Book Reviews

The Highlander Journal invites reviews of books that engage the thematic and conceptual contours outlined in the journal’s Focus and Scope. We are interested in both ‘classic’ theoretical texts as well as recent empirically grounded works that have engaged the highland spaces and populations and overtly or implicitly figures the heuristic notion of ‘Zomia+’.

While our journal is broadly concerned with the study of Highland Asian communities situated at the margins of the state, we encourage reviews of books that allow discussions to unpack the relevance of received categories and tropes such as ‘highland space’, ‘margins/periphery’, ‘borders’, ‘frontiers’, ‘remote’, ‘backward’, ‘state evasion’, ‘stateless’ etc. We seek to inspire multidisciplinary Area Studies in its broadest sense, and thus, our interest goes beyond conventional Area based approaches restricted by ‘methodological nationalism’ in Asian Highland contexts. Moreover, books that illustrate the relations between Highland-Lowland dichotomies or those that identify the circulation of the Highland heuristics in other contexts outside of Asia (example, in the Americas, Oceania, Eurasia, and Arctic/Antarctica) are particularly welcome. The books we review are usually situated roughly from the Pre-Modern era to the Twenty-first century, but we are open to relevant books that fall outside of this temporal boundary. Our journal believes in supporting diversity in knowledge production, and in that spirit, we also welcome reviews of relevant and rigorous books by vernacular and less-visible local publishers whose merits deserve discussion.

We also occasionally welcome Review Articles which thematically discusses a set of inter-related 2-3 books which together provides a meaningful discussion of new trends or theoretical directions within a field (while adhering to the larger scope of the journal).

Book Review Submission:

All reviews must be approved in advance by the editors. Please email us your enquiries to aditya.kakati@iheid.ch. We also occasionally solicit reviews of books that are of specific interest.

Content: The book review should be an engaging, informative, and critical discussion of approximately 700-1000 words. Review articles are longer and can range from 2000-2500 words.

A review should be submitted through the article submission portal as an MS Word file, should be typed double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins on all sides, and should conform to The Highlander Journal Style Guidelines. References to other works should be kept to a minimum. Page number citations of the specific book under review should be made in-text under parentheses.

The header of the review should include:

• Author(s) or editor(s) first and last name(s) (please indicate if it is an edited book)
• Title of book • Year of publication • Place of publication • Publisher • Number of pages • Price (please indicate paperback or hardcover) if available • ISBN

Reviewer Information

At the end of each review, please include your name and institutional affiliation (if none, then as an independent scholar), email address and mailing address.

Make a new submission to the Book Reviews section.