Explore the creation of Guillermo del Toro's early masterpiece through this visually stunning and insightful look at the spine-chilling classic. Released in 2001, Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone marked out the director as a singular talent with the unique ability to mix the macabre with the sublime. Set during the Spanish Civil War, the film focuses on ten-year-old Carlos (Fernando Tielve), an orphan taken in by Republican sympathisers. On his first day at the orphanage, he witnesses a ghostly apparition, the spirit of a young boy named Santi (Andreas Munoz) who disappeared from the institution a year earlier. With the ghost's help, Carlos must uncover the dark secrets that led to Santi's death and help prevent himself and his fellow orphans from meeting the same fate. Seen by del Toro as a spiritual companion piece to his Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Devil's Backbone explores similar themes against the backdrop of the same brutal conflict that turned ordinary men into monsters. This book is written in close collaboration with the director and provides the definitive account of the film's creation, covering everything from del Toro's initial musings through to the haunting designs for Santi, the hugely challenging shoot, and the overwhelming critic and fan reactions upon its release. Including exquisite concept art and rare unit photography from the set, Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone gives readers an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at how this gothic horror masterpiece was crafted for the screen. The book also draws on interviews with every key player in the film's creation to present the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at this unforgettable Spanish-language classic.

The Northman: A Call to the Gods is the official look at how this epic Viking revenge thriller was conceived, written, cast, and produced by acclaimed director Robert Eggers. Set against the ruthless backdrop of tenth-century Norse territory, The Northman is an epic Viking revenge thriller by acclaimed director Robert Eggers (The Witch [2015] and The Lighthouse [2019]), featuring an all-star cast including Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and Bjoerk. Compiled from fascinating interviews with the cast and crew, inspiring storyboards, exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs-including the director's own firsthand account of his creative processes in writing and directing-The Northman: A Call to the Gods explores the cold and forbidding world of the Vikings, their customs, traditions, and relentless thirst for battle and vengeance that inspired Eggers to write this compelling Norse saga. Learn how the wardrobe department recreated the intricate chainmail armor and costumes of Viking berserkers and warriors; and delve into the research behind the art department's visual inspiration for replicating the villages of Hrafnsey and Freysdalur.

What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society. With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.

In planning debates, culture is often treated as a fixed element, either as a quasi-economic resource or as a category of behaviour. Yet a wealth of research and analysis is available that moves the spotlight from the question of what culture is, towards understanding what we are doing when we talk about culture. This book brings that focus to planning research, examining culture as a socio-historical concept, and introducing a line of scholarship, both established and recent, to show what 'culture' does and why. Illustrated by case studies from planning contexts, it addresses the materialisation of abstract concepts, performance and embodiment, and social categorisation. In doing so, it shows how a deeper understanding of culture can offer new insights into the challenges that planners and planning theorists face. While Culture and Planning is aimed primarily at planning theorists, professionals and students, it has equal relevance for students of human geography or sociology and is accessible to a wider readership. In effect, it opens up the field of planning to a new realm of research, enabling readers to think beyond the bounds of what they know about planning, and to think about what they may, or may not, know about culture.

In planning debates, culture is often treated as a fixed element, either as a quasi-economic resource or as a category of behaviour. Yet a wealth of research and analysis is available that moves the spotlight from the question of what culture is, towards understanding what we are doing when we talk about culture. This book brings that focus to planning research, examining culture as a socio-historical concept, and introducing a line of scholarship, both established and recent, to show what 'culture' does and why. Illustrated by case studies from planning contexts, it addresses the materialisation of abstract concepts, performance and embodiment, and social categorisation. In doing so, it shows how a deeper understanding of culture can offer new insights into the challenges that planners and planning theorists face. While Culture and Planning is aimed primarily at planning theorists, professionals and students, it has equal relevance for students of human geography or sociology and is accessible to a wider readership. In effect, it opens up the field of planning to a new realm of research, enabling readers to think beyond the bounds of what they know about planning, and to think about what they may, or may not, know about culture.

This book explores what anthropology can contribute to an understanding of how people live through pandemics. It reflects on how pandemics are experienced and what we can learn from Covid-19 as well as previous instances that might inform future responses and help to alleviate suffering. The chapters highlight current research and longer-term reflections from different countries and areas of the discipline, covering medical anthropology, care and surveillance, digital and experimental ethnography, and the everyday economies of lockdown. They show the breadth and originality of anthropological work relevant to thinking about and responding to pandemic situations. Extending beyond Covid-19, the volume considers the implications for ongoing and future research under pandemic restrictions and gives a broad overview of current anthropology relevant to questions about pandemics. It will be of interest to both academic and applied anthropologists, as well as to sociologists and those working in global and public health.

This collection shifts the focus away from this to examine the conflicts and realities of development at a local, empirical level. It provides a series of case studies which illuminate the attitudes and actions of those involved in local development schemes. The material is drawn from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. All the contributors use rigorous anthropological methods of analysis to shed light on the place of feelings of personal sentiment and identity in reactions to planned development schemes. In a world where direct action and public protest are routine responses to local development schemes, they show how protesters, developers and politicians often hold very different fundamental views about the environment, society, government and development which go beyond partisan economic and political interests. This collection provides a comparative perspective on the context of development, and should be of interest to social anthropologists, planners, development workers and specialists in development studies.

There is a wealth of published material which analyzes large-scale international development plans and policies. This collection shifts the focus away from this to examine the conflicts and realities of development at a local, empirical level. It provides a series of case studies which illuminates the attitudes and actions of those involved in local development.
The material is drawn from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. All the contributors use rigorous anthropological methods of analysis to shed light on the place of personal sentiment and identity in reactions to planned development schemes. In a world where direct action and public protest are routine responses to local development plans, they show how protesters, developers and politicians often hold very different fundamental views about the environment, society, government and development which go beyond partisan economic and political interests.

What are the key rationalities that underpin planning policy discourses and how do they 'frame' seemingly irreconcilable conflicts around development and environmental protection? Providing a thorough assessment of these important questions, this stimulating book reviews planning policy in the UK and the rationality of 'sustainable development'. Supported by a wealth of empirical material collected over the past ten years, the study examines the national, regional and local tiers of planning for housing. It analyzes whether the rationality of planning for 'sustainable development' allows a new spatial sensibility to inform planning policy, and whether it still responds to the social demands that were previously incorporated within the developmental method. The overriding concern, which the authors respond to and expand upon, is whether planning for sustainable development can provide a satisfactory basis upon which to re-establish contemporary planning.

Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.

This book presents lively case studies of tourism developments in the European High North from diverse perspectives. It compares views of the changing political ecology of a fragile region shaped by climatic and cultural factors. In exploring the mutual relations between new developments in Arctic travel narratives and tourism practices. Green Ice: Tourism Ecologies in the European High North pays particular attention to the changing discourses that produce, and are in turn produced by, encounters between contemporary Arctic peoples and territories. Questions of gender and nationality are considered alongside a comparison of texts and practices in different languages, examining the politics of language and its significant role in tourism. This title pays attention to the changing symbolic value of Arctic discourses in environmental movements, in order to consider the close connections between global forms of environmentalist discourse and action and local cultural responses. An engaging and timely work, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Tourism.

Planning in contemporary democratic states is often understood as a range of activities, from housing to urban design, regional development to economic planning. This volume sees planning differently-as the negotiation of possibilities that time offers space. It explores what kind of promise planning offers, how such a promise is made, and what happens to it through time. The authors, all leading anthropologists, examine the time and space, creativity and agency, authority and responsibility, and conflicting desires that plans attempt to control. They show how the many people involved with planning deal with the discrepancies between what is promised and what is done. The comparative essays offer insight into the expected and unexpected outcomes of planning (from visionary utopias to bureaucratic dystopia or something in-between), how the future is envisioned at the outset, and what actual work is done and how it affects people's lives.

Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.

The fact that tourism is a major global industry forecast to continue its dramatic growth well into the twenty-first century is often cited as a rationale for its analysis. However, while the connection between individual locations and the world's global markets is an obvious product of tourism, the heart of the tourist experience is the construction of identity: the relation of the traveller to resident populations; the participants' views of themselves and others; tourists' search for authenticity and their testing of boundaries.
This book significantly furthers current debates on tourism by asking important and vexing questions about the nature of the tourist experience: 'folk museums' that forget many of the 'folk' who live in the areas represented; the environments and events that are shaped to meet the 'imagined dreams' of tourist spectators; the categorization of visitors and returnees who take up residence and participate in the construction of 'local' identities; the evolving meanings associated with indigenous culture, tradition, heritage, representation, reality and authenticity. In renegotiating the definitions of tourism for the new millennium, this book represents a major contribution to an emerging and highly topical area of study.

The fact that tourism is a major global industry forecast to continue its dramatic growth well into the twenty-first century is often cited as a rationale for its analysis. However, while the connection between individual locations and the world's global markets is an obvious product of tourism, the heart of the tourist experience is the construction of identity: the relation of the traveller to resident populations; the participants' views of themselves and others; tourists' search for authenticity and their testing of boundaries.
This book significantly furthers current debates on tourism by asking important and vexing questions about the nature of the tourist experience: 'folk museums' that forget many of the 'folk' who live in the areas represented; the environments and events that are shaped to meet the 'imagined dreams' of tourist spectators; the categorization of visitors and returnees who take up residence and participate in the construction of 'local' identities; the evolving meanings associated with indigenous culture, tradition, heritage, representation, reality and authenticity. In renegotiating the definitions of tourism for the new millennium, this book represents a major contribution to an emerging and highly topical area of study.

What are the key rationalities that underpin planning policy discourses and how do they 'frame' seemingly irreconcilable conflicts around development and environmental protection? Providing a thorough assessment of these important questions, this stimulating book reviews planning policy in the UK and the rationality of 'sustainable development'. Supported by a wealth of empirical material collected over the past ten years, the study examines the national, regional and local tiers of planning for housing. It analyzes whether the rationality of planning for 'sustainable development' allows a new spatial sensibility to inform planning policy, and whether it still responds to the social demands that were previously incorporated within the developmental method. The overriding concern, which the authors respond to and expand upon, is whether planning for sustainable development can provide a satisfactory basis upon which to re-establish contemporary planning.

Energy related infrastructures are crucial to political organization. They shape the contours of states and international bodies, as well as corporations and communities, framing their material existence and their fears and idealisations of the future. Ethnographies of Power brings together ethnographic studies of contemporary entanglements of energy and political power. Revisiting classic anthropological notions of power, it asks how changing energy related infrastructures are implicated in the consolidation, extension or subversion of contemporary political regimes and discovers what they tell us about politics today.

Everyday life as we knew it is increasingly challenged in a world of climate, social, health and political crisis. Emerging technologies, data analytics and automation open up new possibilities which have implications for energy generation, storage and energy demand. To support these changes we urgently need to rethink how energy will be sourced, shared and used. Yet existing approaches to this problem, driven by engineering, data analytics and capital, are dangerously conservative and entrenched. Energy Futures critically evaluates this context, and the energy infrastructures, stakeholders, and politics that participate in it, to propose plausible, responsible and ethical modes of encountering possible energy futures. Imagining anthropocene challenges, emerging technologies and everyday life otherwise through empirically grounded studies, opens up possible energy futures. Energy Futures proposes and demonstrates a new critical and interventional futures-oriented energy anthropology. Combining the theories and methods of futures anthropology with the critical expertise and perspectives of energy anthropology creates a powerful mode of engagement, which this book argues is needed to disrupt the dominant narratives about our energy futures. Its contributors collectively reveal and evidence through innovative ethnographic practice how new knowledge about imagined and possible energy futures can be mobilised in engagements with emerging technologies, anthropocene challenges and everyday realities. In doing so it brings together authors, analytical expertise and ethnographic evidence from the global south, north and places in between, generated through innovative methodologies including remote video and comic strip methods and documentary video practice as well as long term fieldwork.

Energy related infrastructures are crucial to political organization. They shape the contours of states and international bodies, as well as corporations and communities, framing their material existence and their fears and idealisations of the future. Ethnographies of Power brings together ethnographic studies of contemporary entanglements of energy and political power. Revisiting classic anthropological notions of power, it asks how changing energy related infrastructures are implicated in the consolidation, extension or subversion of contemporary political regimes and discovers what they tell us about politics today.

What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society. With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.

Planning in contemporary democratic states is often understood as a range of activities, from housing to urban design, regional development to economic planning. This volume sees planning differently-as the negotiation of possibilities that time offers space. It explores what kind of promise planning offers, how such a promise is made, and what happens to it through time. The authors, all leading anthropologists, examine the time and space, creativity and agency, authority and responsibility, and conflicting desires that plans attempt to control. They show how the many people involved with planning deal with the discrepancies between what is promised and what is done. The comparative essays offer insight into the expected and unexpected outcomes of planning (from visionary utopias to bureaucratic dystopia or something in-between), how the future is envisioned at the outset, and what actual work is done and how it affects people's lives.

Simone Abram is Reader at both Durham University and Leeds Met University, and has worked in interdisciplinary planning departments at Sheffield and Cardiff Universities. Her publications include "Culture and Planning" (Ashgate, 2011), "Rationalities of Planning" (with Jonathan Murdoch, Ashgate, 2002), and "Anthropological Perspectives on Local Development" (co-edited with Jacqueline Waldren, Routledge, 1998).

Gisa Weszkalnys is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her book, "Berlin, Alexanderplatz: Transforming Place in a Unified Germany" (Berghahn Books, 2010) tackles the intricate politics of place in contemporary Berlin. She is currently working on a manuscript focusing on the temporality and materiality of oil exploitation, specifically in West Africa.