In our interview with Cecilie Eriksen and Nora Hämäläinen, the editors of New Perspectives on Moral Change, volume 13 in the WYSE Series in Social Anthropology, they explain the thinking behind their work, how they found their contributors, and the range of issues that they tackled.
According to the United Nations, International Translation Day is “an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation.”
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Following up on Smithsonian Day last week, an event hosted by ‘Smithsonian’ magazine where participating museums and various cultural centers across the US provide free entry, Berghahn is excited to feature an excerpt from Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls by Diana E. Marsh.
Describing participant observation and historical research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as it prepared for its largest-ever exhibit renovation, Deep Time, the author provides a grounded perspective on the inner-workings of the world’s largest natural history museum and the social processes of communicating science to the public.
Can you give some background to yourself, and how you became an anthropologist in the first place?
Well, I was born in 1958 in Cambridge and brought up there. I went to the Perse School (which incidentally is the origin of the name Free School Lane, where the Cambridge Anthropology Department is based). As an undergraduate I studied physics and philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, where I first encountered anthropology indirectly from Rom Harré who taught the philosophy of science. I came to feel that I knew more about the structures of the atom than the structures of society (sorry: I know this comes across as portentous, and now, a long time afterwards, I am little better off – but a little nonetheless!). This led me to a conversion Masters degree in anthropology at the LSE.
After that I returned to Cambridge to study for a PhD supervised by Esther Goody. This was on “Mambila Traditional Religion”. I first went to Cameroon in 1985 and I have managed to continue going every year until COVID stopped travel.
I know you’ve asked about the deep background but to continue, as it were, talking you through my CV, I then had two successive postdocs at Oxford (a Wolfson College postdoc followed by a British Academy fellowship) before eventually being appointed as lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1995. Continue Reading »
“As disasters are increasing in number and intensity, so too will be the need for reconstruction…”
So reads a line from the blurb of Making Things Happen, Jane Murphy Thomas’ account of post-earthquake reconstruction in Pakistan. And, sadly, how prescient it was, for her book was published just weeks before the same nation experienced a new disaster, the terrible flooding that left more than 10% of it underwater.
Here we have gathered our most recent volumes on the subject of disaster in its many awful forms (earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, chemical spills, and more), and on our approaches to risk management, and the many challenges of post-disaster reconstruction.
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The idea for Towards a Collaborative Memory came when I was researching my last book on memories of the East German Stasi. I was reading press releases from the Stasi Prison Memorial at Berlin Hohenschönhausen and came across one in which the then Director of the Memorial used a visit to memorials in the Czech Republic to criticise German memory culture. I had spent a long time researching memorials in Germany – especially Hohenschönhausen – but had never really considered how they collaborated with partners in other countries and how they might use those collaborations to further their own politics of memory.
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September 6th marks National Read a Book Day in the United States with International Literacy Day following closely on September 8th. To celebrate, we want to share what the Berghahn staff is currently reading and a scholarly reading from Berghahn Books we recommend for you.
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August 13th marks the anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The concrete barrier physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Along with separating West Berlin from East German territory, it came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
Browse relevant Berghahn titles on the history of a divided Germany. In addition, Berghahn Journals is offering free access to Vol. 29, Issue 2 of German Politics and Society until August 22, 2022. See below for details.
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JANE MURPHY THOMAS is an independent consultant, practitioner, project manager and social anthropologist in projects for UN agencies, NGOs, governments, donor agencies, and consulting firms, specializing in anthropological approaches and community participation in conflict and disaster-prone locations. Her book, Making Things Happen: Community Participation and Disaster Reconstruction in Pakistan was published in July in hardback and Open Access ebook editions. Following the interview are photographs, some never before published, illustrating steps in the reconstruction process.
