Why monuments still have a future

by Anna Saunders, author of Memorializing the GDR: Monuments and Memory after 1989 Recent years have witnessed fierce debates about the existence of controversial monuments around the world – most notably Confederate monuments and memorials, but also numerous structures built in honour of wealthy benefactors with murky pasts. The outcomes of such debacles have been varied. In […]

SIMULATED SHELVES: BROWSE June 2018 NEW BOOKS

  We’re delighted to offer a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Archaeology, Anthropology, Film Studies, History, and Political Economy, along with our New in Paperback titles.       Archaeology   ARCHAEOGAMING An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games Andrew Reinhard   This book serves as a general introduction to […]

World Refugee Day 2018

The United Nations’ (UN) World Refugee Day is observed on June 20 each year. This event draws public’s attention to the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and persecution. For more information please visit www.un.org. In marking this year’s observance, we’re pleased […]

Berghahn Journals: New Issues Published in May

     Now Open Access! Anthropology in Action Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice Volume 25, Issue 1  We are delighted to announce that, as of 2018, Anthropology in Action will be published as an open access journal per the Knowledge Unlatched Select initiative! Read more in our related blog post. The first new Open Access issue has […]

Visit Berghahn Books at SCSMI 2018!

We are delighted to inform you that we will be present at The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI) annual conference at Montana State University, in Bozeman, Montana, June 13-16, 2018. Please stop by our table to browse the latest selection of books at discounted prices & pick up some free journal […]

Anthropological Issues and US President Obama

The following is an excerpt from the article “The President’s Mother, the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son: Anthropological Issues and US President Obama” by David Lampert published in the latest issue of our journal, Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice. As of 2018, this journal is Open Access per the Knowledge Unlatched Select […]

The Daily Routines of Great Writers

The Daily Routines of Great WritersGet a sampling of some great writers’ works with The Underground Reader: Sources in the Trans-Atlantic Count ... Continue reading on Tumblr →

George Orwell Reveals the Role & Responsibility of the Writer “In an Age of State Control”

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New in Paperback

Bush Bound

Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa

Paolo Gaibazzi

“… a readable, nuanced, and timely monograph, complemented by a glossary and by original photographs and maps. It responds to the under-theorization of emplacement in migration and transnationalism studies. It does so as a rich ethnography of rural permanence and global mobility, thus resisting, for the most part, over-theorizing on the subject.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

New in Paperback

Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba

Valerio Simoni

“Well-written and accessible, the book will appeal to scholars and students in the disciplines of anthropology, Latin American/Caribbean studies, and tourism studies. It offers a unique view of the intimate negotiations between Cubans and tourists at a time when Cuba is in the spotlight with the pending opening to the U.S. market.” • Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

New in Paperback

Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy

Action Research in Higher Education

Morten Levin and Davydd J. Greenwood

“In Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy, Morten Levin and Davydd Greenwood add their voices to the burgeoning catalogue of critiques of the impact of neoliberal policies on the quality of higher education in Europe and the US. But unlike many such contributions, this work draws heavily on the change management literature and offers a cornucopia of compelling and well-grounded ideas for reform of the academy.” • Times Higher Education

Featured Title

The Virago Story

Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon

Catherine Riley

“Riley's book does a terrific job of laying out the context in which Virago first appeared and its transformations over time. Not only does it evocatively capture a historical moment, but it also serves as an important case study in business history, provides a critical intellectual history of feminism, and even alters our understanding of the book itself.” • Jennifer Scanlon, Bowdoin College

Featured Title

Oil and Sovereignty

Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States and Western Europe in the 1970s

Rüdiger Graf

“Succeeds in the difficult task of shedding new light on a topic that has been analysed from many different perspectives… It deserves a wide readership.” • German History

Featured Title

Burgundy

A Global Anthropology of Place and Taste

Marion Demossier

“[This study] is clearly structured and written in the strongly personal voice of a scholar deeply immersed in her subject, which she has been researching for more than two decades. The book has the potential to become an important point of reference for future research on a range of issues beyond wine-making.” • Ullrich Kockel, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Featured Series

Series:

Articulating Journeys: Festivals, Memorials, and HomecomingsLevinCreating

“Safet HadžiMuhamedović’s work makes a very significant contribution to the field of phenomenological, anthropological, and historical research on Bosnia and Herzegovina in general, and to the exploration of affective landscapes in particular… The one thing that comes across to any scholar of the Balkans is the authenticity of his writing. This work had me enthralled at times, and I couldn’t put it down.” • Robert Hudson, University of Derby

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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