Tag: new book releases

A Moving Picture: The Evolution of Africa on Screen

The perception of Africa through the lens has certainly changed since the films of the 1950s. That change in the way viewers see Africa in twenty-first century film is the topic of Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema, published in June 2013. Below, the collection editor Nigel Eltringham discusses the changing frame of Africa in mainstream cinema.

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In November 2004, I attended the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in New Orleans. A flier inserted into the conference programme invited participants to a private screening of a new film, Hotel Rwanda, at a small arts cinema nearby.

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Bittersweet Europe: A Study of Albania and Georgia

Adrian Brisku connects two seemingly disconnected European experiences—those of Georgia and Albania—in Bittersweet Europe: Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008, to be published this month. Brisku shares the triumphs and difficulties of the writing process, and what interested him in the area to begin with, below.

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Berghahn Books: What drew you to the study of Albania and Georgia, especially as they exist within the larger European framework?

 

Adrian Brisku: I had written about Albanian debates on ‘Europe’ while living in Georgia—from the year 2001 to 2005.

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The Hearth of the Home

Editors David G. Anderson, Robert P. Wishart, and Virginie Vaté look from many angles—history, cosmology, and architecture—at the idea of home in About the Hearth: Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North, which will be published next month. Below, co-editor Wishart discusses the importance of home and shares a bit about how life is constructed in the Arctic North.

 

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Berghahn Books: What drew you ‘to the hearth,’ or to the study of the home in the circumpolar north?

 

Robert P. Wishart: For myself it came originally through observations on the importance of building cabins among the Gwich’in.

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Knowledge, an Anthropological Commodity

Within the pages of his newly published book, An Anthropological Trompe L’Oeil for a Common World: An Essay On The Economy Of Knowledge, published by Berghahn last month, Alberto Corsín Jiménez addresses the value and framework of knowledge, theory, and scholarship. Below the author discusses the sources of inspiration for the book, the commodity of knowledge, and the trick that not everything is exactly as it first appears.

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Although I did not quite know it at the time, I began writing this book roughly at the time of my appointment to a university lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2003.

 

The university had only just merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology — a merger hailed in various contexts as a harbinger of the changes to come in UK higher education. Continue reading “Knowledge, an Anthropological Commodity” →

‘Pregnancy in Practice’ and a Royal Baby

Parents preparing to welcome a new bundle of joy follow certain conventions, from decorating the nursery to deciding on baby names, explains Sallie Han in her newly released volume, Pregnancy in Practice: Expectation and Experience in the Contemporary US. Below the author discusses the recent royal birth along these guidelines and explains that though they may be parents of the future King of England, Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton are perhaps not so different from common parents as thought.

 

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The Duchess of Cambridge and I have this in common: We shared a due date. She is the new mother of a future King of England. I am the new author of a book, Pregnancy in Practice: Expectation and Experience in the Contemporary US. I believe that the period of gestation for my book has been considerably longer.

 

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Hot Off the Presses – New Paperback Releases

 

HeinonenYouth

Newly released paperbacks from Berghahn:

Youth Gangs and Street Children: Culture, Nurture and Masculinity in Ethiopia, Paula Heinonen

Funerals in Africa: Explorations of a Social Phenomenon, Michael Jindra and Joël Noret

Gardening the World: Agency, Identity and the Ownership of Water, Veronica Strang

Growing Up in Central Australia: New Anthropological Studies of Aboriginal Children and Adolescence, Ute Eickelkamp

Hot Off the Presses – New Book Releases

Newly released titles from Berghahn’s Anthropology, Colonialism, Economics, Politics, and HistoryCorsinAnthropological lists:

Creating a Nation with Cloth: Women, Wealth, and Tradition in the Tongan Diaspora, Ping-Ann Addo

Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, Josep M. Fradera and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara

An Anthropological Trompe L’Oeil for a Common World: An Essay on the Economy of Knowledge, Alberto Corsín Jiménez

Framing Africa Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema, Nigel Eltringham

Tax Justice and the Political Economy of Global Capitalism, 1945 to the Present, Jeremy Leaman and Attiya Waris

Routes into the Abyss Coping with Crises in the 1930s, Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner

Bedouin of Mount Sinai: An Anthropological Study of their Political Economy, Emanuel Marx

Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Family Upheaval Generation, Mobility and Relatedness among Pakistani Migrants in Denmark, Mikkel Rytter

Up Close and Personal: On Peripheral Perspectives and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge, Cris Shore and Susanna Trnka

Astonishment and Evocation: The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology, Ivo Strecker and Markus Verne

The Gaddi Beyond Pastoralism: Making Place in the Indian Himalayas, Anja Wagner

The Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and Commemoration, Anton Weiss-Wendt

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Mount Sinai

In this excerpt from his new book The Bedouin of Mount Sinai: An Anthropological Study of their Political Economy, published June 2013, Emmanuel Marx reflects on how a short visit led to a decade-long study of the Bedouin people of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

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Soon after the Israeli forces occupied Sinai in 1967 the peninsula was inundated with many kinds of tourists and journalists. I avidly listened to their glowing accounts of the Bedouin of Sinai. Yet for several years I hesitated to visit Sinai. I wavered between fear and hope that I would be tempted to study the Bedouin, and again experience the intellectual and emotional tumult of my earlier study of the Negev Bedouin.

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Writing the Wrongs of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, published June 2013, offers a wide-ranging view of the Spanish slave trade, from Caribbean trafficking to Spanish antislavery protests. Editors Josep M. Fradera and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara speak to the trials and rewards of editing the collection of work, their influences, and a prediction of what will be the future important studies in the field.

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Berghahn Books: What drew each of you to the study of the Spanish empire’s Atlantic holdings?

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Successful Transformation or Failed Transition: ‘United Germany’ Presents Lively Debate

East meets West in United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects, to be published this month, a collection of works that compares and contrasts German sentiments since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly a quarter of a century ago. Editor Konrad Jarausch answers questions about the collection and the roots of his passion for the subject.

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What drew you to the study of Germany’s re-unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

 

Since we had just bought an apartment at the Bayerischer Platz in Schöneberg during the summer of 1989, I was able to witness a good deal of the “peaceful revolution” firsthand. Moreover, as co-chair of an IREX commission of GDR and U.S. historians I became personally involved in the transition difficulties of my East German colleagues. After so many decades of Cold War stagnation, it seemed that history had returned with a vengeance – posing a challenge for explanation which I could not resist.

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