the non-specialist reader Accolade
Duncan McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail. Amsterdam University Press, 2012.

Specialist publication Accolade
Jonardon Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Teaching tool Accolade
David Lockwood, The Indian Bourgeoisie. A Political History of the Indian Capitalist Class in the Early Twentieth Century. I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Ground-breaking subject matter Accolade
Robert Marks, China. Its Environment and History. Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.

Edited volume Accolade
James W. Heisig, Thomas Kasulis & John. C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011.