International Day for Monuments and Sites

  Celebrated yearly on April 18th, the International Day for Monuments and Sites  encourages local communities and individuals throughout the world to consider the importance of cultural heritage to their lives and to promote awareness of its diversity and vulnerability and the efforts required to protect and conserve it. Sharing stories through heritage sites is […]

Berghahn Journals: New Issues Published in March

       Celebrating 30 Years of Scholarship! Critical Survey Volume 30, Issue 1: Shakespeare and War  In its current incarnation, Critical Survey is now thirty years old. The first of four issues in its volume, this special issue serves as a reminder of the journal’s founding principles: clarity of exposition; relevance to the curriculum; recognition given to emerging […]

Born on April 15: Durkheim, the ‘founding father’ of sociology

    “Social man…is the masterpiece of existence.” ― Émile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher. Along with Karl Marx and Max Weber, he formally established the academic discipline and and is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and […]

David Émile Durkheim, Father of Mind

Commonly credited as the father of modern sociology, David Émile Durkheim (born on April 15, 1858) drew on the philosophies of Karl Marx and Auguste Compte to create his own. In turn, his philosophy inspired Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Michel Foucault, among many others, including Alexander Tristan Riley, W.S.F. Pickering, and William Watts Miller, whose […]

World Health Day

World Health Day is annually held on April 7, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO), to mark WHO’s founding, and is seen as an opportunity by the organization to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health each year. For more information and this year’s theme please visit WHO webpage. In recognition […]

International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

To mark International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda on 7 April, we’re offering FREE access to these relevant journal articles from Conflict and Society, Focaal, Journeys, and Social Analysis until April 14.  From the UN website: On 26 January 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted draft resolution A/72/L.31, designating 7 […]

Learning never exhausts the mind. —Leonardo da Vinci ... Continue reading on Tumblr →

It’s admittedly an odd thing, to be a Nancy Drew scholar.

It’s admittedly an odd thing, to be a Nancy Drew scholar.Strictly speaking, “Nancy Drew Scholar” i ... Continue reading on Tumblr →

New in Paperback

The Long Aftermath

Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016

Edited by Manuel Bragança and Peter Tame

“Manuel Braganca and Peter Tame have compiled a highly stimulating volume of essays, which whets the appetite for more.” • Journal of European Studies

New in Paperback

Oikos and Market

Explorations in Self-Sufficiency after Socialism

Edited by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann

“…the volume offers possibilities for fruitfully reconsidering  enduring topics and issues in economic theory that are of great interest not just to anthropologists but to other social scientists and economic philosophers.” • Anthropos

New in Paperback

Sustaining Russia's Arctic Cities

Resource Politics, Migration, and Climate Change

Edited by Robert Orttung

“Russia's Arctic Cities are definitely understudied, as are Arctic urban studies in general. Therefore the focus of this volume is timely and well chosen.” • Florian Stammer, University of Lapland

Featured Title

The Partial Revolution

Labour, Social Movements and the Invisible Hand of Mao in Western Nepal

Michael Hoffmann

“With this book, Hoffmann makes an important contribution to the ethnography of Maoism in Nepal, as well as providing much needed ethnographic insight into an area of western Nepal which has received relatively little scholarly attention, yet remains at the center of recent political upheavals.” • Sara Shneiderman, University of British Columbia

Featured Title

Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces

Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus

Edited by Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried, & Kevin Tuite

“This volume shares in a rich resurgence of writing on religious activity across the former Soviet Union and particularly in areas of the Caucasus, offering sharp insight into arguably one of the most popular religious traditions, shrine pilgrimage, about which we know surprisingly little. The editors have gathered the highly qualified scholars for the task, including a number of specialists from the Caucasus proper.” • Bruce Grant, New York University

Featured Title

A Living Past

Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America

Edited by John Soluri, Claudia Leal, and José Augusto Pádua

“There is no book out there that matches the scope, detail, and comprehensiveness of A Living Past. Especially for an edited collection of this kind, the consistency and quality of the scholarship are remarkable.” • Shawn Miller, Brigham Young University

Featured Series

Series:

Museums and Collections

“This is an impressive and often powerfully written book. It offers an insightful analysis and an accessible point of entry into key debates around the function of testimony and the differences between communicative and cultural memory.” • Andrea Witcomb, Deakin University

Stories Make the World

Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary

Stephen Most

Since the beginning of human history, stories have helped people make sense of their lives and their world. Today, an understanding of storytelling is invaluable as we seek to orient ourselves within a flood of raw information and an unprecedented variety of supposedly true accounts. In Stories Make the World, award-winning screenwriter Stephen Most offers a captivating, refreshingly heartfelt exploration of how documentary filmmakers and other storytellers come to understand their subjects and cast light on the world through their art. Drawing on the author's decades of experience behind the scenes of television and film documentaries, this is an indispensable account of the principles and paradoxes that attend the quest to represent reality truthfully.

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Ritual Retellings

Luangan Healing Performances through Practice

Isabell Herrmans

Belian is an exceptionally lively tradition of shamanistic curing rituals performed by the Luangans, a politically marginalized population of Indonesian Borneo. This volume explores the significance of these rituals in practice and asks what belian rituals do — socially, politically, and existentially — for particular people in particular circumstances...

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