Sacrificial Limbs

"The strength of Sacrificial Limbs is twofold: on one hand, it delves deeply into the history of Turkish politics, culture, and social life while at the same time it opens up to a broader sphere of applicability for those interested in gender, sexuality, disability, nationalism, and politics."

— Disability Studies Quarterly

"The book is equally a work of political anthropology and medical anthropology and would easily be at home in upper- level undergraduate or graduate courses about either subject. With its careful attention to the sociocultural and political, and the embodiment of disabled masculinity, the book is also an exemplary contribution to the burgeoning field of disability anthropology, and one that clearly demonstrates how work on disability can push medical anthropology to attend to the political in new ways."

— Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Açiksöz effectively reminds us of how otherwise unmarked bodies in theories of sovereignty and biopolitics (and necropolitics) are already always gendered, classed, and ethno-racialized in specific ways."

— Anthropology Book Forum

"Brings together meticulous ethnographic insight with rigorous conceptual analysis. . . . Açiksöz has written a beautiful ethnography that provides rare insight into the intimate lives of the protagonists of ultranationalist politics. It is a book that approaches its interlocutors with critical empathy, seeking to understand and lay bare what propels them to become protagonists in deadly violence."

— Kurdish Studies

"Sacrificial Limbs weaves an extremely well-written and caring ethnography with important theoretical insights. It is a must-read for those interested in contemporary political dynamics in Turkey and the Middle East. . . . It is no surprise that this elegant ethnography has won several prestigious book awards including the 2021 New Millennium Book Award by the Society of Medical Anthropology and 2020 Fatema Mernisi Award by MESA (Middle Eastern Studies Association). It is highly recommended to political anthropologists."

— Political and Legal Anthropology Review

"Moving in its description and insightful in its analysis, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey provides timely and important contributions to the study of nationalism, sovereignty, violence, masculinity, and embodiment. The author’s discussion of prostheses and their political significance is particularly fascinating."

— Ethnos

"This is the kind of book one would point to as a textbook example of ethnographic description or, if you like, of ‘thick description’. But the thickness under consideration does not just mean a mass of statements lumped together by a certain thematic resemblance but rather indicates an eloquently weaved narrative that moves, unsettles, and affects the reader."

— Cultural Studies

"Can we still understand the suffering of the people whose politics are offensive to our worldviews if they are simultaneously threatening us or the people sharing our political stance? In Sacrificial Limbs, an ethnography of the disabled veterans and martyrs’ families in Turkey, Salih Can Ac¸ikso¨z asks and answers this question by inhabiting a ‘grey zone’ and by writing critically, tragically and beautifully from within it."

— Social Anthropology