Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Sophie Chao's 2025 monograph, Land of Famished Beings, which received the 2026 Mid-Career Book Prize from the Asian Studies Association of Australia, examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorise hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities (Figure 1).By centering Indigenous feminist theories of hunger, Chao offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between the environment, food, and nourishment in an age of self-consuming capitalist growth.She also considers how Indigenous theories invite anthropologists to reimagine the ethics and politics of ethnographic writing and the responsibilities, hesitations, and compromises that shape anthropological commitments in and beyond the field.In this book review forum, six scholars-Margaret Jolly, Shiori Shakuto, Hatib Kadir,
DOI: 10.1111/taja.70098
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,010
Funder: University of Sydney
OpenAlex ID: W7220731958