The Anthropology Book Forum (https://anthrobookforum.americananthro.org) was founded by the American Anthropological Association as an experimental digital platform aimed at accelerating the scholarly book review process and expanding conversations around newly published work. Based on the idea that book reviews are not just summaries of academic texts, but engagements with scholarship, ideas and authors, the Forum seeks to facilitate connections and exchange between authors and readers within and outside of anthropology. In 2022, the Forum was awarded the GAD New Directions Award (group category) for its sustained efforts towards transitioning to new modes of book reviews as well as to more diverse and accessible formats. In recent years, the Forum has sought to encourage and host new configurations of the book review, including visual, audio, and video formats that can reach a broader public both within and outside of academia. This roundtable seeks to host a conversation around the book review in transition, its role in contemporary scholarly exchange, and how it is evolving in the current era. Toward this end, this roundtable brings together authors who engage with reviews of their recently published work to reflect on the value of the book review, the role reviews play in reaching larger audiences, and what an author can learn about their work by engaging with reviews. It similarly highlights the ways in which different modes of review can provide a medium for early career scholars and graduate students to engage with disciplinary conversations, while also thinking about the value of reviews for larger audiences beyond anthropology.

In this dissertation, I investigate relations between humans, waste, pollution, and marine life. I introduce the concept of Aquabiopolitics as a means to understand how humans govern life in water in order to enrich human life on land. The study focuses on the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren, using Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, as the connection point. Throughout the dissertation, I explore how human practices over time have had devastating effects on marine life and continue to have so today. 

The dissertation engages with the marine world through underwater ethnography to provide a perspective on water from below the surface. In this endeavor, I employ the assistance of marine scientists and trash scuba divers who are jointly invested in tracking human maltreatment of water and finding solutions for treating water differently in the future. We will follow the scientists on expeditions at sea and to their laboratories in order to learn about their methods and relations to underwater worlds. Together with the trash scuba divers, we will dive into the dark murky waters around Stockholm—experiencing what it is like to move below water, among sharp and toxic waste, without any visibility.  

The work of creating a knowing and caring relationship between humans and water is of key importance to both scientists and divers. Therefore, one of the main parts of this dissertation is to analyze how, and if, this relationship can be created: via social media, images, installations, or other means. For as the divers often say: Water is Life. Make it Important!

This case study is based on my work with student activists from Aleppo, Syria, who were actively involved in planning and organizing demonstrations during the initial phase of the Syrian Revolution. The material presented in this study is based on two years of fieldwork from 2015 to 2016 in Stockholm among student activists from Aleppo who have fled Syria for Sweden. And on online research conducted among student activists still living in Aleppo during the time of my research. The case study focuses on ethical and methodological concerns regarding how to conduct research in a war zone using online methods. Some of the questions raised are whether it is ethically defendable to conduct online research among groups who possibly can be arrested as a result? How to build rapport with interlocutors during online interviews? And how online and offline research differ with regard to time management.