Where do Switzerland and Madagascar meet, and what do the people of each place think of those in the other? Eva Keller, in her recently published Beyond the Lens of Conservation: Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another, in seeking to connect these two places winds up highlighting the disconnect between them. Following, the author […]
How do sufferers of anorexia recover? Richard A. O’Connor and Penny Van Esterik seek answers to this question, first by identifying root causes of the disease and then by sharing the stories of those who have made a full recovery. From Virtue to Vice: Negotiating Anorexia, the book that resulted from their research, does not […]
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the history of the lives and work of middle eastern artisans. Bread from the Lion’s Mouth: Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities, soon to be published, uses archival documents to re-create a scene of life in the Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth through twentieth […]
Drawing on the work of medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science, and sociologists, Identity Politics and the New Genetics: Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging explores how science and culture are used to create and perpetuate ideas of race and ethnicity. The volume was published as a paperback in November. Following, David Skinner, who co-edited […]
In Bodies in Pain: The Emotion and Cinema of Darren Aronofsky, Laine explores the emotionally engaging nature of this prominent director’s work, which includes Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, Pi and The Fountain. Following, the author explains how she came to write this book, as well as some emotional nuances in the […]
The healing powers of a plant in sub-Saharan Africa, long used for indigenous medicine, are now being harnessed as a pharmaceutical to be more widely produced and sold. Author Julie Laplante follows this path of production of Artemesia Afra from a wild-growing bush to a processed, controlled substance in her soon-to-be-published monograph, Healing Roots: Anthropology […]
Combining classic and contemporary theory, Thinking through Sociality: An Anthropological Interrogation of Key Concepts is an exploration of concepts from disjuncture to social space and field to sociability. In advance of the volume’s publication later this month, editor Vered Amit discusses its origins and purpose. ________________________________ This volume is the outcome of a […]
Recently published Vehicles: Cars, Canoes and other Metaphors of Moral Imagination, edited by David Lipset and Richard Handler, offers insight into the vehicle as an object that can move not only people, but also ideas. Following, Handler discusses the origination of the volume, which all came about by way of an interesting connection of coincidence. […]
Now available in paperback, Learning from The Children: Childhood, Culture and Identity in a Changing World, edited by Jacqueline Waldren and Ignacy-Marek Kaminski, explores the world of children and their significant role in current society and its future. The following text is Waldren’s reflection on the book’s importance, supplemented by a selection of images from […]
This post was submitted to Berghahn by the authors of Kinship, Community, and Self: Essays in Honor of David Warren Sabean, forthcoming in December 2014. A Festschrift celebrates a scholar’s entire career. A collection of essays written by students or those inspired by the academic’s work, a Festschrift is typically presented to the honoree on […]