Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989

35th anniversary

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989)!

To celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall, we want to spotlight our Books Series on German Studies. These series span further than only our most recent publications, and include a number of Open Access books, entirely free to read! These blog will be looking at…

Last month, we created a collection of our most recent German Studies titles for German Unity Day, which you can read here.

Lastly, we would like to highlight that our website allow you to Browse by Area: Germany here.


Berghahn Books Series on German Studies


Studies in German History

General Editors: Simone LässigDirector of the German Historical Institute, Washington,
with the assistance of 
Patricia C. Sutcliffe, Editor, German Historical Institute.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington

To be published March 2025
Volume 30
Open Access
Volume 29
Open Access
Volume 28
Open Access
Volume 27
Volume 26
Volume 25
Open Access
Volume 24
Volume 23

Perspectives on the History of German Jews

The volumes in this series provide concise introductions to different fields of German-Jewish history with a focus on the topics of politics, society, gender and religion across the last two centuries. Reflecting the latest research developments, these titles are not only valuable resources for scholars but are also accessible to a wider audience. The authors, all experts of German-Jewish history and mostly working at German universities, focus on socio-historical perspectives, including questions of social and cultural history.

The series was first published in German by Schoeningh, now an imprint of Brill. It was edited by Stefanie Schüler-Springorum and Rainer Liedtke on behalf of the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Academic Working Group) of the Leo Baeck Institute in Germany. The volumes have all been updated for publication in English.

Volume 3
Volume 2
Volume 1

Vermont Studies on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Editorial Committee: Jonathan D. HuenerUniversity of Vermont, Susanna SchrafstetterUniversity of Vermont, and Alan E. SteinweisUniversity of Vermont

The University of Vermont has been an important venue for research on the Holocaust since Raul Hilberg began his work there in 1956. These volumes reflect the scholarly activity of UVM’s Miller Center for Holocaust Studies. They combine original research with interpretive synthesis, and address research questions of interdisciplinary and international interest.

Volume 9
Volume 8
Volume 7
Volume 6

New German Historical Perspectives

Series Editor: Paul Betts (Executive Editor), St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford

Established in 1987 this special St. Antony’s series showcases pioneering new work by leading German historians on a range of topics concerning the history of modern Germany, Europe, and the wider world. Publications address pressing problems of political, economic, social, and intellectual history informed by contemporary debates about German and European identity, providing fresh conceptual, international, and transnational interpretations of the recent past.

Volume 13
Volume 12
Volume 11
Volume 10

Monographs in German History

The complexities and peculiarities of German history present challenges on various levels, not least on that of historiography. This series offers a platform for historians who, in response to those challenges, produce important and stimulating contributions to the various debates that take place within the discipline.

Volume 38
Volume 37
Volume 36
Volume 35
Volume 34
Volume 33
Volume 32
Volume 31
Open Access

Culture & Society in Germany

Volume 6
Volume 5
Volume 4
Volume 3

Policies and Institutions: Germany, Europe, and Transatlantic Relations

Volume 5
Volume 4
Volume 3
Volume 2

Modern German Studies

A Series of the German Studies Association

This series offers books on modern and contemporary Germany, concentrating on themes in history, political science, literature and German culture. Publications will include works in English and English translations of significant works in other languages.

Volume 6
Volume 5
Volume 4
Volume 3

You might also be interested in…

Last month, we created a collection of our most recent German Studies titles for German Unity Day, which you can read here.

World Adoption Day

9 November

The 9th of November is World Adoption Day! As described on the official website, “The day was created for the purpose of celebrating family, raising awareness for adoption and raising funds to support families in the adoption journey“. This year marks a decade since its creation. Read more from the organisation’s page here.

We would like to highlight two of our book series: Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives, and Rethinking Biosocial Anthropology. For more details on these series, scroll down to the second section of this blog.

The first section of our blog is a collection of our latest titles relating to the studies of adoption, including books from the highlighted series, ranging from recent to backlist.

You might also be interested in our blog post marking the International Day of Care and Support.


Berghahn books in the study of adoption


Adoption, Emotion, and Identity

An Ethnopsychological Perspective on Kinship and Person in a Micronesian Society

Manuel Rauchholz

“It makes a unique contribution to our understanding of traditional child adoption, a topic that has received considerable attention from anthropologists working in Oceania, and especially in Micronesia.” • Donald H. Rubinstein, University of Guam

Volume 8, Person, Space and Memory in the Contemporary Pacific

Read our freely available introduction.


A Magpie’s Tale

Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives on the Kazakh of Western Mongolia

Anna Odland Portisch

Telling the story of the author’s time living with a Kazakh family in a small village in western Mongolia, this book contextualizes the family’s personal stories within the broader history of the region. […] These are stories of migration across generations, bride kidnappings and marriage, domestic violence and alcoholism, adoption and family, and how people have coped in the face of political and economic crisis, poverty and loss, and, perhaps most enduringly, how love and family persist through all of this.

Volume 1, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Read our freely available introduction.


In the Best Interests of the Child

Loss and Suffering in Adoption Proceedings

Mili Mass

“This is an important book, which examines the practice of adoption from the perspective of an expert who has been exposed to the defective operation of a bureaucratic system. It re-examines critically and rigorously the role of social workers in adoption cases and it does so in a forceful and compelling way.” · Alon Harel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Read our freely available introduction.


European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology

Edited by Jeanette Edwards and Carles Salazar

This superb anthology extends the emphasis on technology that has become such a prominent feature of much recent anthropological work on kinship…In this richly ethnographic text, the most familiar problems produce the most unusual answers…Each chapter brilliantly combines kinship as a matrix with kinship as a tool, using ethnographic examples that leap off the page.  ·  Journal of Anthropological Research

Volume 14, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives


Substitute Parents

Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting in Human Societies

Edited by Gillian Bentley and Ruth Mace

[This book] brings together high-quality papers from many different fields: endocrinology, evolutionary biology, demography, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology… It can be seen as a practical tool for researchers in the field, and it provides a large amount of data across a wide range of populations and helps to find a common ground between theories emerging from different fields […]”  ·  BioOne. Research Evolved

Volume 3, Rethinking Biosocial Anthropology


Islam and New Kinship

Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon

Morgan Clarke

Social scientists interested in any of these areas of study will benefit from familiarizing themselves with Clarke’s work. Those who are particularly interested in the study of reproductive technologies will find notions of milk kinship and adoption aversion useful in considering how ART is contextualized globally. Students of kinship will benefit from this text because it provides a case study of how a culturally relative approach to kinship enriches our understanding of the meanings and markers of the important relationships within a culture/religious tradition.  ·  Contemporary Sociology

Volume 16, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives


Race, Ethnicity, and Nation

Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics

Edited by Peter Wade

Race, ethnicity and nation are all intimately linked to family and kinship, yet these links deserve closer attention than they usually get in social science, above all when family and kinship are changing rapidly in the context of genomic and biotechnological revolutions. Drawing on data from assisted reproduction, transnational adoption, mixed race families, Basque identity politics and post-Soviet nation-building, this volume provides new and challenging ways to understand race, ethnicity and nation.

Volume 1, Rethinking Biosocial Anthropology


Reproductive Disruptions

Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium

Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn

Reproductive disruptions, such as infertility, pregnancy loss, adoption, and childhood disability, are among the most distressing experiences in people’s lives. Based on research by leading medical anthropologists from around the world, this book examines such issues as local practices detrimental to safe pregnancy and birth; conflicting reproductive goals between women and men; miscommunications between pregnant women and their genetic counselors; cultural anxieties over gamete donation and adoption; the contested meanings of abortion; cultural critiques of hormone replacement therapy; and the globalization of new pharmaceutical and assisted reproductive technologies […]”.

Volume 11, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives


The Kinning of Foreigners

Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective

Signe Howell

“Transnational adoption is growing phenomenon and Norway has led the way in its legal and social development. In this pioneering study, Norwegian scholar, Signe Howell, brings to the subject not only anthropological insight but the personal experience of an adoptive parent. Her remarkable book is based on comprehensive research both in Norway and in the countries of origin of adopted children, throwing new light on the way that the children identify as Norwegians despite the tendency of adults to associate with their birth places. Howell’s findings are of great interest and significance for families and policy makers worldwide”.  ·  John R. Gillis, Professor Emeritus of History, Rutgers University


A Sealed and Secret Kinship

The Culture of Policies and Practices in American Adoption

Judith S. Modell

“This book offers a thought-provoking exposition of the ironies of adoption, and by extension, the inconsistencies of our social attitudes toward parenting in general.”   · Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

Volume 3, Public Issues in Anthropological Perspective


Berghahn Books Series with titles on adoption


Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

General Editors: Soraya TremayneFounding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. InhornWilliam K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip KreagerDirector, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford

Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. This series includes studies by specialists in the field of social, cultural, medical, and biological anthropology, medical demography, psychology, and development studies. Current debates and issues of global relevance on the changing dynamics of fertility, human reproduction and sexuality are addressed.

Volume 55
Volume 54, Open Access
Volume 53
Volume 52, Open Access

Rethinking Biosocial Anthropology

Series Editors: Hayley MacGregor, Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Health, Institute of Development Studies, and Ian Harper, Professor of Anthropology of Health and Development, University of Edinburgh

This series invites submissions (monographs or edited volumes) from scholars engaged in rethinking the ‘biosocial’ and the interconnectedness of biological and social dynamics in shaping human experience.

In recent years, significant changes and new phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic, advances in neurosciences and genetics, and concern about the anthropocene and global warming have advanced thinking about complex biosocial relations and the ways in which these come to be mutually constituted. Contemporary phenomena are also redefining the boundaries between the bio- and social sciences and the humanities. This involves a wide range of academic disciplines at the intersections of natural, ecological, medical and social sciences, as linked to social and biological anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, biomedicine, global health and also development studies.

We seek multiple perspectives, inter and cross-disciplinary conversations that value the varied contributions required to address our current global challenges across a diversity of regions. We are also interested in historical accounts and genealogies of the biosocial in different traditions. Thus the aim of this series is to make available to the informed public, undergraduates and postgraduate students the current and cutting edge research and debates that define these emergent parameters.

The series is supported by the RAI Biosocial Committee.

Volume 10
Volume 9
Volume 8
Volume 7

Journals



You might also be interested in…

International Day of Care and Support

29 October

The 29th October 2024 is the International Day of Care and Support! As the United Nations explains, “Care work, both paid and unpaid, is crucial to the future of decent work. Growing populations, ageing societies, changing families, women’s secondary status in labour markets and shortcomings in social policies demand urgent action on the organization of care work from governments, employers, trade unions and individual citizens.” If not adequately addressed, current deficits in care service provision and its quality will create a severe and unsustainable global care crisis and increase gender inequalities at work.“.

Read more on the Care Economy and the International Day of Care and Support on UN’s page here.

We would like to highlight four of our book series: The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives, New Directions in Anthropology, and Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations. For more details on these series, scroll down to the second section of this blog.

The first section of our blog is a collection of our latest titles relating to the studies of care and support, including the more recent books from the highlighted series.


Latest Berghahn books in the study of care and support


 Paperback coming January 2025

Invisible Faces and Hidden Stories

Narratives of Vulnerable Populations and Their Caregivers

Edited by Cecilia Sem Obeng and Samuel Gyasi Obeng

“This book demonstrates that the anthropological approach is uniquely suited to uncovering how people live their lives and see their world without imposing judgment… Recommended.” • Choice

Volume 12, Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.


Open Access

Care in a Time of Humanitarianism

Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South

Edited by Arzoo Osanloo & Cabeiri deBergh Robinson

“This volume is a timely and seminal contribution to understanding our time when humanitarian crisis unfolds in myriad forms in various sites. The perspectives on humanitarianism from the global South featured in this volume are both rich in their ethnographic grounding and multi-faceted in the analytical insights.” • Jiazhi Fengjiang, University of Edinburgh

Volume 5, Humanitarianism and Security

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.


The Politics of Relations

How Self-Government, Infrastructures, and Care Transform the State in Serbia

André Thiemann

“This is a very impressive book. The analysis is developed in sustained, thoughtful and detailed engagement with a very broad range of existing literature. • Stef Jansen, University of Sarajevo

Volume 49, EASA Series

Read freely available introduction.


State Intimacies

Sterilization, Care and Reproductive Chronicity in Rural North India

Eva Fiks

“Sterilization ‘camps’ have earned a bad press in India – and rightly so. Yet, as Eva Fiks demonstrates in her elegant intervention, coercion is entangled with care for village women contending with the reproductive chronicity that is integral to their daily lives.” • Patricia Jeffery, Professor Emerita, University of Edinburgh

Volume 4, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Read freely available introduction.


Fragile Futures

Ambiguities of Care in Burkina Faso

Helle Samuelsen

“This is a theoretically solid book presenting unique data and perspectives on survival strategies in a broad meaning. The focus is on the most marginalized populations of the world, outlining local, long-term trajectories of their dealing with challenges and uncertainties.” • Jónína Einarsdóttir, University of Iceland

Volume 22, Epistemologies of Healing

Read freely available introduction.


Open Access

Voices of Long-Term Care Workers

Elder Care in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond

Andrea Freidus and Dena Shenk

“The book provides remarkable insights into the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on front-line workers in North Carolina who care for the residential elderly (and) uses an excellent combination of ethnographic and epidemiological methods to provide in-depth qualitative insights while contextualized by the larger quantitative world of disease transmission.” • Linda M. Whiteford, University of South Florida

Volume 10, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Read freely available introduction, and more with open access.


How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?

Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted

Robin A. Hadley

“In this book Hadley lays bare the complex contexts surrounding aging and male childlessness in particular in a powerfully emotive and academically rigorous manner. The book contains a powerful message to those in academia and policymakers and institutional stakeholders, of the urgent need to acknowledge this structurally excluded population. The book is of interest not only to gerontologists but anthropologists, demographers, embryologists, psychologists, sociologists, practitioners in health and care, counsellors, social workers and students at all levels and the general public.” • British Society of Gerontology

Volume 48, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

Read freely available introduction.


Open Access

Translocal Care across Kosovo’s Borders

Reconfiguring Kinship along Gender and Generational Lines

Carolin Leutloff-Grandits

“This book is based on careful and in-depth ethnographic research, and it expertly embeds its findings in patterns on broader historical and geographical scales. The book displays all the hallmarks of high-quality anthropological research.” • Stef Jansen, University of Sarajevo

Volume 8, Anthropology of Europe

Read freely available introduction, and more with open access.


At Home in a Nursing Home

An Ethnography of Movement and Care in Australia

Angela Rong Yang Zhang

“This is a really good, in fact vital, contribution to our understanding of aged care. This is an opinion enhanced in part by the political context, at least in Australia, in which aged care is being discussed. In this country, which has an aging population and inadequate quality and quantity of aged care facilities, an opportunity exists to ask different kinds of questions – one of which might be about being at home in an institutional home”. • Simone Dennis, Università di Bologna

Volume 9, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Read freely available introduction.


Migration and Health

Challenging the Borders of Belonging, Care, and Policy

Edited by Nadia El-Shaarawi and Stéphanie Larchanché

“This is a welcome and timely addition to the scholarly literature on migration and health.” • Charles Watters, University of Sussex

Volume 10, Rethinking Biosocial Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.


Beyond Filial Piety

Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies

Edited by Jeanne Shea, Katrina Moore and Hong Zhang

“This is a fascinating book which inspires us with new insights and deep thoughts. Through the description of the subjective practice of caregiving and the discourse of positive aging, the book has in fact come back to the essence of filial piety, focusing on subjectivity, dignity, love, responsibility, harmony and continuity in families, communities and the state, which is beyond social transformations and challenges of time.” • Asian Journal of Social Studies

Volume 6, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Read freely available introduction.


Care across Distance

Ethnographic Explorations of Aging and Migration

Edited by Azra Hromadžić and Monika Palmberger

“Overall, this volume offers valuable empirical and theoretical contributions to the anthropology of care and transnational families. It is highly recommended reading for students and scholars seeking insights into novel care practices and care relations in this fast-changing field.” • International Journal of Care and Caring

Volume 4, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Read freely available introduction.


The Patient Multiple

An Ethnography of Healthcare and Decision-Making in Bhutan

Jonathan Taee

“This book is a welcome pioneering ethnography based on case studies that demonstrate a clear understanding of the way in which public health care services in Bhutan integrate both biomedical and ’traditional’ medicine.” • Mona Schrempf, Free University, Berlin

Volume 4, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.


Berghahn Books Series with titles on the study of care


The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession

click to expand on… Editors: Robbie Davis-FloydRice University, Houston and Ashish PremkumarFeinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, is a well-known medical/reproductive anthropologist and international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, obstetrics, and reproduction.

Ashish PremkumarMD is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, as well as a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist practicing at the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Illinois. He is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at The Graduate School at Northwestern University.

Obstetricians are the primary drivers of the research on and the implementation of interventions in the birth process that have long been the subjects of anthropological critiques. In many countries, they are also primary drivers of violence, disrespect, and abuse during the perinatal period. Yet there is little social science literature on obstetricians themselves, their educational processes, and their personal rationales for their practices. Thus, this dearth of social science literature on obstetricians constitutes a huge gap waiting to be filled. These ground-breaking edited collections seek to fill that gap by officially creating an “anthropology of obstetrics and obstetricians” across countries and cultures—including biopolitical and professional cultures—so that a broad and deep understanding of these maternity care providers and their practices, ideologies, motivations, and diversities can be achieved.

Obstetricians Speak: On Training, Practice, Fear, and Transformation

Cognition, Risk, and Responsibility in Obstetrics: Anthropological Analyses and Critiques of Obstetricians’ Practices

Obstetric Violence and Systemic Disparities: Can Obstetrics Be Humanized and Decolonized?


Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

General Editors: Soraya TremayneFounding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. InhornWilliam K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip KreagerDirector, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford

Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. This series includes studies by specialists in the field of social, cultural, medical, and biological anthropology, medical demography, psychology, and development studies. Current debates and issues of global relevance on the changing dynamics of fertility, human reproduction and sexuality are addressed.

A few more of our titles not shown in latest books section above:

Volume 44

Privileges of Birth: Constellations of Care, Myth, and Race in South Africa by Jennifer J. M. Rogerson

Volume 38

Reconceiving Muslim Men: Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times, edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Nefissa Naguib

Volume 33

Patient-Centred IVF: Bioethics and Care in a Dutch Clinic by Trudie Gerrits

Volume 6

Ageing Without Children: European and Asian Perspectives on Elderly Access to Support Networks, edited by Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill


New Directions in Anthropology

General Editor: Jacqueline Waldren (1937-2021)was Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University and Director, Deia Archaeological Museum and Research Centre, Mallorca.

Migration, modernization, technology, tourism, and global communication have had dynamic effects on group identities, social values and conceptions of space, place, and politics. This series features new and innovative ethnographic studies concerned with these processes of change.

An additional title to those shown in latest books section above:

Volume 41

Living Before Dying: Imagining and Remembering Home by Janette Davies


Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

General Editor: Jay Sokolovsky, University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Published by Berghahn Books under the auspices of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology (AAGE) and the American Anthropological Association Interest Group on Aging and the Life Course.

The consequences of aging will influence most areas of contemporary life around the globe, from the makeup of households and communities and systems of care to attitudes toward health, disability and life’s end. Engaging a cross-cultural framework, this series publishes monographs and collected works that examine these widespread transformations with a perspective on the entire life course and a particular focus on mid/late adulthood.

An additional title to those shown in latest books section above:

Volume 2

Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India by Bianca Brijnath


World Food Day 

16 October 2024

The 16th October 2024 is World Food Day! As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations explains, “‘Foods’ stands for diversity, nutrition, affordability, accessibility and safety. A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, fishing nets, markets, and on our tables, for the benefit of all.” Read more from their page here.

We would like to highlight three of our book series: Research Methods For Anthropological Studies Of Food And Nutrition, Anthropology Of Food And Nutrition and Food Nutrition And Culture. For more details on these series, scroll down below.

You can also browse our books by subject: Food & Nutrition here, which will include some of our series’ titles.


Latest Titles in Food & Nutrition


Food and Families in the Making

Knowledge Reproduction and Political Economy of Cooking in Morocco

Katharina Graf

“An important contribution to the growing ethnographic literature on cooking and social life, Graf’s Food and Families in the Making stands out for its careful analysis and evocation of the senses (beyond just five), and for its well-developed autoethnography of learning cooking. A must-read for those interested in the social production of taste and in the most up-to-date approaches to sensory ethnography.” • David Sutton Southern Illinois University

Volume 8, Food, Nutrition, and Culture

Read freely available introduction.

Pure Food

Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Paul Collinson and Helen Macbeth

“This is a valuable addition to the anthropology of food and interdisciplinary food studies. The volume’s contributors analyze a wealth of interesting phenomena from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.” • Giovanni Orlando, Food sustainability consultant

Volume 12, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition

Read freely available introduction.

Feeding Anxieties

The Politics of Children’s Food in Poland

Zofia Boni

“The book provides a detailed and dense study of eating-feeding practices spread among school-age children, their parents and their school environment in post-transitional Poland. The book is very interesting, much needed and refers to the important dimension of late capitalist systems in Central Eastern Europe.” • Tomasz Rakowski, University of Warsaw

Volume 6, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations

Read freely available introduction.

Food Connections

Production, Exchange and Consumption in West African Migration

Maria Abranches

“This ethnographically and theoretically rich volume provides an understanding of how people and their food transform their space. Recommended.” • Choice

Volume 10, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition

Read freely available introduction.

Wine Is Our Bread

Labour and Value in Moldovan Winemaking

Daniela Ana

“This is an excellent book, ‘a little gem’, which provides a highly original contribution to both the fields of anthropology of wine and of postsocialist economies by focusing on an under-researched area.” • Marion Demossier, University of Southampton

Volume 9, Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy

Read freely available introduction.

Bigger Fish to Fry

A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples

David E. Sutton

“With writing that is highly readable, clear, and well-paced, this book will appeal to students and scholars alike, especially those studying food and cooking, Greece, and risk, and is an exceptional example of studying food practices for their theoretical bounty.” • Food, Culture & Society

Volume 3, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations

Read freely available introduction.

Matsutake Worlds

Edited by Lieba Faier and Michael J. Hathaway

The matsutake mushroom continues to be a highly sought delicacy, especially in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisine. Matsutake Worlds explores this mushroom through the lens of multi-species encounters centered around the matsutake’s notorious elusiveness. The mushroom’s success, the contributors of this volume argue, cannot be accounted for by any one cultural, social, political, or economic process. Rather, the matsutake mushroom has flourished as the result of a number of different processes and dynamics, culminating in the culinary institution we know today.

Volume 12, Studies in Social Analysis

Read freely available introduction.

Risk on the Table

Food Production, Health, and the Environment

Edited by Angela N. H. Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière

“The editors have brought together enough international work to form a broad picture of changes in the global food system. This is an extremely welcome view of how those changes were received in different places at different times.” • Technology and Culture

Volume 21, Environment in History: International Perspectives

Read freely available introduction.

Nourishing Life

Foodways and Humanity in an African Town

Arianna Huhn

“The nuanced discussion of the Nyanja concepts of nourishment, as it relates to the dietary quality of vitamina (vitamins) ascribed to certain foods and as dependent on ‘interdependence, cooperative labor, compassion, and moral intelligence’, is thoughtful and challenging…Recommended.” • Choice

Volume 7, Food, Nutrition, and Culture

Read freely available introduction.

Nourishing the Nation

Food as National Identity in Catalonia

Venetia Johannes

Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia presents a captivating and compelling ethnographic study centered on Catalonia, exploring nationalist movements and tangible cultural aspects. This book holds immense appeal for students across diverse fields within the social sciences, effectively connecting history, anthropology, and even political science. Furthermore, the book showcases innovation and creativity by employing photo-elicitation as a method in ethnographic research. Despite its theoretical sophistication, the book maintains an approachable and engaging style, making it accessible even to the general public with an interest in understanding Catalonia’s rich history, and how the Catalans’ take pride with their gastronomic tradition.” • Anthropology Book Forum

Volume 44, New Directions in Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

Food and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century

Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Paul Collinson, Iain Young, Lucy Antal, and Helen Macbeth

“[This book] provides a holistic understanding of food-related activities and behaviour … both theoretical and empirical arguments are covered in a balanced manner. The volume takes cognisance of the ‘minutiae of food experiences’ (p. 19) of people with respect to sustainability, cutting across the globe.” • European Association of Social Anthropologists Journal

Volume 9, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition

Read freely available introduction.

Burgundy

The Global Story of Terroir

Marion Demossier

“One of the ethnography’s strengths lies in the theoretical frameworks that are used to delve further into the construction of a good that circulates globally and whose value is closely associated with a heritage site. Another is the author’s long-term engagement with the region: this insider status offers a unique perspective on groups of people who are not easy to access… I would recommend this book for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. The chapters stand well on their own and the volume as a whole offers an excellent example of long-term ethnographic research.” • JRAI

Volume 43, New Directions in Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

Open Access

From Clans to Co-ops

Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily

Theodoros Rakopoulos

“Rakopoulos admirably delineates the entwined positionalities of mafia, anti-mafia, workers, administrators, and the state.” • American Anthropologist

Volume 4, The Human Economy

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.


Berghahn Books Food Series


Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition

Editors: Janet ChrzanUniversity of Pennsylvania and John A. Brett, University of Colorado Denver
Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin

The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields during the last two decades has generated a diverse and dynamic set of approaches for understanding the complex relationships and interactions that determine how people eat and how diet affects culture. These volumes offer a comprehensive reference for students and established scholars interested in food and nutrition research in Nutritional and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Food Studies and Applied Public Health.

Click to expand: Reviews

“I feel that this set will be exceptionally useful not only for anthropologists, but also for ethnographers, demographers, and others conducting research within food systems and food studies. With the burgeoning interest in food research at all levels, and with new graduate programs in the field, this book has the potential to be a crucial resource for scholars in the field… I look forward to requiring this as reading for my graduate students and advanced undergraduates.” · Teresa Mares, University of Vermont
 
“Unlike other resources I’ve come across, this set covers methods used in the traditional four fields of anthropology, ranging from highly quantitative and scientific oriented research to qualitative, culture oriented work… These volumes function as inclusive how-to manuals, providing examples of different questions each type of research might address as well as their limitations. Each chapter includes a helpful, extensive bibliography.” · Amy Bentley, New York University

“This set offers a comprehensive overview of methods across the discipline and beyond, providing readers with basic (and in some cases advanced) insights into why particular methods are useful and how those methods can be implemented… This is an unparalleled and comprehensive collection.” · David Beriss, University of New Orleans

Vol. 3, Food Health: Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health

Vol. 2, Food Culture: Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies

Vol. 1, Food Research: Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods


Anthropology of Food & Nutrition

Series Editor: Helen MacbethOxford Brookes University

Eating is something all humans must do to survive, but it is more than a biological necessity. Producing food, foraging, distributing, shopping, cooking and, of course, eating itself are all are deeply inscribed as cultural acts. This series brings together the broad range of perspectives on human food, encompassing social, cultural and nutritional aspects of food habits, beliefs, choices and technologies in different regions and societies, past and present. Each volume features cross-disciplinary and international perspectives on the topic of its title. This multidisciplinary approach is particularly relevant to the study of food-related issues in the contemporary world.

A few more of our titles not shown above:


Food, Nutrition, and Culture

Series Editors: Jakob KleinSchool of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Melissa L. CaldwellUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

While eating is a biological necessity, the production, distribution, preparation, consumption, and disposal of food are all deeply culturally inscribed activities. Taking an anthropological perspective, this book series provides a forum for critically engaged, ethnographically grounded work on the cultural, social, political, economic, and ecological aspects of human nutrition and food habits. The monographs and edited collections in this series present timely, food-related scholarship intended for researchers, academics, students, and those involved in food policy, businesses, and activism. Covering a wide range of topics, geographic regions and mobilities across regions, the series  decenters dominant, often western-centered approaches and assumptions in food studies.

A few more of our titles not shown above:


Berghahn Journals


Enjoy FREE Access to the following articles until Oct 23! Use code FOODDAY. Redemption details here: bit.ly/3F5lmqg

ENVIROMENT AND SOCIETY
Special Issue: Environment, Society, and Food (Vol. 2)

NATURE AND CULTURE
Certification Regimes in the Global Agro-Food System and the Transformation of the Nature-Society Relationship: Ecological Modernization or Modernization of Ecology?
Md Saidul Islam (Vol. 17, Issue 1)

Special Issue: Civil Society and Urban Agriculture in Europe (Vol. 13, Issue 3)

Open Access Articles

ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Using Direct Observation to Examine the Relationship between Smoking and Consumption Patterns in a Middle Eastern Food Services Setting Richard A. Heiens and Larry P. Pleshko (Vol 18, Issue 1)

Special Issue: Food and Cooking in the Middle East and North Africa (Vol. 15, Issue 2)

ENVIROMENT AND SOCIETY
We All We Got: Urban Black Ecologies of Care and Mutual Aid
Ashanté M. Reese and Symone A. Johnson (Vol. 13)

FOCAAL
The “awkwardnesses” of aid and exchange: Food cooperative practices in austerity Britain
Celia Plender (Vol. 98)

SIBIRICA
Arctic “Laboratory” of Food Resources in the Allaikhovskii District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Nikolai Goncharov (Vol. 21, Issue 2)

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGIE SOCIALE
‘Eating with the People’: How a Chinese Hydropower Project Changed Food Experiences in a Lao Community*
Floramante SJ Ponce (Vol. 30, Issue 1)

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Berghahn recognizes the significance of indigenous cultures and in the spirit of this day, we have collected some of our relevant titles below.


Enacted Relations

Performing Knowledge in an Australian Indigenous Community

Franca Tamisari

“This is an excellent exploration and exegesis of Yolngu performance in all its varied forms from ceremonial to popular song and dance … This book is a highly satisfying and compelling read as its penetrating argument utilizes a sophisticated interweaving of theory and ethnography to demonstrate how learning ‘The Law’ is a foundational sense of being in and part of the boneland, (ngaraka), knowing the stories, being able to relate appropriately to kin and country and having the skills, knowledge, rights and ability to perform the songs and dances.” • Fiona Magowan, Queen’s University Belfast.

Volume 15, ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America

Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz

“This volume is an outstanding piece of scholarship, which, from the standpoint of the processes of creation and creativity, accomplishes, in a good measure, a critique and reassessment of current styles on analyzing Amazonian sociality.” • Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Read freely available introduction.

Open Access

Indigenous Resurgence

Decolonialization and Movements for Environmental Justice

Edited by Jaskiran Dhillon

“Although the essays were already published a while ago, they have not lost any of their relevance, and one can only wish that thanks to the volume being available through Open Access many people will discover this topical publication.” • Amerindian Research

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.

I Dreamed the Animals

Kaniuekutat: The Life of an Innu Hunter

Georg Henriksen

“Through his own life story, Kaniuekutat speaks to many issues of importance facing the Innu in contemporary times, with an eye on tradition and the lessons of the past…A valuable text for students of anthropology, Native studies, and history.”  ·  Choice

Read freely available introduction.

About the Hearth

Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North

Edited by David G. Anderson, Robert P. Wishart, and Virginie Vaté

“Each chapter offers something interesting for the reader…One can list bright and sometimes provocative ideas put forth by each contributor…The main advantage of this book is the ability to spark interest among the most diverse groups of specialists in the field of indigenous cultures.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

Nordic Paths to Modernity

Edited by Jóhann Páll Árnason and Björn Wittrock

“…the articles, taken together, provide an exciting picture of the diversity that is unified in the Nordic region… [and] a significant contribution to the discussion of multiple modernities.”  ·  Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études scandinaves au Canada

Read freely available introduction.

Animism in Rainforest and Tundra

Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia

Edited by Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva

“This thoughtful volume is extraordinarily rich and will prompt all of us interested in these questions to think about them from fresh perspectives.” • Anthropological Forum

Read freely available introduction.

The 1926/27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions

Edited by David G. Anderson

“The contributors have made excellent use of recently opened archives and interviews with descendants of the people surveyed to provide a uniquely human portrait of this seminal project. While the chapters focus most thoroughly on the Nenets, Khanty, and Yakut, the analysis is of broader relevance to an understanding of Siberian peoples during the first stages of the sovietization of the Far North. This book will prove of unique value to historians of the Soviet period as well as to cultural anthropologists specializing in polar peoples. Highly recommended.” • Choice

Indigenous Peoples and Demography

The Complex Relation between Identity and Statistics

Edited by Per Axelsson and Peter Sköld

This interesting collection looks at changes in population studies and examines indigeneity in contexts as different as Australia and Norway. It is particularly valuable with respect to two broad geographic categories: countries originally settled by British colonists, and states in northern Europe… the study of categorization and enumeration offers valuable insights on how ethnic boundaries are established, and how–inevitably–they are challenged and contested.”  ·  Choice

Read freely available introduction.

Narrating the Future in Siberia

Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among the Eveny

Olga Ulturgasheva

This thought-provoking and highly original work, relevant especially for students of the anthropology of childhood, supplies an important new chapter to native Siberian ethnography. Highly recommended for anyone seriously interested in today’s Siberia, all levels.”  ·  Choice

The New Media Nation

Indigenous Peoples and Global Communication

Valerie Alia

In sum, New Media Nationoffers scholars of minorities, of digital media and of globalizing indigeneities the opportunity to understand how the practices of producing meanings through discourses of resistance contribute over time to the development and re-invigoration of alternative discourses often thought to have been dissolved by the spread of ‘mass media’. By engaging in micro-analyses of specific cultural discourses and their elaboration in specific emergent media situations, Alia alerts her readers to the importance of the complexity of the local.” • Discourse & Communication

Volume 2, Anthropology of Media

Read freely available introduction.

Hunters in the Barrens

The Naskapi on the Edge of the White Man’s World

Georg Henriksen

Valuable as an example of the anthropology of development and modernization prevalent in northern Canada at the time, the book transcends this genre in the acuity of its ethnographic analysis and beautifully captures a moment – Henriksen began fieldwork in 1966 – when Mushuau Innu were making the transition to permanent communities… This book is important for Algonquian and circumpolar specialists, as well as for students wishing to understand dynamics of hunting societies in modernity. It has also become significant as a historical record both of the Innu people and of anthropology in northern Canada.  ·  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Read freely available introduction.

Names and Nunavut

Culture and Identity in the Inuit Homeland

Valerie Alia

“…a thought-provoking book. Alia lays out the intricacies of Inuit naming so clearly, describes the Arctic environment so vividly, and conveys such a rich sense of Inuit values, concerns, and humour that readers are likely to hunger for more information and to pose ethnographic and on mastic questions that press forward the horizons of Inuit ethnography. Names and Nunavut is a welcome addition to Arctic ethnography and should be of interest not only to linguists and anthropologists working in the Arctic but to anyone interested in the relationship between onomasty, personhood, and cosmology and to anyone looking for fresh insights to the micropractices of linguistic and onomastic colonialism”  ·  NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics

Read freely available introduction.

Cultivating Arctic Landscapes

Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North

Edited by David G. Anderson and Mark Nuttall

“The edited work contains one of the most interesting sets of northern papers to appear in a very long time…each paper is excellent…this book will hopefully provoke considerable thought…This is a work that should be discussed in terms of the particulars of the various papers, but also for the overview it provides.” – Polar Record

International Day of the Girl Child

Today is the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl Child, and this year’s theme is ‘Girls’ vision for the future’.

Click to expand text: The UN explains more on this year’s International Day of the Girl Child

Today’s generation of girls is disproportionately affected by global crises of climate, conflict, poverty and pushback on hard won gains for human rights and gender equality. Too many girls are still denied their rights, restricting their choices and limiting their futures.

Yet, recent analysis shows that girls are not only courageous in the face of crisis, but hopeful for the future. Every day, they are taking action to realize a vision of a world in which all girls are protected, respected and empowered. But girls cannot realize this vision alone. They need allies who listen to and respond to their needs. 

With the right support, resources and opportunities, the potential of the world’s more than 1.1 billion girls is limitless. And when girls lead, the impact is immediate and wide reaching: families, communities and economies are all stronger, our future brighter. It is time to listen to girls, to invest in proven solutions that will accelerate progress towards a future in which every girl can fulfil her potential.

Read Five game-changing solutions with and for adolescent girls, the background of International Day of the Girl Child, Vanessa Nakate on how the climate crisis impacts girls, and more from the UN page here.

In the spirit of this day, we have compiled a collection of some of our titles looking at girlhood below, with free to read introductions and some open access titles.

For more content, you can browse though our books by subject ‘Gender Studies and Sexuality’ here, or take a look at our book series ‘Transnational Girlhoods’ here.


To be published January 2025

Girls Take Action

Activism Networks by, for, and with Girls and Young Women

Edited by Catherine Vanner

The repression of the rights of girls and women is continuously threatened in a wide range of global cultural contexts. From the rise in laws restricting reproductive freedom to the growth in essentialist ideas about gender and the backlash to the #MeToo movement, the challenges facing girls and young women are as diverse as the activism networks established to address them. Girls Take Action shines light on the myriad ways girls and young women are exercising agency in the face of injustice, considering especially the role of community and collaboration in fostering activism networks and ultimately a more transnational understanding of girlhood.

Volume 8, Transnational Girlhoods

To be published November 2024

Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Laura Shamali Batatota

For female Sinhalese students attending a national school in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, the school serves as a significant base for cultural production, particularly in reproducing ethno-religious hegemony under the guise of ‘good’ Buddhist girls. It illustrates that tuition space acts as an important site for placemaking, where students play out their cosmopolitan aspirations whilst acquiring educational capital. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, the book examines young people’s aspirations of ‘figuring out’ their identity and visions of the future in the backdrop of nation-building processes within the school.

Volume 7, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Open Access

Black Schoolgirls in Space

Stories of Black Girlhoods Gathered on Educational Terrain

Edited by Esther O. Ohito and Lucía Mock Muñoz de Luna

Locating Black girls’ desires, needs, knowledge bases, and lived experiences in relation to their social identities has become increasingly important in the study of transnational girlhoods. Black Schoolgirls in Space pushes this discourse even further by exploring how Black girls negotiate and navigate borders of blackness, gender, and girlhood in educational spaces. The contributors of this collected volume highlight Black girls as actors and agents of not only girlhood but also the larger, transnational educational worlds in which their girlhoods are contained.

Volume 7, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.

Girls in Global Development

Figurations of Gendered Power

Edited by Heather Switzer, Karishma Desai, and Emily Bent

“This collection is a well-imagined, important, incisive contribution to the fields of girlhood studies, development studies, and gender studies that deftly exposes the contradictions, complications, and limits of the “Girls in Development” paradigm and the ways it shapes the current landscape of development and thus the lives of girls around the world.” • Jessica Taft, University of California Santa Cruz

Volume 6, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction.

Open Access

The Girl in the Pandemic

Transnational Perspectives

Edited by Claudia Mitchell and Ann Smith

The Girl in the Pandemic makes a unique and much-needed contribution to the scholarship on Girlhood Studies in times of crises in different global contexts and particularly including scholarship from the global south and north.” • Relebohile Moletsane, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Volume 5, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.

Punching Back

Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women-Only Kickboxing

Jasmijn Rana

“Jasmijn Rana has written an engaging, well-crafted and long-anticipated ethnography of the intersectionally gendered and racialized experience of Muslim Dutch women, drawn from her own apprenticeship in women-only kickboxing venues in the southern neighbourhoods of The Hague.” • Paul Silverstein, Reed College

Volume 5, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations

Read freely available introduction.

Ӧmie Sex Affiliation

A Papuan Nature

Marta Rohatynskyj

“It offers a unique contribution to the literature on Papua New Guinea societies. The ethnography was collected at a time when it was possible to engage with people who had witnessed and participated in complex rites which have lapsed or been replaced by recent introductions.” • James Leach, CNRS

Volume 14, ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

An American Icon in Puerto Rico

Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play

Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez

“The book provides a thought-provoking and insightful exploration of the transnational impact of Barbie as a cultural object, highlighting the importance of critically examining the cultural products that shape our understanding of gender, race, and identity.” • Women’s Studies

Volume 4, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction.

Living Like a Girl

Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond

Edited by Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell

“This collection truly captures what it means to live like a girl in contemporary Europe, and it is sure to be a key resource for scholars working in the area for years to come.” • Fiona Vera-Gray, Durham University

Volume 3, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction.

Ethical Practice in Participatory Visual Research with Girls

Transnational Approaches

Edited by Relebohile Moletsane, Lisa Wiebesiek, Astrid Treffry-Goatley, and April Mandrona

“[This] is an outstanding book with highly fascinating chapter contributions theorizing significant issues of co-researchers, and thereby offering a how-to for conducting participatory research in an ethical manner.” • Participatory Research Methods

Volume 2, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction.

Deconstructing Dolls

Girlhoods and the Meanings of Play

Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell

In recent decades, emerging scholarship in the field of girlhood studies has led to a particular interest in dolls as sources of documentary evidence. Deconstructing Dolls pushes the boundaries of doll studies by expanding the definition of dolls, ages of doll players, sites of play, research methods, and application of theory. By utilizing a variety of new approaches, this collected volume seeks to understand the historical and contemporary significance of dolls and girlhood play, particularly as they relate to social meanings in the lives of girls and young women across race, age, time, and culture.

Read freely available introduction.

The Girl in the Text

Edited by Ann Smith

“Ann Smith’s collection provides both inspiration and a challenge to readers, writers, and researchers of girls and girls themselves to transverse physical and conceptual borders critically to write their own transnational girl into lived and textual existence.” • Girlhood Studies

Volume 1, Transnational Girlhoods

Read freely available introduction.


For more content, you can browse though our books by subject ‘Gender Studies and Sexuality’ here, or take a look at our books series ‘Transnational Girlhoods’ here.


Berghahn Journals

Girlhood Studies
An Interdisciplinary Journal

Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the critical discussion of girlhood from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and for the dissemination of current research and reflections on girls’ lives to a broad, cross-disciplinary audience of scholars, researchers, practitioners in the fields of education, social service and health care and policy makers.

Aspasia
The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 

Aspasia is the international peer-reviewed annual of women’s and gender history of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE). It aims to transform European women’s and gender history by expanding comparative research on women and gender to all parts of Europe, creating a European history of women and gender that encompasses more than the traditional Western European perspective.


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World Architecture Day

Happy World Architecture Day!

As described by the International Union of Architects, “World Architecture Day (WAD), created by the International Union of Architects (UIA) in 1985,  is celebrated annually on the first Monday of October. This day coincides with the United Nations World Habitat Day, aligning the architectural community’s efforts with global urban development goals.”. This year’s theme is ‘Empowering the next generation to participate in urban design’. Read more from their page here.

In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our Architecture titles below, spanning across subjects, with free to read introductions.

You may also be interested in our series Space and Place:

Bodily, geographic, and architectural sites are embedded with cultural knowledge and social value. This series provides ethnographically rich analyses of the cultural organization and meanings of these sites of space, architecture, landscape, and places of the body. Contributions examine the symbolic meanings of space and place, the cultural and historical processes involved in their construction and contestation, and how they communicate with wider political, religious, social, and economic institutions.


Smoke and Mirrors

The Yenidze Cigarette Factory, Dresden

David Nielsen

The Yenidze Cigarette Factory of 1909 was constructed as an industrial, architectural object that advertised Dresden as a center for the tobacco trade. Born from a unique client-architect relationship between Hugo Zietz and Martin Hammitzsch, the factory’s importance to modernism has been understated. Smoke and Mirrors uncovers the history of the factory’s planning, design, and construction, and for the first time, apart from the building’s historical narrative, positions this addition to Dresden’s skyline within the formative histories of the modern movement.

Volume 22, Space and Place

Read freely available introduction.

Transforming Author Museums

From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs

Edited by Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke

“This is a fine and rich collection of essays on the topic of the literary museum, notably on the writer’s house museum. It offers engaging perspectives and new horizons that in the international scholarship on this topic will be highly appreciated.” • Harald Hendrix, University of Utrecht

Volume 13, Museums and Collections

Read freely available introduction.

Houses Transformed

Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Practices of Dwelling and Building

Edited by Jonathan Alderman and Rosalie Stolz

“An interesting and worthwhile collection, covering a wide range of different themes relating to change and transformation related to the house.” • Monica Janowski, University of London

Read freely available introduction.

Poverty Archaeology

Architecture, Material Culture and the Workhouse under the New Poor Law

Charlotte Newman and Katherine Fennelly

“This is an excellent and fascinating examination of how archaeology can inform the study of poverty in nineteenth century England. The work takes as its focus the exploration of workhouses and how the analysis of the built material culture can aid our understanding of them. It exemplifies the value of using detailed case studies to interrogate and critique national models and understandings of social experience. To tell, what Hicks and Beaudry have called, ‘stories that matter’.” • Matthew Jenkins, University of York

Read freely available introduction.

Structures of Protection?

Rethinking Refugee Shelter

Edited by Tom Scott-Smith and Mark E. Breeze

“While there has been an exponential growth in the literature on refugees and forced migration over the past decade, the issue of shelter has received very little attention. This volume fills that important gap in an admirable manner.” • Jeff Crisp, University of Oxford

Volume 39, Forced Migration

Read freely available introduction.

Pacific Spaces

Translations and Transmutations

Edited by A.-Chr Engels-Schwarzpaul, Lana Lopesi, and Albert L. Refiti

“The authors make an important contribution to understanding spatial relationships within indigenous communities. The book highlights an important, and often overlooked, connection between space, time, and the built environment by breaking the disciplinary bounds that often confine our understandings.” • Jamon Alex Halvaksz, University of Texas at San Antonio

Volume 10, Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists

Read freely available introduction.

Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative

Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities

Annika Bünz

A characteristic trait of the maritime museums is that they are often located in a contemporary and/or historical environment from which the collections and narratives originate. The museum can thereby be directly linked to the site and its history. It is therefore vital to investigate the maritime museums in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections. This volume unravels the kinds of worlds and realities the Nordic maritime museums stage, which identities and national myths they depict, and how they make use of both the surrounding maritime environments and the architectural properties of the museum buildings.

Volume 15, Museums and Collections

Read freely available introduction.

Forging Architectural Tradition

National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century

Edited by Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko

“The book Forging Architectural Tradition is an excellent contribution for anyone interested in the creation of national narratives around architectural buildings. It is suitable for architects, art historians, historians, sociologists, cultural researchers, and the general cultural public, as well as anyone interested in the national narratives of ‘small’ nations. The topics explored in the book should not be viewed as a part of the distant past but as still current as the historical processes described in the book can help us deal with problems related to the politicization of heritage that is still evident today.” • Prostor

Volume 4, Explorations in Heritage Studies

Read freely available introduction.

Politics of the Dunes

Poetry, Architecture, and Coloniality at the Open City

Maxwell Woods

“At the heart of the project are the politics of avant-gardism and of the brutally repressive dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Though not an easy read, this is certainly a volume that specialists in visionary experiments of the 20th century will want to take into account…Recommended.” • Choice

Volume 19, Space and Place

Read freely available introduction.

Power and Architecture

The Construction of Capitals and the Politics of Space

Edited by Michael Minkenberg

“…a volume which, through its innovative approach, provides numerous valuable insights.” · Contemporary European Studies

Volume 12, Space and Place

German Unity Day

Commemorating German Reunification

German Unity Day is celebrated on October 3rd. Tag der Deutschen Einheit celebrates the 1990 reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic with ceremonial acts and the citizens’ festival Bürgerfest.

In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our German Studies titles below.

You can browse our books by area: Germany here.


Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary German Politics and Policy

Edited by Eric Langenbacher

Germany has undergone more change in the past two years than it has experienced in decades. In the fall of 2021, the Social Democratic Party unexpectedly surged to first place in the Bundestag elections, going on to lead a coalition of SPD, Greens, and Free Democrats that promised to “dare more progress” domestically. Then just two months after the new government was installed, Russia invaded Ukraine. The contributions in this volume investigate the altered state of German politics and predict the trajectory of Europe’s leading power in the transformed geopolitical environment.

Read freely available introduction.

Shaping Tomorrow’s World

A Twentieth-Century History of West German, Cold War, and Global Futures Studies

Elke Seefried

“This new book marks a milestone in the still young field that investigates the history of the future.” • Historische Zeitschrift

Read freely available introduction.

Intimate Histories

African Americans and Germany since 1933

Nadja Klopprogge

Intimate Histories focuses on intimate relations as sites of shared pasts connecting African American and German history in the years between 1933 and 1990. By tracing topics that include anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilization, casual sexual encounters, marriage, and friendships, Intimate Histories broadens our understanding of African American–German relations during the so-called “century of extremes.”

Volume 12, Explorations in Culture and International History

Read freely available introduction.

Don’t Need No Thought Control

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

Gerd Horten

“Horten has written a fascinating, very readable, analytically sharp monograph, based on an impressive amount of primary and secondary sources… The average East German, not the few dissidents or the few fanatics on top, are the real heroes of his narrative.” • H-Soz-Kult

Read freely available introduction.

Children are Everywhere

Conspicuous Reproduction and Childlessness in Reunified Berlin

Meghana Joshi

“There are some unique and important discussions [in this book] that I have not seen elaborated elsewhere and certainly not brought together in one place.” • Heide Castañeda, University of South Florida

Volume 53, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

Read freely available introduction.

German Division as Shared Experience
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postwar Everyday

Edited by Erica Carter, Jan Palmowski, and Katrin Schreiter

“All told, this volume successfully brings together its fascinating chapters into a powerful interdisciplinary analysis. German Division as Shared Experience is a significant achievement that will serve as a bedrock for future research on the ‘entanglement’ of the Cold War Germanies. The editors and contributors have produced a genuinely pathbreaking book.” • The Journal of Modern History

Read freely available introduction.

Friendship without Borders

Women’s Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany

Phil Leask

“Beginning and advanced students can learn much from this highly readable book. Its bottom-up view of postwar German history is revealing even to the expert. Its subtle and perceptive interpretations of attitudes about gender and womanhood, Heimat and the German past, politics and everyday life are enlightening. It provokes one to think about friendship, the psychology of groups, and ageing in new and refreshing ways. A most worthwhile read.” • German History

Read freely available introduction.

The Politics of Personal Information

Surveillance, Privacy, and Power in West Germany

Larry Frohman

“This is an important book crafted by a master of intellectual history. It will be widely consumed and discussed among German historians and a wide range of intellectuals interested in the origins of the modern surveillance state. Essential.” • Choice

Read freely available introduction.

Inside Party Headquarters

Organizational Culture and Practice of Rule in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Rüdiger Bergien

Everyday life in the East German Socialist Unity Party revolved heavily around maintaining the “party line” in all areas of society, whether through direct authority or corruption. Spanning a long period of the GDR’s history, from 1946 through 1989, Rüdiger Bergien presents the first study that examines the complexities of the central party’s communist apparatus. He focuses on their role as ideological watchdogs, as they fostered an underbelly and “inner life” for their employees to integrate the party’s pillars throughout East German society. Inside Party Headquarters reviews not only the party’s modes power and state interaction, but also the processes of negotiation and disputation preceding formal Politburo decisions, advancing the available detail and discourse surrounding this formative and volatile stretch of German history.

Read freely available introduction.

France and the German Question, 1945–1990

Edited by Frédéric Bozo and Christian Wenkel

“These impressively researched chapters persuasively demonstrate that France was a leader in addressing postwar concerns with West Germany. Furthermore, the authors argue that France sought a constructive relationship with West Germany as early as 1945. From the economic rebuilding of the 1950s through de Gaulle’s desire to transform the continent and negotiations with the Eastern bloc following Ostpolitik to Mitterand’s support for German reunification within a European framework, this collection makes clear that the fates of the two countries were often inextricably linked. Highly Recommended.” • Choice

Read freely available introduction.

The Guardians of Concepts

Political Languages of Conservatism in Britain and West Germany, 1945-1980

Martina Steber

Since 1945, what ‘conservative’ means has troubled intellectuals, politicians and parties in the United Kingdom and West Germany. In Britain conservatism was an accepted term of the political vocabulary, denoting a particular tradition of political thought and practice. In West Germany, by contrast, conservatism was a difficult concept for the young democracy to swallow. It carried a heavy antiliberal and antidemocratic burden and led people to question whether there was a place for conservatism within democratic culture after all.

The Guardians of Concepts scrutinizes the debates about conservatism in the UK and the Federal Republic of Germany from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. Informed by historical semantics, it conceives of conservatism as a flexible linguistic structure, and shows the importance of language for the self-understanding of many conservatives, who not by chance, have regarded themselves as the guardians of concepts. The intense national and transnational debates about the meaning of conservatism had far-reaching consequences and continue to influence politics today.

Volume 9, Studies in British and Imperial History

Read freely available introduction.

End Game

The 1989 Revolution in East Germany

Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk

“This story is so far little known and not a big topic of the German public. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk closes our knowledge gaps in an impressive way” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Volume 26, Studies in German History

Read freely available introduction.

Open Access

Comrades in Arms

Military Masculinities in East German Culture

Tom Smith

“This book is important because it opens avenues of research into queerness in East Germany’s National People’s Army (NVA)… Smith’s book is commendable for breaking barriers in masculinity studies and offering a refreshing second look at the NVA… Highly Recommended. All readers.” • Choice

Read freely available introduction.

Gendering Post-1945 German History

Entanglements

Edited by Karen Hagemann, Donna Harsch, and Friederike Brühöfener

“This volume achieves a tremendous feat in its breadth, though its forte lies in its diverse contexts, uses, and understandings of gender—including its co-constituency with race and sexuality… This collection offers a much-needed re-narrativization of a divided Germany that centers gender, race, and sex in the shaping of citizenry during postwar nation-making.” • Feminist German Studies

Read freely available introduction.

Rethinking Social Movements after ’68

Selves and Solidarities in West Germany and Beyond

Edited by Belinda Davis, Friederike Brühöfener, and Stephen Milder

“A volume on social movements in the 1970s and 1980s is very welcome and timely. Now that there exists a solid corpus of monographs on the Long Sixties, serious research on the 1970s is slowly beginning to see the light of day – less so on the 1980s. Thus, Rethinking Social Movements after ’68 will begin to fill a growing need.” • Gerd-Rainer Horn, Sciences Po

Volume 31, Protest, Culture & Society

Read freely available introduction.

A History Shared and Divided

East and West Germany since the 1970s

Frank Bösch

“…the range and rigour make this handbook a useful point of entry for specialists and students alike interested in understanding the transformation of Germany in the last half century.” • European History Quarterly

Read freely available introduction.

The History of the Stasi

East Germany’s Secret Police, 1945-1990

Jens Gieseke

“Gieseke treats… many issues with careful and lucid analysis, confining himself to the known facts. He rejects the hyperbolic in favor of more mundane explanations. The truth is bad enough… Essential.” • Choice

Read freely available introduction.

The Path to the Berlin Wall

Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany

Manfred Wilke

“…constitutes a superlative model of combining biography with the study of nationalism. The latter constitutes the most novel contribution of this well-researched, straightforward historical depiction of Kohl’s ideology and its impact upon the continuing development of German national identity… Recommended” · Choice


Berghahn Journals

GERMAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Editor: Jeffrey J. Anderson, Georgetown University

German Politics and Society is a joint publication of the BMW Center for German and European Studies (of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). These centers are represented by their directors on the journal’s Editorial Committee.

German Politics and Society is a peer-reviewed journal published and distributed by Berghahn Journals. It is the only American publication that explores issues in modern Germany from the combined perspectives of the social sciences, history, and cultural studies.

International Translation Day

The 30th of September is International Translation Day, celebrated on the same day as the feast of St. Jerome, who is considered the patron saint of translators. The United Nations established International Translation Day in 2017 “to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation, contributing to development and strengthening world peace and security”. Read more from the UN page here.

In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our translated titles from 2024 below, with freely available introductions, and linked some of our 2023 titles at the bottom of this page.

You may also be interested in our 2024 Women in Translation Month blog post, which includes some of Berghahn Books titles of women’s research and narratives that were translated into English, or our 2022 International Translation Day blog post.


To be published October 2024

Rag Fair

A Different Migration History of London’s East End, 1780-1850

Ole Münch

Translated by Angela Davies and Jozef van der Voort from German

In the early Victorian age, the streets of East London were home to migrants from different regions and religions. In the midst of this area lay the famous Rag Fair street market, sustained by trade routes stretching across the globe. The market’s history demonstrates that it was not only a place of economic exchange, but also an intercultural contact zone where Jewish and Irish migrants mingled, entered client relationships and forged political alliances. Reconstructing the varied (partly multiethnic) group-building processes operating in the market, Rag Fair draws on approaches across migration history, economic history, economic anthropology and the sociology of political movements to uncover the social mechanisms at work in the old clothing trade.

Volume 10, Studies in British and Imperial History

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Reversible America

Cowboys, Clowns, and Bullfighters

Frédéric Saumade and Jean-Baptiste Maudet

Translated from the French

Rodeo, cattle ranching, and bullfighting converge in the arenas of race, gender, and ethics in Reversible America. In Southwestern California, these sports manifest in spectacular expressions of transcultural interactions that continue to develop through border crossings. Using an interdisciplinary scope, this unique look into the subculture negotiates the paradoxes and connections between the popular American performances, Iberian bullfighting, and Native American hunting methods, along with the relationship between human and non-human beings, and systems of value across borders.

Read freely available introduction.

After Auschwitz

The Difficult Legacies of the GDR

Edited by Enrico Heitzer, Martin Jander, Anetta Kahane, and Patrice G. Poutrus
Translated from the German

“It is a combination of the expertise of academics and professional practitioners, enhanced by personal insights, that make this volume unique and especially intriguing.” • Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

Read freely available introduction.

Shaping Tomorrow’s World

A Twentieth-Century History of West German, Cold War, and Global Futures Studies

Elke Seefried

Translated from the German by Patricia C. Sutcliffe and Alison Kraft

“This new book marks a milestone in the still young field that investigates the history of the future.” • Historische Zeitschrift

Read freely available introduction.

Social History of German Jews

A Short Introduction

Miriam Rürup, edited by Jake Schneider
Translated by Bill Templer from German

Tracing the social history of modern German Jews from the end of the 18th century up to the aftermath of World War II, Miriam Rürup follows their ascent into the middle and upper middle classes through repeated experiences of setbacks but also of self-assertion. In doing so it is explained how Jewish life changed under the auspices of emancipation and what impact these changes had on the demographic and social profile of the Jewish minority. With a focus on the daily interactions between Jews and other Germans when choosing a home, profession, or school, for example, Social History of German Jews shows the contrasting processes of integration and exclusion in a new light.

Volume 2, Perspectives on the History of German Jews

Read freely available introduction.

The Herero Genocide

War, Emotion, and Extreme Violence in Colonial Namibia

Matthias Häussler
Translated from the German by Elizabeth Janik

“The author impressively demonstrates that emotions can be the driving force behind cruelty and is able to portray the brutalization of ordinary soldiers, who ultimately also became ‘motor[s] of extermination,’ more clearly than previous studies have done. Fear, bitterness, and frustration in the face of military failures led to violence…Häussler’s work is an innovative, at times brilliant study that deserves a wide readership – hopefully, and thanks to the translation, now also in English-speaking countries.” • Central European History

Volume 31, War and Genocide

Read freely available introduction.

Fascist Europe

From Italian Supremacy to Subservience to the Reich (1932-1943)

Monica Fioravanzo

Translated by Ian Mansbridge from Italian

By shedding light on an often-overlooked aspect of Fascism and Nazism, this book examines the ambitious plans for a new European order conceived by Italian intellectuals, historians, geographers, politicians, and even student representative of the Fascist University Groups (GUF). Through expert reconstruction of the debate on this envisaged order’s development, Monica Fioravanzo opens a window into the theoretical arena that shaped relationships between German, Italy and the other Axis nations and provides insight into how the project was anticipated to unite the Fascist regime in Italy and the Nazi Reich.

Read freely available introduction.

Gender History of German Jews

A Short Introduction

Stefanie Schüler-Springorum

Translated by Christopher Reid from German

This concise overview traces the Gender history of German-Jews from the early modern period to the present day and provides a unique perspective on both men and women as historical actors in the German lands. By adopting new perspectives on the German-Jewish experience, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum introduces and examines gender narratives and opportunities across a wide range of individual circumstances and during times of discrimination, persecution and deportation. While being directed against all Jews the effects of Nazi policy had remarkably different results, depending on gender, class, marital status, age and religious affiliation. The picture that emerges here of German Jewry in modern times is consequently more vibrant and nuanced.

Volume 1, Perspectives on the History of German Jews

Read freely available introduction.

Centennial Fever

Transnational Hispanic Commemorations and Spanish Nationalism

Javier Moreno-Luzón

Translated by Nick Rider from Spanish

Commemorations that shaped major elements of Spanish identity at the beginning of the 20th century are full of centennials and anniversaries that elaborate and renew the Spanish national mythology. In Centennial Fever Javier Moreno-Luzón, one of the most prominent Spanish historians of his generation, studies the milestones that defined transnational dimensions of celebration at the beginning of the 20th century including the Peninsular War, the first Spanish Constitution, the independence of Latin American States, the “discovery” of the Pacific Ocean and the death of Miguel de Cervantes and the publication of Don Quixote of La Mancha. Through these truly global events, a cultural community is created, called “Hispanoamerica” or “La Raza”, on which Spanish nationalism has become dependent.

Volume 10, Studies in Latin American and Spanish History

Read freely available introduction.


Have a look at some translated titles from 2023!


Berghahn Journals

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGIE SOCIALE

Free access to the following articles until October 9, 2024 using code TRANSLATION
Redemption details: https://bit.ly/3F5lmqg

ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURES

Translating Islam into Georgian: The Question of Georgian Muslim Identity in Contemporary Adjara
Ricardo Rivera (Vol. 28, Issue 2)

Translating the Bottom-Up Frame: Everyday Negotiations of the European Union’s Rural Development Programme LEADER in Germany
Oliver Müller, Ove Sutter, and Sina Wohlgemuth (Vol. 28, Issue 2)

BOYHOOD STUDIES

Beyond (Hyper)Masculinity: Images of Boyhood in Croatian Young Adult Novels in English Translation

Marija Todorova (Volume 15, Issue 1-2)

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF CONCEPTS

Translating the Concept of Experiment in the Late Eighteenth Century: From the English Philosophical Context to the Greek-Speaking Regions of the Ottoman Empire
Eirini Goudarouli and Dimitris Petakos (Vol. 12, Issue 1)

CRITICAL SURVEY

‘Our golden crown’: Analysis of Religious Intertextuality in Shakespeare’s Richard II, and Its Translation into Spanish

Luis Javier Conejero-Magro (Volume 35, Issue 2)

Harold Bloom and William Shakespeare: The ‘Saints of Repetition’ and the Towers of Babel
Taoufiq Sakhkhane (Vol. 34, Issue 3)

‘A Scorneful Image of this Present World’: Translating and Mistranslating Erasmus’s Words in Henrician England
Luca Baratta (Vol. 34, Issue 3)

Canonising Shakespeare in 1920s Japan: Tsubouchi Shōyō and the Translator’s Choice
Daniel Gallimore (Vol. 33, Issue 1)

EUROPEAN JUDAISM

The Task of the Hebrew Translation: Reading into Othello’s Indian/Iudean Crux in the First Hebrew Translation
Eran Tzelgov (Vol. 51, Issue 2)

SARTRE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL

Sarah Richmond’s Translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness
Adrian van den Hoven (Vol. 26, Issue 1)

SIBIRICA

Gaps of Kinship in the Yakut Heroic Epic Olonkho: A Brief Analysis and Implications for Translation

Alina A. Nakhodkina (Volume 23, Issue 1)


You might also be interested in…

MEET THE EDITORS: Dr. Samira Marty and Dr. Pardis Shafafi, the new Editors of Anthropology in Action

Pardis Shafafi (CNRS Paris and Designit) and Samira Marty (Binghamton University) are our incoming editors of Anthropology in Action.

Samira Marty and Pardis Shafafi are anthropologists who bring a wealth of practitioner and applied experiences to the journal. They believe in the public and discourse shaping potential of anthropological thought and in experimenting and developing ethnographic methodologies in urgent and contemporary environments. Their themes and approaches of interest speak to these experiences, with Marty conducting long-term fieldwork between Central America and Germany and Shafafi engaged with non-state armed groups from Iran, both focussing on political violence and grassroots movements and all the contradictions and promises contained therein. 

Dr. Pardis Shafafi, French National Centre
for Scientific Research, France 

Dr. Samira Marty, Binghamton University, US

What made you interested in the role of co-editors of Anthropology in Action?

Pardis Shafafi: Primarily, I’ve been looking for a way to collaborate with Samira in a formalised setting and this seemed like the perfect forum. Aside from this, while I’ve published and edited in different contexts, academic journals represent a new challenge and, to be honest, an area I have often wanted to shape and evolve. As an editor, I’m able to participate in a process that is often skewed in favour of certain kinds of academics and journals themselves. It’s exciting to be in a position to encourage more inclusive and non-traditional perspectives, and in a collaborative vein.

What unique perspectives do you both bring to the journal as new editors?

Samira Marty: As social and political anthropologists, Pardis and I bring a wealth of practitioner and applied experiences to the journal. My work is informed by long-term fieldwork between Central America and Germany, where I focus on the complex dynamics of political violence and transnational solidarity from a grassroots perspective. These experiences have profoundly impacted my approach to anthropology, and I believe in the power of ethnographic methodologies to address urgent and contemporary issues. I’m also strongly committed to bringing insights outside of institutional anthropology back to the table—mostly because I’ve worked in fields I’ve been active in, such as food, journalism, policy advisory, emerging tech, and special education.

Pardis Shafafi: In my current role as an anthropology practitioner in design, I’m focused on analysing societal changes and how they impact our social relations and global perspectives. Much of my work is centred on emerging technologies, where I teach and train critical thinking, ethical practices and rigorous research as an antidote to unintended harms which may arise in these fields. Although not immediately obvious, my research interests lie in grassroots political movements, state violence and collective trauma-work to inform each other, at macro and micro levels. These layers of complexity and their manifestation in the everyday inspire much of my work. Like Samira, I am driven by a belief in a more public-facing anthropology and our combined experiences inform our commitment to exploring and developing ethnographic methods that are both innovative and responsive to the challenges of our time- whether in the field of AI in healthcare, or organising political movements in the diaspora.

What is your vision for the journal during your tenure?

Samira Marty: Our vision is to feature cutting-edge and thought-provoking scholarship that errs on the side of creative, critical, and daring. We really strive to push the boundaries of the more conventional academic discourse in AiA. That’s why we’re especially welcoming contributions that explore emerging and timely topics that are often neglected in scholarly discourse, such as the entangled lives we lead with advancing technologies, the public discourses surrounding genocide, or the application of design thinking for systems change, to name a few. Whether it’s exploring the everyday life implications, or the macro-structural junctures that drive societal change, we want the journal to be a platform for scholarship that is as ambitious and daring as the subjects it tackles.

How do you see the role of ‘applied’ anthropology in the journal’s future?

Pardis Shafafi: We take the term ‘applied’ in the journal title very seriously. For us, applied anthropology is not just about practical application but also about deeply engaging with the core issues that define contemporary life. We are particularly interested in how anthropology can contribute to shaping ideal futures, both through scholarly work and real-world applications. We both have drawn these connections in our professional lives, as we’ve touched upon earlier, and are keen to develop this area in the wider anthropology realm.

What kinds of submissions are you particularly looking for?

Samira Marty: We want to see work that challenges what is traditionally considered the “canon” of anthropological scholarship. We strongly invite submissions from non-traditional anthropologists who explore the intersections of anthropology across disciplines and consider the broader implications of anthropological research for society at large. To facilitate this dialogue, we continue to publish shorter formats and have updated our guidelines for the submission section on the journal’s homepage. All in all, we’re interested in contributions that are deeply engaged with the world around us and not only analyze the world as it is but also imagine what it could be.

What significant developments do you see in anthropology, and which topics will be especially pertinent today and in the near future?

Pardis Shafafi: What I observe from my tenure in the applied field is that there is a disconnect between immersive design and technology research, which focuses on specific modes of knowledge production within these fields, yet the profound global impact they have on our lives. This disconnect happens both within and between these industries – and, what is more, it has remained a blackbox in anthropological interrogations. I regret this, as the impact of emerging technologies on our lives extends far beyond the defining products and services, leaving substantial imprints on social relations and political values.

Samira Marty: Those who hold the finger on the pulse of anthropological inquiry know how to differentiate between intrinsic and “trendy” research interests, which often reflect those of larger funding bodies. As co-editors, we’re dedicated to showcasing critical thinkers whose work may be underrepresented in journals that predominantly feature established scholars and prestigious grant recipients. Leading journals such as Anthropology in Action provide a pivotal platform for these emerging voices, and we’re so excited to take this challenge on.

Learn more about how to submit to Anthropology in Action here.

AIA is a part of the Berghahn Open Anthro-Subscribe-to-Open initiative.

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