Tag: Asia-Pacific

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

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

WORLD TOURISM DAY

The 27th of September is World Tourism Day, and the United Nations’ theme in 2024 is “Tourism and Peace” to highlight the capacity for tourism to bridge connections and understandings between nations and cultures.

As the United Nations’ page describes it:

Tourism, often highlighted for its role in economic development, also plays a significant role in fostering peace. On a global level, where nations are interconnected and interdependent, Tourism, an industry made by people and for people, emerges as a compelling and dynamic force to defy stereotypes and challenge prejudices.

This sector can be perceived as the epitome of intercultural dialogue; it allows meeting the “other”, learning about different cultures, hearing foreign languages, tasting exotic flavours, bonding with other human beings, and building tolerance. In essence, it is a mind-broadening educational and spiritual experience.

Read more on the UN’s World Tourism Day here.

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

For more content, you can browse our Travel and Tourism subject page here.

Open Access

Unexpected Encounters

Migrants and Tourists in the Mediterranean

Francesco Vietti

“The Mediterranean … has been shaped by the migration phenomena related to the colonial history and more recently to the crisis of receiving refugees – the author skillfully maneuvers through the history of the region’s multiple mobilities and connectivities … My overall opinion about the book is very positive.” • Natalia Bloch, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

Volume 4, Articulating Journeys: Festivals, Memorials, and Homecomings

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.

Open Access

Footprints in Paradise

Ecotourism, Local Knowledge, and Nature Therapies in Okinawa

Andrea E. Murray

“… a wonderful ethnographic work…As readers navigate through shared narratives and collective histories, they cannot help but feel they are immersed within the Okinawan culture. Libraries with anthropological collections focusing on Pacific Island studies (with a primary focus on Japan) or cultural heritage tourism should have a copy of this work. Highly recommended.” • Choice

Volume 40, New Directions in Anthropology

Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.

World Heritage Craze in China

Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory

Haiming Yan

“This book brings a wealth of information and spirited discussion to a wide readership and could readily be considered for courses on heritage issues in Asia and globally.” • Asian Perspectives

Read freely available introduction.

Expeditionary Anthropology

Teamwork, Travel and the ”Science of Man”

Edited by Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris

“Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris’s edited volume makes important steps towards understanding the history of the sociopolitical formations that are embedded in, and around, the idea of the expedition.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

Volume 33, Methodology & History in Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

The Long Journey

Exploring Travel and Travel Writing

Edited by Maria Pia Di Bella and Brian Yothers

“Because the essays represent a variety of disciplines—among them literature, history, and anthropology—the book offers a refreshing view of the field as a whole…Highlights include Wendy Bracewell’s insightful take on masculinity and the Balkans (via work ranging from Sara Mills’s to Moma Dimić’s) and Keith Newlin’s unvarnished examination of Jack and Charmian London’s insular journey to Melanesia. This engaging and useful text should invigorate both new and seasoned scholars of the genre….Recommended” • Choice

Read freely available introduction.

The Romance of Crossing Borders

Studying and Volunteering Abroad

Edited by Neriko Musha Doerr and Hannah Davis Taïeb

“Overall, this edited volume illustrates the complexities of affective encounters as students and young volunteers cross borders and engage with cultural diversity. Important is the relevance of understanding, studying, and acknowledging how affect impacts subject-making as students travel. There are also important insights that allow practitioners, teachers and programme co-ordinators to think strategically about how to better direct or address affective encounters in more meaningful and productive ways.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

Read freely available introduction.

Transforming Study Abroad

A Handbook

Neriko Musha Doerr

“Doerr’s work makes a unique contribution to the international education scholarship by grouping together the key terms supporting the dominant discourse and putting them under the spotlight for a closer examination. For easy practical reference, the author chooses to focus on one term in each chapter. While using theories to expose the study abroad clichés, the author manages to keep her language simple and easy to understand.” • McGill Journal of Education

Read freely available introduction.

Momentous Mobilities

Anthropological Musings on the Meanings of Travel

Noel B. Salazar

“Salazar’s book is immensely readable because he is not held back by writing regular academic prose. Momentous Mobilities, true to its subtitle, is an intense and meditative musing on the subject. It will be valuable to sociologists, anthropologists, scholars of migration, and non-specialists alike.” • JRAI

Volume 4, Worlds in Motion

Read freely available introduction.

Revisiting Austria

Tourism, Space, and National Identity, 1945 to the Present

Gundolf Graml

“Gundolf Graml’s book presents a fresh, enterprising assessment of the role played by tourism in the construction of ‘Austrianness’ under the Second Republic…[It] offers much to mull over and invigorates both tourism and Austrian history with new approaches.” • Journal of Austrian Studies

Volume 28, Austrian and Habsburg Studies

Read freely available introduction.

Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba

Valerio Simoni

“Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba offers useful material for academics such as ethnographers and sociologists and researchers in the business community, but also for politicians, tourists, and commercial enterprises to understand the nature and impact of the “Cuban hustler.” Well grounded in academic theory, it draws on prior investigations as well as the author’s own experiences over a ten-year period in Cuba.” • New West Indian Guide

Volume 38, New Directions in Anthropology

Read freely available introduction.

Travel and Representation

Edited by Garth Lean, Russell Staiff, and Emma Waterton

“This is a well-written book that disentangles, through sound interdisciplinary scholarship, the multiple workings of travel representations, their effects on people, and their limits…[It] is definitely recommended reading for graduate students and scholars with an interest in how travel, including tourism, is represented and how both travel and its representations mutually influence each other.” • JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)

Read freely available introduction.

The Good Holiday

Development, Tourism and the Politics of Benevolence in Mozambique

João Afonso Baptista

“What the book offers most is a rich, detailed, and highly personal account of how everyday life is experienced within a community centred on a developmentourism project. It also offers a valuable source of reflection on the process and challenges of doing ethnographic research, particularly in postcolonial settings. In this way, it stands as a useful ethnography to illustrate discussions of tourism, development, community, participation, governance – many of the concepts central to our teaching and whose complexity we often find so difficult to convey to students.” • Anthropos

Volume 30, EASA Series

Read freely available introduction.

Tourism Imaginaries

Anthropological Approaches

Edited by Noel B. Salazar and Nelson H. H. Graburn

“This book establishes ‘imaginaries’ as part of the conceptual apparatus of the anthropology of tourism [and] contributes to social anthropology more generally by exploring how tourism imaginaries intersect with broader cultural and ideological structures… The wealth of its ethnography, combined with its innovative conceptual approaches, exemplifies the strengths anthropology is bringing to interdisciplinary tourism studies.” · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Read freely available introduction.

Japanese Tourism

Spaces, Places and Structures

Carolin Funck and Malcolm Cooper

“The volume’s scope suggests how daunting the editors’ task was, and they do a credible job, addressing issues ranging from governmental policy to heritage tourism to the possibilities of virtual tourism in the 21st century.  This is a good introduction to the subject… what the authors do accomplish is significant, particularly for comparative tourism studies…Highly recommended.”  ·  Choice

Volume 5, Asia-Pacific Studies: Past and Present

For more content, you can browse our Travel and Tourism subject page here.

Berghahn Journals

JOURNEYS
The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing

Journeys ceased publication in 2022. All articles we currently publish for the journal, since 2000, are Free Access in order to ensure their ongoing availability.

Journeys is an interdisciplinary journal that explores travel as a practice and travel writing as a genre, reflecting the rich diversity of travel and journeys as social and cultural practices as well as their significance as metaphorical processes. The dual focus on experience and genre makes Journeys unique among scholarly journals concerning travel and is intended to draw into conversation scholars in such varied disciplines as anthropology, literary studies, social history, religious studies, human geography, and cultural studies.

Open Access Articles

ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURES
Hiking the Via Alpina: Logos, Eros and the Trails to Freedom
Jonathan Atari and Jackie Feldman (Vol. 32, Issue 2)

ANTHROPOLOGY IN ACTION
Tourism and COVID-19: Intimacy Transformed or Intimacy Interrupted?
Hazel Andrews (Vol. 27, Issue 2)

FOCAAL
Afterlives of depopulated places: Development through extractivism and rural tourism
Dragan Đunda (Vol. 2023, Issue 96)

MUSEUM WORLDS
Air Connectivity and Proximity of Large Airports as an Added Value for Museums
Lázaro Florido-Benítez (Vol. 11)

The Politics of Indigeneity and Heritage: Indonesian Mortuary Materials and Museums
Kathleen M. Adams (Vol. 8)

RELIGION AND SOCIETY
Discourses, Bodies, and Questions of Sharedness in Kenya’s Wellness Communities
Sarah M. Hillewaert (Vol. 12)

Totemic Outsiders: Ontological Transformation among the Makushi
James Andrew Whitaker (Vol. 12)

Free access to the following articles until October 5, 2024 with code TOURISM24 Redemption details: bit.ly/3F5lmqg

CONTENTION
Environmental Movement Interventions in Tourism and Energy Development in the North Atlantic: Connecting the Social Movement Societies and Players and Arenas Perspectives
Mark C.J. Stoddart, Alice Mattoni, and Elahe Nezhadhossein (Vol. 8, Issue 2)

FRENCH POLITICS, CULTURE & SOCIETY
Le Rallye Méditerranée-le Cap: Racing towards Eurafrica?
Megan Brown (Vol. 38, Issue 2)

ISRAEL STUDIES REVIEW
“Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv: Pride Tourism in Israel
Amit Kama and Yael Ram (Vol. 35, Issue 1)

NATURE AND CULTURE
Explicating Ecoculture: Tracing a Transdisciplinary Focal Concept
Melissa M. Parks (Vol. 15, Issue 1)

REGIONS & COHESION
Ciudades turísticas: ¿sostenibles? Caso Cancún
Pilivet Aguiar Alayola, Christine McCoy Cador, and Lucila Zárraga Cano (Vol. 11, Issue 2)

TRANSFERS
Essaying to Decenter the (White, Male, Elite) Tourist Gaze
Stephen L. Harp (Vol. 13, Issue 1-2)

Past, Present, and Future of Peripheral Mobilities in Portugal: The Portuguese Narrow-Gauge Railway System (1870s–2010s)
Hugo Silveira Pereira (Vol. 11, Issue 1)

Women in Translation Month

Happy Women in Translation Month! Initiated in 2014 by Meytal Radzinski, this year marks the 10-year anniversary of this celebration. WIT Month is an international and inclusive project that aims to get the voices of women — writing in languages other than English — heard, shared and discussed. There is a large gender disparity in translated literature, as demonstrated on the graphs below*. For example, women make up, at most, 34% of translated literature, and only 36% of writing translated into English comes from non-European countries, highlighting the necessary intersectionality of this project.

In honour of this month, we have compiled a collection of some of our titles featuring women in translation down below. These range from women’s narratives to academic research and essays.

*These figures are from the official WIT website but lacks dating. For more information, and an incredible list of further resources, please visit Women in Translation.

Paperback Available in September 2024

Law, History, and Justice

Debating German State Crimes in the Long Twentieth Century

Annette Weinke
Translated from the German by Nicholas Evangelos Levis

“This book is complicated, and not for the beginner. It covers much ground, and quickly. Weinke does not so much create a usable narrative as destroy usable, but unfortunately inaccurate, narratives. Her book should be required reading for anyone producing new scholarship in these fields.” • Journal of Modern History

Read Introduction

Girl in the Pandemic

Paperback Available

Escapees

The History of Jews Who Fled Nazi Deportation Trains in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands

Tanja von Fransecky
Translated from German by Benjamin Liebelt

“Fransecky’s accounts of the individual escapes offer an interesting and important addition to Holocaust literature.” • Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Read Introduction

Cosmopolitan Refugees

Paperback Available

Gulag Memories

The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia’s Repressive Past

Zuzanna Bogumił
Translated from the Polish by Philip Palmer

“[The book’s] considerable value as a contribution to Soviet and post‐Soviet memory studies is undeniable. Bogumił’s work should become a must‐read for everyone who works in the field of the memory of political repressions.” • Soviet & Post-Soviet Politics & Society

Read Introduction

Punching Back

Heirs of the Bamboo

Identity and Ambivalence among the Eurasian Macanese

Marisa C. Gaspar
Translated by Roopanjali Roy

“Focusing on the manipulation of language and food, Marisa Gaspar’s monograph constitutes obligatory reading for anyone who is puzzled by the way in which the past challenges the future and vice versa”. • João Pina-Cabral, University of Kent

Read Introduction

Paperback Available

The France of the Little-Middles

A Suburban Housing Development in Greater Paris

Marie Cartier, Isabelle Coutant, Olivier Masclet, and Yasmine Siblot
Translated by Juliette Rogers

“[The volume] shows the value of investigating middle-class Western neighborhoods and especially of the historical changes in such sites. The study is a contribution to the anthropology of Europe as well as to urban anthropology and to the anthropology of class, and it usefully complicates and even debunks some preconceptions about suburban life, immigration, class, and politics.” • Anthropology Review Database

Read Introduction

The Women’s Camp in Moringen

A Memoir of Imprisonment in Germany 1936-1937

Gabriele Herz
Translated by Hildegard Herz and Howard Hartig

“These memoirs by Gabriele Herz have great significance in that they describe the experiences of a Jewish woman as well as that of non-Jewish prisoners, as seen by her, during the early years of national-socialist internment policy. In this sense it is a rare document of the literature of memories.”  ·  H-Soz.-u.Kult

The Journalism of Milena Jesenská

A Critical Voice in Interwar Central Europe

Edited and translated from the Czech

“Jesenská’s essays offer firsthand observations on a society that was slowly imploding between the years 1920 and 1939 [and] will certainly encourage lively classroom debates (especially in women’s studies, political science and history courses) concerning politics, the condition of women, and social problems of yesterday and today.”   · Slavic and East European Journal

A Year of Revolutions

Fanny Lewald’s Recollections of 1848

Translated, edited, and annotated by Hanna Ballin Lewis

“… if the reader wishes to hear the street cries of the revolution, climb the barricades …, experience the hopes and anxieties of a city gripped with political uncertainty and stripped of its trees from the boulevards, and witness the actress Rachel Felix sing the Marseillaise at the end of her performance …, then this is the book to buy.”  · French History

To see more of our titles on Gender Studies, follow this link.

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 

Special Issue: A Hundred Years of International Women’s Day in CESEE

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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Essential Reads for World Refugee Day

June 20th is designated World Refugee Day by the United Nations to bring awareness to the plight of millions of refugees throughout the world and also to honour their strength and perseverance.

Berghahn Books publishes many studies on the lives and the plights of refugees globally. Find our latest titles here along with a selection of classic Open Access titles. Berghahn Journals is also offering free access to related articles and special issues. See below for details.

Continue reading “Essential Reads for World Refugee 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!” →

Celebrating International Day for Monuments & Sites, also known as World Heritage Day!

Celebrated yearly on April 18th, the International Day for Monuments and Sites, also known as World Heritage Day, encourages local communities and individuals throughout the world to consider the importance of cultural heritage to their lives and to promote awareness of its diversity and vulnerability and the efforts required to protect and conserve it. For information on this year’s theme please visit ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) webpage www.icomos.org.

In joining the celebration, Berghahn is excited to present relevant Heritage Studies titles and Journals, as well as highlight our Explorations in Heritage Studies series.

Continue reading “Celebrating International Day for Monuments & Sites, also known as World Heritage Day!” →