Making Anthropological Soup! New Books Celebrating Eclectic Concepts

David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab invite you to a joint book launch on June 2nd, 2023, at the Old Tylor Library in 51-53 Banbury Road. Drinks will be served from 5.15 pm, followed by brief talks.

David will be launching his book An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts (Berghahn, 2022). The book promotes an eclectic, multi-faceted anthropology in which multiple approaches are applied in pursuit of the limited insights which each can afford. David argues that mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results that, in their breadth and richness, are productive for anthropology and other social sciences, reflecting the endless complexities of real life.

Chihab will also be launching Al-Fahhama [The Explanation Machine] (Diwan, 2022), an introduction to social theory concepts written in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Using examples from everyday life in Cairo, the book introduces 120 key concepts covering a wide theoretical landscape, from the self and society to space, history, the state, and the arts.

All welcome!

About the authors

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology in SAME. He has been working with Mambila in Cameroon since 1985, on various topics including traditional religion, sociolinguistics, kinship, history, and photography. He is author of several books in anthropology, including Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers (Routledge, 2020) and An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts (Berghahn, 2022).

Chihab El Khachab is Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology in SAME. He has worked extensively on Egyptian cinema and visual culture. His first monograph, Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry, was published by the American University in Cairo Press in 2021.