Pitt-Bradford Professor Co-Edits
New Book on Anthropology of Government
A new book co-edited by Dr. William Schumann III, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, examines the culture of government. “Governing Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Political Labor, Power and Government” is a collection of essays edited by Schumann and Kendra Coulter, assistant professor in the Centre for Labour Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. The two met at the 2008 meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society, where a panel discussion about the culture of government brought about the idea for the book. Schumann and Coulter selected a broad range of essays from different disciplines and covering a variety of worldwide geography and time periods, including late 20th century Mexico, 1930s and ’40s Ecuador, and modern Alberta, Canada. The essays focus less on the culture of politics and more on the culture of everyday bureaucracies. In addition to editing th...