New Books in Anthropology

Youth workers are essential to the fabric of society. Schools, families, and many of our social institutions rely heavily on their work, yet their contributions often go unrecognized. Laboring in the Shadows: Precarity and Promise in Black Youth Work (Stanford UP, 2026) explores the critical role of Black youth workers, especially in the lives of vulnerable youth, and the challenges they face in their unstable, underappreciated position. Bianca J. Baldridge situates the experiences of Black youth workers within the broader context of anti-Blackness and historical inequities. Drawing on rich interview data from across the United States, Baldridge offers a nuanced analysis of how the precarity of this work—marked by high turnover rates, low wages, and housing insecurity—compounds the challenges these workers face. She highlights how Black youth workers resist these structural harms by adopting and implementing innovative pedagogical practices alongside practices of "freedom dreaming" and joy as forms of resistance and pathways to agency for youth despite their precarious roles. Positioning Black youth workers within a broader network of informal care workers in the United States, Baldridge underscores the significance, fragility, precarity, and power of these dedicated professionals, their essential work, and the possibilities they create for youth.

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On October 5, 2026, Brazil had elections for the president, governors, and congressmen. On October 25, 2026 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Lula won the presidency of Brazil. He won during the run-off election after coming in second in the first election. Afro-Brazilians played a decisive role in Lula's electoral win as well as in securing their own wins during the election. This conversation examines the raced and gendered contours of the 2026 election and electoral politics in Brazil.
Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour is the Dan T. Blue Endowed Chair at North Carolina Central University. Dr. Mitchell-Walthour is a political scientist whose research examines race and politics in Brazil. She is the author of The Politics of Survival: The Political Opinions of Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the USA (Columbia University Press) as well as numerous articles and books.
Dr. Kia Lilly Caldwell is the Dean's Distinguished Professorial Scholar in Arts & Sciences in the Department of African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Caldwell is an anthropologist whose research has examined race, gender, and health in Brazil. She is the author of Health Equity in Brazil: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Policy (University of Illinois Press) as well as numerous articles and books.
Dr. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Diasporic Connections: How Afro-Brazilians Use African American Culture to Challenge Racial Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press).

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Zion’s Last Frontier: LDS Ranchers, Federal Regulators, and the Clash of the New West in Capitol Reef Country, Utah (U Arizona Press, 2026) is a historical ethnography that documents the uniquely Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) ranching community around Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah over the last 150 years.
From the arrival of the first LDS pioneers in the 1870s to fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of those pioneers today, anthropologist Thomas E. Sheridan documents their ongoing struggles with the federal and state agencies that control 96 percent of the land they ranch. Changing policies and management philosophies profoundly impact the ranchers’ livelihoods and ways of life. Sheridan argues that the ranchers should qualify as Traditionally Associated People. Only one allotment on the Park remains, but the Park still allows ranchers to drive their cattle on horseback along the few canyons that cut through the Waterpocket Fold as they move their herds from their traditional summer grazing lands to their winter grazing lands.
Pushing beyond binary arguments, Sheridan offers an empathetic look at the lived experiences of rural communities often mischaracterized in debates over public lands and environmentalism. Tensions have been aggravated by a massive increase in the number of tourists that swarm the area in the warmer months and a steady increase in the number of seasonal residents who build second homes there.
Zion’s Last Frontier provides an in-depth look at the clash of cultures between the agrarian Old West and the New West of tourism and second-homers that is playing itself out across so many parts of the rural West today.
This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for The University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert, investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that forever changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

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On March 17, 2015, tens of thousands of Mexican farmworkers went on strike in San Quintin, Baja California, to protest horrible working conditions on the farms that produce most of the fresh fruits and vegetables you consume. Calling themselves the "slaves of the twenty-first century," these mostly Indigenous men, women, and children rose up in defiance of the conditions of modern slavery, forced labor, sexual harassment, and "hunger wages." This ethnography provides an in-depth look into how Indigenous farmworkers organize in the fields and their communities to improve wages and working conditions.
Since the strike, the farmworkers have organized a union to fight for justice in the fields. In this work, author James Daria accompanies these farmworkers as they struggle for dignity. Daria also charts the tensions inside the farmworker movement as women struggle to gain greater power in the home as well as at work. In an era of complex global integration, Daria shows us how what we eat is tied to the suffering of those who produce our food.
¡Huelga!: Indigenous Farm Labor Organizing in Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2026) highlights and centers the Indigenous workers who struggle for justice in a global food system that connects us all.
James Daria is an assistant professor of anthropology and co-director of Food Studies at Spelman College. Dr. Daria is an anthropologist of labor, food, and migration.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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