Tag: applied anthropology

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 Tremayne, Founding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. Inhorn, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip Kreager, Director, 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-Floyd, Rice University, Houston and Ashish Premkumar, Feinberg 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.

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

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 Tremayne, Founding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. Inhorn, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip Kreager, Director, 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

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 Peace

The 21st of September is the International Day of Peace, established by the United Nations in 1981. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the General Assembly adopting the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.

As the United Nations’ page describes it:

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. In that declaration, the United Nations’ most inclusive body recognized that peace “not only is the absence of conflict, but also requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.”

In a world with rising geopolitical tensions and protracted conflicts, there has never been a better time to remember how the UN General Assembly came together in 1999 to lay out the values needed for a culture of peace. These include: respect for life, human rights and fundamental freedoms; the promotion of non-violence through education, dialogue and cooperation; commitment to peaceful settlement of conflicts; and adherence to freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue and understanding at all levels of society and among nations. In follow-up resolutions, the General Assembly recognized further the importance of choosing negotiations over confrontation and of working together and not against each other.

The Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) starts with the notion that “wars begin in the minds of men so it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. It is this notion that framed the theme and logo of this year’s observance of the International Day of Peace. The ideas of peace, the culture of peace, need to be cultivated in the minds of children and communities through formal and informal education, across countries and generations.

The International Day of Peace has always been a time to lay down weapons and observe ceasefires. But it now must also be a time for people to see each other’s humanity. Our survival as a global community depends on that. The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. Two decades later, in 2001, the General Assembly unanimously voted to designate the Day as a period of non-violence and cease-fire.

Information taken from the UN’s page, for more details, please read more here.

In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our latest titles looking at peace studies below.

For more content, you can browse our Peace and Conflict Studies subject page here.

To be published December 2024

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919

The Challenge of a New World Order

Edited by Laurence Badel, Eckart Conze, and Axel Dröber

For more than a century, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 has remained an object of historical scrutiny. As an attempt to consolidate peace in the wake of World War I and to prevent future conflict, it was instrumental in shaping political and social dynamics both nationally and internationally. Yet, in spite of its implications for global conflict, little consideration has been given to the way the Paris Peace Conference constructed a new global order. In this illuminating and geographically wide-ranging reassessment, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 reconsiders how this watershed event, its diplomatic negotiations and the peace treaties themselves gave rise to new dynamics of global power and politics. In doing so it highlights the way in which the forces of nationality and imperiality interacted with, and were reshaped by, the peace.

Paperback Available

Peace at All Costs

Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar Polish–German Reconciliation

Annika Elisabet Frieberg

“This knowledgeably written study succeeds in exemplarily reopening a conceptual approach that is important for international relations on a hitherto rather neglected source basis and providing important insights for the understanding of both discourses of reconciliation in general and the history of German-Polish relations in particular.” • Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

Volume 23, Studies in Contemporary European History

Read Introduction

Paperback Available

In the Shadow of the Great War

Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917–1923

Edited by Jochen Böhler, Ota Konrád, and Rudolf Kučera

“Overall, the volume offers a broad panorama of the history of violence in East Central Europe. The individual essays are thematically diverse and offer an excellent synthesis of multilingual sources of research literature and theory.” • H-Soz-Kult

Read Introduction

200 Years of Peace

New Perspectives on Modern Swedish Foreign Policy

Edited by Nevra Biltekin, Leos Müller and Magnus Petersson

“This generous collection of essays portrays salient aspects of Sweden’s policy of neutrality throughout the last 200 years. A truly stimulating read including splendid and sometimes thought-provoking interpretations. The book deserves international attention.” • Rasmus Mariager, University of Copenhagen

Read Introduction

Durable Solutions

Challenges with Implementing Global Norms for Internally Displaced Persons in Georgia

Carolin Funke

“I really enjoyed reading this monograph…. This book is much more than  area studies research on Georgia as this volume is likely to bear theoretical implications generalizable beyond the Georgian case study. Empirical data collected through ethnographic participant observation, elite interviews, and focus groups is rich and fascinating.” • Huseyn Aliyev, University of Glasgow

Volume 44, Forced Migration

Read Introduction

Reconciliation Road

Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Peace

Benedikt Schoenborn

“Maybe the parties involved in negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine can revisit some of Brandt’s creative thinking and personal gestures as inspiring examples for the beginnings of a new reconciliation. They can use Benedikt Schoenborn’s excellent study of reconciliation and Ostpolitik as their guide.” • H Diplo

Volume 25, Studies in Contemporary European History

Read Introduction

On Mediation

Historical, Legal, Anthropological and International Perspectives

Edited by Karl Härter, Carolin Hillemanns and Günther Schlee

“A very nice compilation of interesting articles on mediation and related practices of third-party conflict regulation from various perspectives, including legal, anthropological, sociological, historical, psychological and philosophical perspective.” • Daniel Girsberger, University of Lucerne

Volume 22, Integration and Conflict Studies

Read Introduction

Paperback Available

Peaceful Selves

Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda

Laura Eramian

“This is richly detailed and an often startling ethnography with sharp insights and resonance for learning about post-conflict moments and the potential future for settings within, and far beyond, modern Rwanda.” • Conflict & Society

2019 CANADIAN ANTHROPOLOGY SOCIETY LABRECQUE-LEE BOOK PRIZE HONORABLE MENTION

Read Introduction

For more content, you can browse our Peace and Conflict subject page here.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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

This year’s theme is “Indigenous youth as agents of change for self-determination,” commemorating the Indigenous youth at the forefront of some of the most pressing crises facing humanity today. For more information, please visit UN.org.

Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day by learning more about indigenous populations from around the world.

Continue reading “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” →

Celebrating World Environment Day

June 5th is World Environment Day! It is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations (UN) stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. For more information please visit worldenvironmentday.global.

In joining the celebration Berghahn would like to offer a selection of Open Access titles, in addition to recommending the most recent issues of Environment and Society, Regions & Cohesion, and Nature and Culture!

Continue reading “Celebrating World Environment Day” →

Spring Paperbacks!

Unique studies at budget-friendly prices, these March and April paperbacks are great for adoptions and reading lists. If you want to evaluate their usefulness on a course you teach, please request a digital examination copy: just click through and look for the green ‘Request a review or examination copy’ button. Open Access titles are, of course, freely available to download any time.

Continue reading “Spring Paperbacks!” →

Essential Reading in Environmental History from Berghahn

We are excited to have a selection of titles at the American Society for Environmental History conference, March 22-26, in Boston, Massachusetts. If you are attending in-person come browse some of our titles at the Ingram Academic stand in the book exhibit area!
We are excited to offer a 35% discount on all Environmental History titles through April 9th. Use discount code ASEH23 on print and eBooks ordered through our website.
Continue reading “Essential Reading in Environmental History from Berghahn” →

Disasters, Risks, Responses, and Recovery

“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.

Continue reading “Disasters, Risks, Responses, and Recovery” →