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 TremayneFounding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. InhornWilliam K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip KreagerDirector, 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-FloydRice University, Houston and Ashish PremkumarFeinberg 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.

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 TremayneFounding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Affiliate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Marcia C. InhornWilliam K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University, and Philip KreagerDirector, 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


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!”

AUTHOR ARTICLE: Weary Warriors: Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers (Open Access)

As the paperback edition of their acclaimed Weary Warriors volume is published, Pamela Moss and Michael J. Prince have kindly written this exclusive look at the issue it tackles, the profound distress and disorders experienced by military personnel. They also discuss how these effects of service have been represented by different generations in novels, television and film, notably All Quiet on the Western Front.

Continue reading “AUTHOR ARTICLE: Weary Warriors: Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers (Open Access)”

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Angela Rong Yang Zhang on At Home in a Nursing Home

ANGELA RONG YANG ZHANG received the Australian Government Postgraduate Award and Emerging Researchers in Ageing Conference Bursary in 2015 and is currently Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) Grant supported researcher at College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University, Australia. Dr Zhang is also an Adjunct Fellow to School of Social Sciences at The University of Adelaide.

In this exclusive interview, Angela explores the inspiration and issues behind her new book, At Home in a Nursing Home: An Ethnography of Movement and Care in Australia.

Continue reading “AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Angela Rong Yang Zhang on At Home in a Nursing Home”

Author interview (PART 2): ANNA ODLAND PORTISCH on A MAGPIE’S TALE

In the concluding part of our discussion of her new book A Magpie’s Tale, Anna tells us about the family she stayed with for the best part of a year – with sometimes as many as ten people in their small, two-room house – and how dramatic economic and political changes drastically changed the lives of many Kazakh families in Mongolia.

Read more: Author interview (PART 2): ANNA ODLAND PORTISCH on A MAGPIE’S TALE Continue reading “Author interview (PART 2): ANNA ODLAND PORTISCH on A MAGPIE’S TALE”

AUTHOR INTERVIEW(part 1): Anna Odland Portisch on A MAGPIE’S TALE

ANNA ODLAND PORTISCH has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Brunel University. In her new book A Magpie’s Tale: Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives on the Kazakh of Western Mongolia she recounts her time living with a Kazakh family in a small village.

It’s fascinating (“Can you imagine a stranger showing up on your doorstep and asking to stay for a year?”) and highly evocative (“It was so cold that night, the next morning the driver had to bring the engine back to life by lighting a small fire underneath the car”) and it gave us so much to discuss that we’ve split our discussion into two parts.

Anna’s story begins here and Part Two will follow very soon.

Continue reading “AUTHOR INTERVIEW(part 1): Anna Odland Portisch on A MAGPIE’S TALE”