Tag: new in paperback

Tradition Taboo: Disagreements between Common Practice and Public Discourse

Hans Steinmüller’s Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China is now available in paperback. The ethnography explores the moral uncertainties experienced by the people of the village of Zhongba in Central China as they navigate and balance the expectations of capitalism and their traditional culture. The author offers a reflection on his fieldwork in rural China and insights into Chinese culture in the following post.

 

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The main idea of ‘Communities of Complicity’ has to do with the delicate relationship between vernacular practices and official discourse in rural China. In regards to geomancy (fengshui), rituals, gifting, and corruption discourse, for instance, official representations are often inconsistent with local practice. While it is very common to invite ritual masters for family celebrations and to give money gifts at such occasions, these practices are often described in public discourse as backwards and corrupt.

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Simulated Shelves: Browse March 2015 New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published March 2015 titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Colonialism, Education, Global Health, History, Medical Anthropology, Politics, Theory & Methodology in Anthropology, and Urban Studies, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

We are especially excited to announce the publication of the paperback edition of CIVILIZING NATURE edited by Bernhard Gissibl, Sabine Höhler and Patrick Kupper.

“This book makes a unique contribution to the conservation literature by enhancing one’s understanding and appreciation of the cultural meaning of nature conservation through the lens of national park development. […] Highly recommended.” · Choice

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NIMBY IS BEAUTIFUL
Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation Around the World
Edited by Carol Hager and Mary Alice Haddad

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#MuseumWeek 2015

Museum Week is international: more than 800 museums, galleries and cultural institutions from across the UK, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania — 29 countries in total — are officially participating in this, the first ever international Museum Week on twitter, March 23-29. ‪#‎MuseumWeek‬ 2015!

Happy Museum Week from Berghahn! Read a FREE virtual issue on Museums from Berghahn Journals: http://bit.ly/P0ugcB  

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Berghahn is delighted to present some of the latest Museum Studies titles:

 

Museums and Collections Series: This series explores the potential of museum collections to transform our knowledge of the world, and for exhibitions to influence the way in which we view and inhabit that world. It offers essential reading for those involved in all aspects of the museum sphere: curators, researchers, collectors, students and the visiting public.

 

Forthcoming! Volume 8

MUSEUM WEBSITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Issues of Participation, Sustainability, Trust and Diversity
Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws

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Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality

Today (March 18th) is Goddess of Fertility Day, a time when Aphrodite and other gods and goddesses of fertility are honored by pagans throughout the world in celebration of life and fertility.

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Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality 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. Below is a selection of forthcoming & newly published titles within the series:

 

Volume 30 Forthcoming!

THAI IN VITRO
Gender, Culture and Assisted Reproduction
Andrea Whittaker

 

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National Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month is an annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It is celebrated during March in the United States, and across Europe, corresponding with International Women’s Day on March 8. All around the world, National Women’s History Month & International Women’s day present an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality!

 

Berghahn invites you to explore a special issue of Aspasia devoted to International Women’s Day. The year 2010 marked the centennial of International Women’s Day, and the year 2011 marked the centennial of its first celebrations. Inspired by these events, this issue deals with “A Hundred Years of International Women’s Day in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.” Read more.

 

Berghahn is also pleased to offer a 25% discount on any of our Gender Studies books on orders placed within the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code IWD15.

 

GENDER HISTORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Edited by Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug

 

 

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Supercinematic Projection: Author Looks toward Future of Film Studies

Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age, originally published in May 2013, is now available in paperback. Following, author William Brown reflects on the book as a launching pad for his own studies and what he perceives as the forward trajectory of film studies. This post pairs with his reflection on the book’s initial release, which can be read here.

 

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The argument in Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age is about the depiction and possible meanings of the continuous times and spaces that contemporary mainstream cinema often seems to depict thanks to the aesthetic possibilities opened up to, or at the very least made more easily achievable by, cinema as a result of digital technology.

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Identity at the Intersection of Science and Culture

Drawing on the work of medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science, and sociologists, Identity Politics and the New Genetics: Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging explores how science and culture are used to create and perpetuate ideas of race and ethnicity. The volume was published as a paperback in November. Following, David Skinner, who co-edited the volume with Katharina Schramm and Richard Rottenburg, reflects on the volume’s reception and its distinction from other volumes on genetics and social history.

 

As the attention devoted to science journalist Nicholas Wade’s recent book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History illustrates, discussion of race and genetics is habitually deemed ‘difficult’ or ‘controversial’. Wade is one of a long line of writers who portray themselves as fearless truth-seekers battling the politically correct consensus that races are social not biological types.

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Simulated Shelves: Browse January 2015 New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published January 2015 titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Economics, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Medical Anthropology, and Politics, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

 

We are especially excited to announce the publication of JESUS RECLAIMED: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene by Walter Homolka

“This book offers a constructive contribution to the debates on the theological significance of Jewish and Christian approaches to the historical Jesus. The author’s knowledge of Jewish and Christian discourses on both sides of the Atlantic is impressive.” · Werner G. Jeanrond, University of Oxford

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JESUS RECLAIMED
Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene
Walter Homolka
Translated by Ingrid Shafer

 

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International Holocaust Remembrance Day

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly, is an international memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews, 1 million Gypsies, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

 

January 27th, 2015 also marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ most notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most of about 1.1 million people that passed through the gates between 1940 and 1945 never left, many of them murdered in the camp’s gas chambers. Only some 200,000 are believed to have survived that fate. No one knows how many of the survivors remain alive today, but it’s a group that is dwindling as age takes its toll. To mark the liberation’s anniversary, about 300 former Auschwitz prisoners are travelling to Oświęcim, Poland, to pay tribute on Jan. 27 at Birkenau’s Gate of Death, the unloading ramp at the camp’s rail entrance.

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In honor of the UN’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Berghahn has made several relevant journal articles freely available through a special virtual issue. You may access the issue through this link: bit.ly/Holocaust-Remembrance-Day

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Berhahn Books would also like to present a selection of relevant titles on the history of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

 

JEWISH HISTORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST
New Transnational Approaches
Edited by Norman J. W. Goda

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Today in History

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin (Russian: Ле́нин) died of a brain hemorrhage on January 21st, 1924 at the age of 54. Lenin was one of the Russian leading political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century. He masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in 1917 serving as head of government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. Under his administration, the Russian Empire was replaced by the Soviet Union and all wealth including land, industry and business was nationalized.

Lenin had a significant influence not only on the history of Russia but on the international Communist movement and was one of the most influential and controversial figures of the 20th century. Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, reverence for Lenin declined among the post-Soviet generations, yet he remains an important historical figure for the Soviet-era generations.

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Berghahn Books presents a selection of titles on Russian & Soviet history and culture:

 

Forthcoming in Paperback!

RUSSIAN POSTMODERNISM
New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture
Mikhail N. Epstein, Alexander A. Genis, and Slobodanka M. Vladiv-Glover
With an Introduction by Thomas Epstein

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