Reading Environments
The Reading Environments group was founded in 2015 as the Contemporary Anthropology Reading Group (CARG) at LMU’s Anthropology Department, initially meeting in person. During the pandemic it moved online and subsequently continued in a hybrid format at the Rachel Carson Center for a further four years. With the start of 2026, it has moved to TUM’s STS Department but remains a self-organized initiative.
Reading Environments is a group of scholars who meet to discuss newly published monographs in anthropology. It is open to researchers, PhD students, and staff currently (or previously) affiliated with Munich-based institutions. Our aim is to cultivate a space to read books from cover to cover and across a wide range of geographic areas and topics, to counter the frantic pace and the increasing specialization of academic life.
We pick books based on the members' suggestions and votes. Past readings include The Government of Beans by Kregg Hetherington, Nightmarch by Alpa Shah, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Weingrow.
The reading material is circulated for free. Meetings are hybrid and happen every two months over lunchtime, for 75–90 minutes. They are a great opportunity to connect with fellow anthropologists across departments and universities.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please contact the organizer, Anna-Maria Walter (anna-maria.walter@tum.de).
For more information and upcoming events, visit the Reading Environments website.
Noteable Past Events
- 14 November 2025: Alex M. Nading. The Kidney and the Cane: Planetary Health and Plantation Labor in Nicaragua. Duke University Press, 2025.
- 12 September 2025: Mark Maguire and Setha Low. Trapped: Life under Security Capitalism and How to Escape It. Stanford University Press, 2024.
- 11 July 2025: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva. The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan. University of California Press, 2021.
- 16 May 2025: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature. Stanford University Press, 2024.
- 14 March 2025: Sara Safransky. The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit. Duke University Press, 2023.
- 10 January 2025: Lucas Bessire. Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains. Princeton University Press, 2021.
- 8 November 2024: Laura McLauchlan. Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness: The Contradictions of Care in Conservation Practice. MIT Press, 2024.
- 6 September 2024: Sophie Chao. In the Shadow of the Palms. More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
- 21 June 2024: Tania Li and Pujo Semedi. Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesias's Oil Palm Zone. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.
- 12 April 2024: Hugh Raffles. The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time. New York: Pantheon Books, 2020.
- 2 February 2024: Alex Blanchette. Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
- 24 November 2023: Michael Taussig. Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
General Information
- 44 books read and discussed since 2015;
- Several discussion sessions joined by authors;
- A review letter by CARG-members to the authors of On Roads (Harvey & Knox), published with their response on the Society for Cultural Anthropology website: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/on-roads-a-review-letter