Celebrating the resilience of Indigenous Peoples

August 9, 2020 The United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is observed on August 9 each year to honor the estimated 370 million indigenous people around the world. The day was established to recognize the first meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations held in Geneva in 1982. This year’s […]

Do Petitions matter? Rethinking Jewish Petitioning during the Holocaust

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner Raul Hilberg’s path-breaking 1961 study The Destruction of the European Jews rightfully remains on the reading list of any serious student of the Holocaust. Nonetheless, Hilberg’s insistence on European Jews‘ alleged “almost complete lack of resistance” has been subjected to frequent scholarly criticism. He partially based this claim on […]

Series Spotlight: Forced Migration

July 30th is the United Nations’ World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. The UN states that “Every country in the world is affected by human trafficking,” and that designating the day was necessary to “raise awareness of the situation of victims of human trafficking and for the promotion and protection of their rights.” Learn more […]

Excerpt: Changing the Subject: How the United States Responds to Strategic Failure

Series Spotlight: Berghahn Monographs in French Studies

Celebrated on July, 14, Bastille Day is the French national day and one of the most important bank holidays in France. The day commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille on the 14th July 1789, a medieval fortress and prison which was a symbol of tyrannical Bourbon authority and […]

Summer Simulated Shelves

Browse our latest in Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology, History, Literary Studies, Film & Television Studies, and Mobility Studies/Refugee and Migration Studies below.  COVID-19 UPDATE: We have implemented a range of initiatives to support the academic community during this time, including unlimited eBook use through your library. All Berghahn eBooks available through your institution’s library are DRM-free: one library purchase […]

June is Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month

Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month recognizes the history and celebrates the cultures, traditions, and contributions of Gypsy, Roma and Traveler communities. See a growing list of digital #GRTHM2020 activities here. As we reach the end of the month, we would like to spotlight our growing Romani Studies series edited by anthropologist Sam Beck. This series aims to remove the […]

Berghahn eBooks Library

We are pleased to announce an expanding list of eBooks available for download directly via our site. Right now we have nearly 1000 titles online. You can use the new eBooks browse filter to view eBooks by subject - for example:

All eBooks purchased through our site can be downloaded to your preferred eBook reader and are also stored in your personalized login area at my.berghahnbooks.com for easy access.

See the FAQ page for more details.

New in Paperback

Techniques, Technology and Civilization

Marcel Mauss

“The appearance of these two essays… in English for the first time attests to the continuing interest in Marcel Mauss and the fact that re-readings of his work still provide not only fertile ground for new interpretations of the Durkheimian school in general, but also a source of inspiration for scholars approaching Mauss as a remarkably contemporary voice still speaking in many ways to current issues in sociology and anthropology.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

New in Paperback

Back to the Postindustrial Future

An Ethnography of Germany's Fastest-Shrinking City

Felix Ringel

“This complex, provocative volume plunges us into the postindustrial, postsocialist world of Hoyerswerda, Germany’s ‘fastest shrinking city,’ and contemporary debates in anthropology about knowledge, time, affect, and meaning…This work speaks strongly to American Rust Belt cities and other sites of profound change in its methods, theory, and data, and should inspire further dialogues about anthropological knowledge as well the possibilities of urban action” • Choice

New in Paperback

Foucault's Orient

The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan

Marnia Lazreg

“Written by a leading sociological theorist of gender with roots in North Africa, Foucault's Orient is the most comprehensive survey to date of the French poststructuralist's perceptions of and writings on non-Western societies… Lazreg's book is an immanent critique in the best sense of the word… Despite its generous and measured tone, Foucault's Orient offers in the end a devastating portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the last few decades, whose pioneering work on punishment and on sexuality continues to resonate.” • Contemporary Sociology

Featured Title

Communities and Place

A Thematic Approach to the Histories of LGBTQ Communities in the United States

Edited by Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate

“This is an exciting book that takes U.S. LGBTQ public history to the next level. Through careful historical research, the authors reveal how diverse spaces—urban gay neighborhoods, beaches, rural communes, legal jurisdictions, and more—have fostered or constrained an equally diverse population of LGBTQ Americans in the past and present.” • Scott De Orio, Northwestern University

Featured Title

Don't Need No Thought Control

Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Gerd Horten

“Horten’s book is a very important new step in understanding the power that Western consumer culture—the "Imaginary West”—had in placing the GDR in a profound dilemma, one which ultimately caused its downfall. A model of cultural history, Don’t Need No Thought Control shines new light on how the GDR attempted to walk a fine line between satisfying its citizens' desire for Western consumer culture while remaining true to its socialist foundations, a task that proved to be ultimately impossible.” • Eli Rubin, Western Michigan University

Featured Title

Timber, Sail, and Rail

An Archaeology of Industry, Immigration, and the Loma Prieta Mill

Marco Meniketti

“Although archaeologists have investigated logging sites for several decades, rarely has this work found publication or broader contextualization. In Timber, Sail, and Rail, the author does just this. This book connects the technological and labor histories, and firmly situates archaeological investigations at the Loma Prieta Mill within the regional contexts of immigration and extractive industry.” • Paul White, University of Nevada, Reno

Featured Series

Series:

War and Genocide

“Voices on War and Genocide assembles three extraordinarily rich personal accounts covering different periods and aspects of the history of the Galician town and region of Buczacz. Such narratives are extremely rare; even rarer are ones that are as informative and illuminating as these three.” • Thomas Kühne, Clark University

Revealing the Invisible Mine

Social Complexities of an Undeveloped Mining Project

Emilia E. Skrzypek

Exploring the social complexities of the Frieda River Project in Papua New Guinea, this book tells the story of local stakeholder strategies on the eve of industrial development, told largely from the perspective of the Paiyamo - one of the project’s so-called ‘impact communities’. Engaging ideas of knowledge, belief and personhood, it explains how fifty years of encounters with exploration companies shaped the Paiyamo’s aspirations, made them revisit and re-examine their past, and develop new strategies to move towards a better, more prosperous future.

... Continue reading →