{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in Anthropology","slug":"new-books-in-anthropology-901932","podcast_index_feed_id":901932,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LIT5223487889","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/c4c2fb9a-effd-11e8-b747-3397cd40d5ab/image/15368bdb812ba6d54c395a6f26d57913.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":1000,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology","last_synced_at":"2026-09-12T12:18:17.867506+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-anthropology-901932"},"episode":{"title":"Sophie Chao, \"Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger\" (Duke UP, 2025)","slug":"sophie-chao-land-of-famished-beings-west-papuan-theories-of-hunger-duke-up-2025","published_at":"2026-08-15T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-anthropology-901932/sophie-chao-land-of-famished-beings-west-papuan-theories-of-hunger-duke-up-2025","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-anthropology-901932","url":"https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6978294334.mp3","audio_url":"https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6978294334.mp3","summary":"In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably situated humans, animals, plants, institutions, infrastructures, spirits, and sorcerers. When approached through the lens of Indigenous Marind philosophies, practices, and protocols, hunger reveals itself to be a multiple, more-than-human, and morally imbued modality of being—one whose effects are no less culturally crafted or contested than food and eating. In 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. Dr Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, and coeditor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice, both also published by Duke University Press. Land of Famished Beings won the 2026 ASAA Mid-Career Book Prize. Her latest book Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge UP, 2026), came out in June. Support our show by beco…","meta_description":"In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand an…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3734,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-anthropology-901932/episodes/sophie-chao-land-of-famished-beings-west-papuan-theories-of-hunger-duke-up-2025/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-anthropology-901932/sophie-chao-land-of-famished-beings-west-papuan-theories-of-hunger-duke-up-2025.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}