Research Associate, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Author of Religious Sensibilities in Pursuit of Sexual Well-Being: African Diasporic Communities in the Netherlands Berghahn Books, 2024
It has been just over a year since the publication of Religious Sensibilities in Pursuit of Sexual Well-Being. At the time, I imagined I was closing a chapter, a culmination of years of ethnographic fieldwork, conceptual struggle, and writing that was a delicate balancing act, supported by many people. But in truth, the book’s release opened a new set of conversations, ones that have drawn me even more deeply into the historical, political, and ethical worlds that shaped its very premise.
Over the past year, I have presented the book in diverse contexts, including African Studies symposia, anthropology and religious studies classes/departments/conferences, as well as migrant justice collectives. Each space brought with it a different set of concerns, frameworks, and questions. And across these differences, I was reminded again and again that the book’s themes, sexual well-being, religious ethics, diaspora, and gender, do not sit quietly within disciplinary borders. They provoke, challenge, and resonate in ways that often exceed the text itself.
Looking back now, I see the book not only as an ethnography of Ghanaian- and Somali-Dutch communities in the Netherlands, but as a critical inquiry into the afterlives of slavery, colonial Christianity and racialised governance. It is a study of how these legacies continue to shape intimate life, influencing how people embody modesty, interpret sacred texts, negotiate kinship obligations, and imagine pleasure, all under the weight of racial and moral surveillance.
Religious Sensibilities: Between Embodiment and Inheritance
The book explored how people navigate intimate lives not despite religion, but often through it. What I foregrounded was not a story of sexual repression versus liberation, but the complex labour of ethical life, how individuals grapple with competing norms, desires, and obligations to cultivate a sense of what it means to live well. This meant attending to everyday gestures and moral decisions, sometimes quiet, sometimes ambivalent, that cannot easily be subsumed under narratives of resistance or compliance.
Over the past year, as I have returned to ethnographic research and comparative histories of colonialism, slavery, and Christianity in West Africa and the Caribbean, I have gained a deeper understanding of the historical depth of these sensibilities. The moral grammars I encountered in diasporic communities are beyond the outcome of contemporary migration or multicultural politics. They are part of a much longer genealogy of moral regulation, bodily discipline, and spiritual inheritance, shaped through missionary violence, colonial gender norms, and resistance.
Gender, Sexuality, and the Racialisation of Religion
From the beginning, I was struck by how Dutch public discourse racialises and pathologises the sexuality of Africans and their communities, especially when they are assumed to be religious. Liberal secularism is often mobilised as a moral high ground, where “gender equality” and “queer rights” become means to reinforce exclusion, police migrant bodies and reassert Eurocentric norms of intimacy and modernity.
And yet, within this fraught terrain, the people I worked with refused to be legible through dominant frameworks. They did not conform to scripts of victimhood or emancipation. They thought deeply about ethical life, whether navigating expectations around sexual purity, asserting care and authority in marriage, or experimenting with new forms of religious engagement. Many research participants demanded a new kind of analytical grammar, one that could hold ambivalence and relationality without flattening complexity.
In conversations across various spaces and settings, I was continually pushed to clarify: What does agency mean in a context of structural constraint? How do we theorise desire and well-being beyond Western liberal paradigms? These are academic, ethical and political questions.
Migration as Afterlife
Migration is too often reduced to routes, borders, and integration policies. But I have come to explore migration as something more temporal: an unfolding of afterlives. The migration of people is also the migration of histories, cosmologies, gendered scripts, and unresolved colonial memories and legacies.
To pursue “sexual well-being” as a migrant subject is beyond negotiating between cultures. It is to live within the resonance of multiple inheritances, to carry theological traditions, kinship disciplines, and embodied memories and legacies of empire, even as one navigates various social and moral terrains.
Living Theory: What the Book Has Taught Me
What the past year has taught me through dialogue, critique, and generous engagement is that Religious Sensibilities is not a book about answers. It is about ways of attending: to silence, hesitation, contradiction, and improvisation. It asks what happens when we take people’s moral reasoning seriously, not as proof of their assimilation or resistance. I have learned so much from the conversations and interactions that have emerged from the book’s publication, and I am deeply grateful for the insights and perspectives shared.
I am also reminded that scholarship is not about closure, but about ongoing ethical responsibility, to history, to complexity, and to the people who allow us to learn from their lives.
Religious Sensibilities in Pursuit of Sexual Well-Being was never meant to provide a final word. It was to open a space where intimate life could be thought with the seriousness, tenderness, and critical depth it deserves.
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For Michael Haneke’s birthday, we have put together some of our relevent titles looking at the film director.
We have also collected some some Film Studies series, and Open Access Film and Television Studies for further browsing. For more content, you can also check out our website by Subject: Film and Television Studies here, or browse by Area, such as Europe, here.
The Ethic of the Image
Catherine Wheatley
“Wheatley provides excellent close readings of a number of films and crucial film scenes. The book as a whole could be used in conjunction with a film course on Haneke, or its various chapters would lend themselves to discussions in graduate and even undergraduate courses on contemporary European film…The writing style is clear and while it pursues a critical theoretical analysis, it remains free from jargon. “ · Monatshefte
Volume 7, Film Europa
SHORT-LISTED FOR BEST MOVING IMAGE BOOK BY THE AND/OR BOOK AWARDS; SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2009 WILLY HAAS AWARD; NOMINATED SIGHT & SOUND MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE MONTH, SEPTEMBER 2009
The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary German and Austrian Cinema
Leila Mukhida
Through illuminating explorations of Michael Haneke, Valeska Grisebach, Andreas Dresen, and other filmmakers of the post-reunification era, Mukhida develops an analysis centered on film aesthetics and experience, showing how medium-specific devices like lighting, sound, and mise-en-scène can help to cultivate political sensitivity in spectators.
Volume 23, Film Europa
Read freely available introduction.
Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema
A Beauvoirian Perspective
Edited by Jean-Pierre Boulé and Ursula Tidd
This book is an attempt to redress this balance and reopen the dialogue between Beauvoir’s writings and film studies. The authors analyse a range of films, from directors including Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Sam Mendes, and Sally Potter, by drawing from Beauvoir’s key works such as The Second Sex (1949), The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and Old Age (1970).
Read freely available introduction.
Edited by Robert von Dassanowsky and Oliver C. Speck
Out of a film culture originally starved of funds have emerged rich and eclectic works by film-makers that are now achieving the international recognition that they deserve: Barbara Albert, Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl, and Stefan Ruzowitzky, to give four examples. This comprehensive critical anthology, by leading scholars of Austrian film, is intended to introduce and make accessible this much under-represented phenomenon.
Read freely available introduction.
Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema
A Sartrean Perspective
Edited by Jean-Pierre Boulé and Enda MacCaffrey
At the heart of this volume is the assertion that Sartrean existentialism, most prominent in the 1940s, particularly in France, is still relevant as a way of interpreting the world today. […] In a scholarly yet accessible style, the contributors exploit the rich interplay between Sartre’s philosophy, plays and novels, and a number of contemporary films including No Country for Old Men, Lost in Translation and The Truman Show, with film-makers including the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, and Mike Leigh.
Read freely available introduction.
Additional Recommendation: A Title on Austrian Film
Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema
Nationhood, Genre and Masculinity
Maria Fritsche
“An extraordinary work, in Postwar Austrian Cinema adds to its lucid presentation of the social and aesthetic dynamics of Austrian national cinema after 1945 a welcome number of superb readings of better and lesser-known films. The period is unlikely to be served by a more thoughtful and attentive analysis any time soon.” • Austrian History Yearbook
Volume 15, Film Europa
Film Book Series
Browse Film Europa
“This is a series which, in a very short period of time, has had a huge impact on the field.” · Monatshefte
German cinema is normally seen as a distinct form, but this series emphasizes connections, influences, and exchanges of German cinema across national borders, as well as its links with other media and art forms. Individual titles present traditional historical research (archival work, industry studies) as well as new critical approaches in film and media studies (theories of the transnational), with a special emphasis on the continuities associated with popular traditions and local perspectives.
Browse Visual And Media Cultures Of The Cold War And Beyond
Published by Berghahn Books and the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
This interdisciplinary series focuses on a range of visual and media cultures in and beyond the Cold War period (1945-1991) in both social and transnational contexts. It explores ways in which film and other media, their creators and audiences, and industries and states participated in, were shaped by and, in turn, shaped cultural relations during the Cold War. Beyond 1991, this series also welcomes interdisciplinary explorations of the legacies of the Cold War and its ongoing cultural impact in a global context.
Check out some of our Open Access Film and Television Studies titles. Browse more here.
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For Andrzej Wajda’s birthday, we have put together some of our titles looking at the Polish film director, as well as some titles on Eastern European cinema, down below.
For more content, you can browse our website by Subject: Film and Television Studies here, or browse by Area: Central/Eastern Europe here.
Open Access
From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest
Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present
Ewa Mazierska
Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Andrzej Wajda.
Read freely available introduction, and more with open access.
A History
Marek Haltof
First published in 2002, Marek Haltof’s seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe’s most distinguished—yet unjustly neglected—film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieślowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.
Read freely available introduction.
Politics and Memory
Marek Haltof
During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (1948) and Aleksander Ford’s Border Street (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda’s A Generation (1955) and Andrzej Munk’s The Passenger (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an “organized silence” regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue 8 (1988), Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski’s Keep Away from the Window (2000), and Roman Polański’s The Pianist (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland’s national memory.
Read freely available introduction.
History, Politics & Nostalgia In Polish Cinema
Janina Falkowska
“Falkowska’s comprehensive survey of Wajda’s artistic evolution is a worthwhile addition to the growing critical literature on this exceptional filmmaker. In practical terms, the monographs is also useable as a textbook and…can serve as a point of departure for the continuing discourse von Andrzej Wajda and his films.” · Slavic and East European Journal
The Political Films of Andrzej Wajda
Dialogism in Man of Marble, Man of Iron, and Danton
Janina Falkowska
Andrzej Wajda is considered one of Poland’s – many would say the world’s – greatest film directors. During the thirty-five years of his activity in film, theatre or television, his work, whether strong or weak, always arouses strong emotions and provokes intense debates in the media. His films deal with historical and political issues concerning Polish character and the nature of political power. Controversial, painful, stimulating and cinematically beautiful, they never fail to fully engage the spectator. This is particularly true for his major political films, which form the basis of the study. Applying Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, the author shows how a creative interaction between the image on the screen and the viewer is established through Wajda‘s films. At the same time, she offers a detailed analysis of the historical events leading up to the collapse of the Socialist system in Poland.
You might also be interested in…
Journals
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November 19th is International Men’s Day, which recognises “worldwide the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities […] highlight[ing] positive role models and raise awareness of men’s well-being”. The official theme for 2024 is “Positive Male Role Models”. This information has been taking from the official site. You can read more on International Men’s Day from their website here.
In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our titles looking at men’s studies right below, but you can also browse our website by Subject: Gender Studies and Sexuality here for more.
Following that, we have put together a small collection of some of our open access titles looking at men’s studies. You can browse our full collection of Open Access Gender Studies here, all entirely free to read, as well as in other subjects.
Further down, we have also listed some relevant journals.
At the bottom of this blog, we have attached four recent and relevant external author materials, including a BBC article, a Telegraph article, an author podcast interview, and a university interview with editors.
Click here to expand text for the details.
- BBC article ‘The real reason for the rise in male childlessness’ by Stephanie Hegarty (November 2024) including research from Berghahn Books publication ‘How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?‘ by Robin A. Hadley.
- Author podcast from October 2024 by New Books Network, hosted by Dr. Miranda Melcher, interviewing author Dr Meghana Joshi on her recent Berghahn Books publication ‘Children are Everywhere‘.
- Interview from Arizona State University article as ‘ASU faculty member celebrates first anniversary of co-edited book […] anniversary coincides with International Day of the Girl Child, celebrating the importance of gender equality for children‘ (October 2024) on Berghahn Book ‘Girls in Global Development‘, and in conversation with its editors Heather Switzer, Karishma Desai, and Emily Bent.
- Telegraph article ‘The crushing truth about being childless at 64’ (November 2024) by Robin Hadley, author of Berghahn Books publication ‘How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?‘.
We have also attached six of our previous Berghahn Blog Materials that are tied to Men’s Studies.
Click here to expand text for more details.
- AUTHOR ARTICLE by Pamela Moss and Michael J. Prince on their Open Access book ‘Weary Warriors: Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers’.
- AUTHOR INTERVIEW with Theodoros Rakopoulos on his Open Access book ‘From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily’
- AUTHOR ARTICLE ‘Clothes, Men, Instagram – suits you sir’ by Joshua M. Bluteau, in relation to his book Dressing Up: Menswear in the Age of Social Media
- AUTHOR ARTICLE ‘Myths Around Men’ by Dr Robin A Hadley, in relation to his book ‘How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?: Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted’
- BOOK EXCERPT ‘Does the Man Make the Motorcycle or the Motorcycle the Man?‘ by Sasha Disko from his book ‘The Devil’s Wheels: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic’
- BERGHAHN ARTICLE ‘A place for sexually variant and gender non-conforming America’ with three book recommendations.
Lastly, we want to highlight our ongoing sale, which some of the titles in this blog are included in.
Click here to expand text for more details.
In 2024, Berghahn Books is celebrating 30 years as a family-run press, and we want to thank you for your support! To celebrate, we are offering 30% off our top 30 all-time bestsellers in each of our biggest subjects. As well as 30% off our frontlist titles from January to June of 2024! Use code BERGHAHN30 for 30% off, available in all formats until December 31st, 2024.
Please click here to browse our full selection of titles on sale now!
Featured Books in Gender Studies looking at Men’s Studies
This title is currently on sale! enter code BERGHAHN30 in the cart for 30% off!
African Americans and Germany since 1933
Nadja Klopprogge
Intimate Histories focuses on intimate relations as sites of shared pasts connecting African American and German history in the years between 1933 and 1990. By tracing topics that include anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilization, casual sexual encounters, marriage, and friendships, Intimate Histories broadens our understanding of African American–German relations during the so-called “century of extremes.”
Volume 12, Explorations in Culture and International History
Read freely available introduction here.
Fixing Motorcycles in Post-Repair Societies
Technology, Aesthetics and Gender
Gabriel Jderu
“The book draws attention to an overlooked area of mobility studies—repair and maintenance. It inventively demonstrates the social and political dimensions of technology and is especially attentive to gender distinctions and differences.” • Suzanne Ferriss, Nova Southeastern University
Volume 3, Politics of Repair
Read freely available introduction here.
A Papuan Nature
Marta Rohatynskyj
The practice of affiliating the female child with the mother and the male child with the father was considered a rare and inexplicable practice in Papua New Guinean ethnography at the time the original data was collected some forty years ago. Marta Rohatynskyj undertakes a shift in her analytical concepts of kinship studies to reveal the deep-seated disjuncture between female and male that this practice represents. The author argues that this practice is associated with a totemic/animistic ontology and has currency in a particular type of Melanesian society.
Volume 14, ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology
Read freely available introduction here.
Gender, Power, and Non-Governance
Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State?
Edited by Andria D. Timmer and Elizabeth Wirtz
“Focusing on the gendered nature of NGO-state relationships it offers a wide spectrum of case studies covering all regions of the world. Diversity is an important asset of the volume: diversity of countries-from different regions, of different sizes, from different type of states (weak or strong), but also diversity of types of NGOs analyzed, diversity of topics proposed.” • Laura Grünberg, University of Bucharest
Read freely available introduction here.
Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon
Uroš Kovač
“The author has not only written one of the few anthropological accounts exploring the relations between neoliberalism, Pentecostalism, masculinity, and the commercialization of professional sports, but also refutes too easily made assumptions about a crisis of masculinity affecting societies on the African continent and elsewhere.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Read freely available introduction here.
Gender and Status in Europe in the Middle Ages
Edited by Katherine Weikert and Elena Woodacre
“This is a stimulating collection overall that contains a number of well-written contributions inviting any reader to ask more questions. The book convincingly shows what paying attention to the construction of gendered identities can bring to our understanding of medieval societies, their texts, and objects.” • H-Soz-Kult
Read freely available introduction here.
How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?
Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted
Robin A. Hadley
“a groundbreaking book shining the light on men and their experiences, how men may feel when they don’t end up having children for one reason or another e.g. not meeting the right person, infertility.” • Guild of Health Writers
Volume 48, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
Read freely available introduction here.
Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality
Edited by Timothy Shary
“The organizational scheme is laudable—Shary includes essays on individual films, auteurs, decades, and national cinemas. Future works on boyhood in cinema could build on any of these organizational categories to contribute to this nascent field…Highly Recommended.” • Choice
Read freely available introduction here.
Modernity and the Unmaking of Men
Violeta Schubert
“This book contains a wealth of ethnographic detail on kinship, marriage, and masculinity in rural Macedonia in the post-Socialist period. With her focus on “the village scape,” Schubert adds fresh insights to understandings of modernity and the state.” • Deborah Reed-Danahay, University of Buffalo
Volume 1, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
Read freely available introduction here.
Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918
Jiří Hutečka
“Hutečka accomplished his goal of using gender to illuminate Czech soldiers’ motivation. He deserves praise for writing an effective and useful book that should be read by students and historians of gender and war.” • Journal of Military History
Volume 26, Austrian and Habsburg Studies
Read freely available introduction here.
Masculinity, Sexuality, and Biosociality in Denmark
Sebastian Mohr
“An important, original contribution to the anthropology of reproduction. Mohr does an excellent job of presenting multiple, fascinating perspectives on this subject. The ethnographic material is superb and his framing of it is appropriate and convincing.” • Linda Layne, University of Cambridge
Volume 40, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
Read freely available introduction here.
Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times
Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Nefissa Naguib
“This volume is an important correction to various types of literature, from within anthropology as well as from other disciplinary fields… it will become a significant contribution to the field of masculinity in general and to Muslim men in particular.” • Leif Manger, University of Bergen
Volume 38, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
Read freely available introduction here.
Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Nefissa Naguib
Open Access Books in Gender Studies looking at Men’s Studies
Here are some of our relevent open access titles. Browse our full collection of Open Access Gender Studies here, all entirely free to read.
From Our Blog: Author interviews, author articles, excerpts…
Pamela Moss and Michael J. Prince
Open Access
“Gaining insight into the effects of various configurations of power and knowledge, including future analyses of moral injury, toxic masculinity, structural racism, and political extremism, can open up more space to address the restrictions imposed on the burned-out soldiers’ minds, bodies, and souls.”
Theodoros Rakopoulos
Open Access
“The continuity here reflects kinship, clanship, genealogy, and ideologies of masculinity that cannot be underestimated. “
Clothes, Men, Instagram – suits you sir
by Joshua M. Bluteau
“[F]rom the bespoke tailor’s shops of London’s Savile Row through to the social media platform Instagram, and casts an anthropological lens on men, their clothes, social media use, and notions of individuality.”
Myths around Men
by Dr Robin A Hadley
“There are many myths around men, manhood and masculinity when it comes to both age and reproduction.”
Does the Man Make the Motorcycle or the Motorcycle the Man? by Sasha Disko
“[I]n the discourse of motorcycling as a whole, proper masculinity was rhetorically disassociated from conspicuous consumption. The act of masculine consumption was concealed behind the twin pillars of modern manliness: production and possession”
A place for sexually variant and gender non-conforming America
“[F]eaturing titles edited by Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate that emphasize the history and preservation of two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer settings in the United States.”
Berghahn Journals
JOURNAL OF BODIES, SEXUALITIES, AND MASCULINITIES
Editors:
Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University, Canada
Chris Haywood, Newcastle University, UK
Frank G. Karioris, University of Pittsburgh, USA
JBSM is a new peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that brings together critical studies of men and masculinities and sexuality studies. Its remit is to bring these two fields together to better understand the complexities of masculinities and sexualities, and especially the way they intersect with one another.
Current Issue: Volume 5, Issue 1: Viral Masculinities. Guest Edited by João Florêncio
BOYHOOD STUDIES
An Interdisciplinary Journal
Interim Editors:
Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University
Chris Haywood, Newcastle University
Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the discussion of boyhood, young masculinities, and boys’ lives by exploring the full scale of intricacies, challenges, and legacies that inform male and masculine developments. Boyhood Studies is committed to a critical and international scope and solicits both articles and special issue proposals from a variety of research fields including, but not limited to, the social and psychological sciences, historical and cultural studies, philosophy, and social, legal, and health studies.
Current Issue: Volume 17, Issue 1: Global South Perspectives on Youth Masculinities. Guest Edited by Veena Mani and Shannon Philip
You might also be interested in these recent author materials…
‘How is a Man Supposed to be a Man?’, Hadley
‘Children are Everywhere’, Dr Joshi
Switzer, Bent, and Desai
‘The crushing truth about being childless at 64’
In 2024, Berghahn Books is celebrating 30 years as a family-run press, and we want to thank you for your support! To celebrate, we are offering 30% off our top 30 all-time bestsellers in each of our biggest subjects. As well as 30% off our frontlist titles from January to June of 2024! Use code BERGHAHN30 for 30% off, available in all formats until December 31st, 2024.
Please click here to browse our full selection of titles on sale now!
World Philosophy Day is celebrated on the third Thursday of November, this year on the 21st of November.
Click to Read More: It was established by UNESCO to underline “the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual”.
Moreover they emphasise that “Philosophy is an inspiring discipline as well as an everyday practice that can transform societies. By enabling to discover the diversity of the intellectual currents in the world, philosophy stimulates intercultural dialogue. By awakening minds to the exercise of thinking and the reasoned confrontation of opinions, philosophy helps to build a more tolerant, more respectful society. It thus helps to understand and respond to major contemporary challenges by creating the intellectual conditions for change”.
Read more from the UNESCO World Philosophy Day page here.
In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our Philosophy Studies titles below.
Where is the Good in the World?
Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy
Edited by David Henig, Anna Strhan and Joel Robbins
“This is a highly commendable piece of literature that will surely enrich the understanding of the intersection of social theory and philosophy as it relates to the good, and its interdisciplinary approach makes a complex topic both approachable and applicable for a diverse readership.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Volume 12, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Akrasia in Anthropological Perspectives
Edited by Patrick McKearney and Nicholas H. A. Evans
“These anthropological perspectives in akrasia do well to illustrate both the ubiquity of the phenomenon and the need to continue to collect cases of akratic human behaviour. Most normative approaches toward akrasia include aspiring toward its elimination, but collections like this give credence to the idea that akrasia is a mental phenomenon that greases the wheels of daily life.” • LSE Review of Books
Volume 14, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Metalogues on Issues in Anthropology and Philosophy
Geoffrey Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça
“This is a work of outstanding interest and originality, both in form and in content.” • Nicholas Jardine, Cambridge University
Read freely available introduction.
The Origins of German Self-Cultivation
Bildung and the Future of the Humanities
Edited by Jennifer Ham, Ulrich Kinzel, and David Tse-chien Pan
Recent devaluations of a liberal arts education call the formative concept of Bildung, a defining model of self-cultivation rooted in 18th and 19th century German philosophy and culture, into question and force us to reconsider what it once meant and now means to be an “educated” individual. This volume uses an arc of interdisciplinary scholarship to map both the epistemological origins and cultural expressions of the pivotal notion of Bildung at the heart of pursuit in the humanities. From its intriguing original historical manifestations to its continuing resonance in current ongoing debates surrounding the humanities, the editors urge us to ask and discover how the classical concept of Bildung, so central to humanistic inquiry, was historically imagined and applied in its original German context.
Volume 27, Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association
Read freely available introduction.
Open Access
What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics
Calum MacKellar
“Calum MacKellar wrote a stimulating book which can be read as a primer covering most aspects of the complex and rapidly growing field of man-computer interactions. The technology will continue to develop, but the ethical problems outlined here will probably remain the same.” • Anthropos
Read freely available introduction, and more with open access.
The German Humanist Tradition and the Future of the Humanities
Alexander Mathäs
“Beyond Posthumanism is a timely intervention into a high-stakes debate on the value of humanist education today. The book situates this debate in a wider historical framework, thereby demonstrating the often overlooked complexity of humanistic concepts. Highlighting literature’s unique ability to serve as a meta-sphere for reflection, this is a comprehensive and thoughtful consideration of one of the great questions of contemporary education.” • Christine Lehleiter, University of Toronto
Volume 22, Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association
Read freely available introduction.
Berghahn Journals
Executive Editors:
For the UKSS
John Gillespie, Ulster University
Katherine Morris, Mansfield College Oxford
For the NASS
T Storm Heter, East Stroudsburg University
Constance Mui, Loyola University
Sartre Studies International is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal which publishes articles of a multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and international character reflecting the full range and complexity of Sartre’s own work. It focuses on the philosophical, literary and political issues originating in existentialism, and explores the continuing vitality of existentialist and Sartrean ideas in contemporary society and culture. Each issue contains a reviews section and a notice board of current events, such as conferences, publications and media broadcasts linked to Sartre’s life, work and intellectual legacy.
Current Issue: Volume 29, Issue 2
View more from Berghahn Journals and receive free access to relevant articles!
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989)!
To celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall, we want to spotlight our Books Series on German Studies. These series span further than only our most recent publications, and include a number of Open Access books, entirely free to read! These blog will be looking at…
- Studies in German History
- Perspectives On The History German Jews
- Vermont Studies on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
- New German Historical Perspectives
- Monographs In German History
- Culture And Society In Germany
- Policies and Institutions: Germany, Europe, and Transatlantic Relations
- Modern German Studies
Last month, we created a collection of our most recent German Studies titles for German Unity Day, which you can read here.
Lastly, we would like to highlight that our website allow you to Browse by Area: Germany here.
Berghahn Books Series on German Studies
Studies in German History
General Editors: Simone Lässig, Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington,
with the assistance of Patricia C. Sutcliffe, Editor, German Historical Institute.
Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington
Volume 30
Open Access
Open Access
Open Access
Open Access
Perspectives on the History of German Jews
The volumes in this series provide concise introductions to different fields of German-Jewish history with a focus on the topics of politics, society, gender and religion across the last two centuries. Reflecting the latest research developments, these titles are not only valuable resources for scholars but are also accessible to a wider audience. The authors, all experts of German-Jewish history and mostly working at German universities, focus on socio-historical perspectives, including questions of social and cultural history.
The series was first published in German by Schoeningh, now an imprint of Brill. It was edited by Stefanie Schüler-Springorum and Rainer Liedtke on behalf of the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Academic Working Group) of the Leo Baeck Institute in Germany. The volumes have all been updated for publication in English.
Vermont Studies on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
Editorial Committee: Jonathan D. Huener, University of Vermont, Susanna Schrafstetter, University of Vermont, and Alan E. Steinweis, University of Vermont
The University of Vermont has been an important venue for research on the Holocaust since Raul Hilberg began his work there in 1956. These volumes reflect the scholarly activity of UVM’s Miller Center for Holocaust Studies. They combine original research with interpretive synthesis, and address research questions of interdisciplinary and international interest.
New German Historical Perspectives
Series Editor: Paul Betts (Executive Editor), St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Established in 1987 this special St. Antony’s series showcases pioneering new work by leading German historians on a range of topics concerning the history of modern Germany, Europe, and the wider world. Publications address pressing problems of political, economic, social, and intellectual history informed by contemporary debates about German and European identity, providing fresh conceptual, international, and transnational interpretations of the recent past.
Monographs in German History
The complexities and peculiarities of German history present challenges on various levels, not least on that of historiography. This series offers a platform for historians who, in response to those challenges, produce important and stimulating contributions to the various debates that take place within the discipline.
Open Access
Culture & Society in Germany
Policies and Institutions: Germany, Europe, and Transatlantic Relations
Modern German Studies
A Series of the German Studies Association
This series offers books on modern and contemporary Germany, concentrating on themes in history, political science, literature and German culture. Publications will include works in English and English translations of significant works in other languages.
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Last month, we created a collection of our most recent German Studies titles for German Unity Day, which you can read here.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
Journals
You might also be interested in…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Privileges of Birth: Constellations of Care, Myth, and Race in South Africa by Jennifer J. M. Rogerson
Reconceiving Muslim Men: Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times, edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Nefissa Naguib
Patient-Centred IVF: Bioethics and Care in a Dutch Clinic by Trudie Gerrits
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
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The 16th October 2024 is World Food Day! As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations explains, “‘Foods’ stands for diversity, nutrition, affordability, accessibility and safety. A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, fishing nets, markets, and on our tables, for the benefit of all.” Read more from their page here.
We would like to highlight three of our book series: Research Methods For Anthropological Studies Of Food And Nutrition, Anthropology Of Food And Nutrition and Food Nutrition And Culture. For more details on these series, scroll down below.
You can also browse our books by subject: Food & Nutrition here, which will include some of our series’ titles.
Latest Titles in Food & Nutrition
Food and Families in the Making
Knowledge Reproduction and Political Economy of Cooking in Morocco
Katharina Graf
“An important contribution to the growing ethnographic literature on cooking and social life, Graf’s Food and Families in the Making stands out for its careful analysis and evocation of the senses (beyond just five), and for its well-developed autoethnography of learning cooking. A must-read for those interested in the social production of taste and in the most up-to-date approaches to sensory ethnography.” • David Sutton Southern Illinois University
Volume 8, Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Read freely available introduction.
Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson and Helen Macbeth
“This is a valuable addition to the anthropology of food and interdisciplinary food studies. The volume’s contributors analyze a wealth of interesting phenomena from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.” • Giovanni Orlando, Food sustainability consultant
Volume 12, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
The Politics of Children’s Food in Poland
Zofia Boni
“The book provides a detailed and dense study of eating-feeding practices spread among school-age children, their parents and their school environment in post-transitional Poland. The book is very interesting, much needed and refers to the important dimension of late capitalist systems in Central Eastern Europe.” • Tomasz Rakowski, University of Warsaw
Volume 6, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
Read freely available introduction.
Production, Exchange and Consumption in West African Migration
Maria Abranches
“This ethnographically and theoretically rich volume provides an understanding of how people and their food transform their space. Recommended.” • Choice
Volume 10, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
Labour and Value in Moldovan Winemaking
Daniela Ana
“This is an excellent book, ‘a little gem’, which provides a highly original contribution to both the fields of anthropology of wine and of postsocialist economies by focusing on an under-researched area.” • Marion Demossier, University of Southampton
Volume 9, Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy
Read freely available introduction.
A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples
David E. Sutton
“With writing that is highly readable, clear, and well-paced, this book will appeal to students and scholars alike, especially those studying food and cooking, Greece, and risk, and is an exceptional example of studying food practices for their theoretical bounty.” • Food, Culture & Society
Volume 3, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
Read freely available introduction.
Edited by Lieba Faier and Michael J. Hathaway
The matsutake mushroom continues to be a highly sought delicacy, especially in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisine. Matsutake Worlds explores this mushroom through the lens of multi-species encounters centered around the matsutake’s notorious elusiveness. The mushroom’s success, the contributors of this volume argue, cannot be accounted for by any one cultural, social, political, or economic process. Rather, the matsutake mushroom has flourished as the result of a number of different processes and dynamics, culminating in the culinary institution we know today.
Volume 12, Studies in Social Analysis
Read freely available introduction.
Food Production, Health, and the Environment
Edited by Angela N. H. Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière
“The editors have brought together enough international work to form a broad picture of changes in the global food system. This is an extremely welcome view of how those changes were received in different places at different times.” • Technology and Culture
Volume 21, Environment in History: International Perspectives
Read freely available introduction.
Foodways and Humanity in an African Town
Arianna Huhn
“The nuanced discussion of the Nyanja concepts of nourishment, as it relates to the dietary quality of vitamina (vitamins) ascribed to certain foods and as dependent on ‘interdependence, cooperative labor, compassion, and moral intelligence’, is thoughtful and challenging…Recommended.” • Choice
Volume 7, Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Read freely available introduction.
Food as National Identity in Catalonia
Venetia Johannes
“Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia presents a captivating and compelling ethnographic study centered on Catalonia, exploring nationalist movements and tangible cultural aspects. This book holds immense appeal for students across diverse fields within the social sciences, effectively connecting history, anthropology, and even political science. Furthermore, the book showcases innovation and creativity by employing photo-elicitation as a method in ethnographic research. Despite its theoretical sophistication, the book maintains an approachable and engaging style, making it accessible even to the general public with an interest in understanding Catalonia’s rich history, and how the Catalans’ take pride with their gastronomic tradition.” • Anthropology Book Forum
Volume 44, New Directions in Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Food and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson, Iain Young, Lucy Antal, and Helen Macbeth
“[This book] provides a holistic understanding of food-related activities and behaviour … both theoretical and empirical arguments are covered in a balanced manner. The volume takes cognisance of the ‘minutiae of food experiences’ (p. 19) of people with respect to sustainability, cutting across the globe.” • European Association of Social Anthropologists Journal
Volume 9, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
The Global Story of Terroir
Marion Demossier
“One of the ethnography’s strengths lies in the theoretical frameworks that are used to delve further into the construction of a good that circulates globally and whose value is closely associated with a heritage site. Another is the author’s long-term engagement with the region: this insider status offers a unique perspective on groups of people who are not easy to access… I would recommend this book for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. The chapters stand well on their own and the volume as a whole offers an excellent example of long-term ethnographic research.” • JRAI
Volume 43, New Directions in Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Open Access
Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily
Theodoros Rakopoulos
“Rakopoulos admirably delineates the entwined positionalities of mafia, anti-mafia, workers, administrators, and the state.” • American Anthropologist
Volume 4, The Human Economy
Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.
Berghahn Books Food Series
Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition
Editors: Janet Chrzan, University of Pennsylvania and John A. Brett, University of Colorado Denver
Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin
The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields during the last two decades has generated a diverse and dynamic set of approaches for understanding the complex relationships and interactions that determine how people eat and how diet affects culture. These volumes offer a comprehensive reference for students and established scholars interested in food and nutrition research in Nutritional and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Food Studies and Applied Public Health.
Click to expand: Reviews
“I feel that this set will be exceptionally useful not only for anthropologists, but also for ethnographers, demographers, and others conducting research within food systems and food studies. With the burgeoning interest in food research at all levels, and with new graduate programs in the field, this book has the potential to be a crucial resource for scholars in the field… I look forward to requiring this as reading for my graduate students and advanced undergraduates.” · Teresa Mares, University of Vermont
“Unlike other resources I’ve come across, this set covers methods used in the traditional four fields of anthropology, ranging from highly quantitative and scientific oriented research to qualitative, culture oriented work… These volumes function as inclusive how-to manuals, providing examples of different questions each type of research might address as well as their limitations. Each chapter includes a helpful, extensive bibliography.” · Amy Bentley, New York University
“This set offers a comprehensive overview of methods across the discipline and beyond, providing readers with basic (and in some cases advanced) insights into why particular methods are useful and how those methods can be implemented… This is an unparalleled and comprehensive collection.” · David Beriss, University of New Orleans
Vol. 3, Food Health: Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health
Vol. 2, Food Culture: Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies
Vol. 1, Food Research: Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods
Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Series Editor: Helen Macbeth, Oxford Brookes University
Eating is something all humans must do to survive, but it is more than a biological necessity. Producing food, foraging, distributing, shopping, cooking and, of course, eating itself are all are deeply inscribed as cultural acts. This series brings together the broad range of perspectives on human food, encompassing social, cultural and nutritional aspects of food habits, beliefs, choices and technologies in different regions and societies, past and present. Each volume features cross-disciplinary and international perspectives on the topic of its title. This multidisciplinary approach is particularly relevant to the study of food-related issues in the contemporary world.
A few more of our titles not shown above:
Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Series Editors: Jakob Klein, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Melissa L. Caldwell, University of California, Santa Cruz
While eating is a biological necessity, the production, distribution, preparation, consumption, and disposal of food are all deeply culturally inscribed activities. Taking an anthropological perspective, this book series provides a forum for critically engaged, ethnographically grounded work on the cultural, social, political, economic, and ecological aspects of human nutrition and food habits. The monographs and edited collections in this series present timely, food-related scholarship intended for researchers, academics, students, and those involved in food policy, businesses, and activism. Covering a wide range of topics, geographic regions and mobilities across regions, the series decenters dominant, often western-centered approaches and assumptions in food studies.
A few more of our titles not shown above:
Berghahn Journals
Enjoy FREE Access to the following articles until Oct 23! Use code FOODDAY. Redemption details here: bit.ly/3F5lmqg
ENVIROMENT AND SOCIETY
Special Issue: Environment, Society, and Food (Vol. 2)
NATURE AND CULTURE
Certification Regimes in the Global Agro-Food System and the Transformation of the Nature-Society Relationship: Ecological Modernization or Modernization of Ecology?
Md Saidul Islam (Vol. 17, Issue 1)
Special Issue: Civil Society and Urban Agriculture in Europe (Vol. 13, Issue 3)
Open Access Articles
ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Using Direct Observation to Examine the Relationship between Smoking and Consumption Patterns in a Middle Eastern Food Services Setting Richard A. Heiens and Larry P. Pleshko (Vol 18, Issue 1)
Special Issue: Food and Cooking in the Middle East and North Africa (Vol. 15, Issue 2)
ENVIROMENT AND SOCIETY
We All We Got: Urban Black Ecologies of Care and Mutual Aid
Ashanté M. Reese and Symone A. Johnson (Vol. 13)
FOCAAL
The “awkwardnesses” of aid and exchange: Food cooperative practices in austerity Britain
Celia Plender (Vol. 98)
SIBIRICA
Arctic “Laboratory” of Food Resources in the Allaikhovskii District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Nikolai Goncharov (Vol. 21, Issue 2)
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGIE SOCIALE
‘Eating with the People’: How a Chinese Hydropower Project Changed Food Experiences in a Lao Community*
Floramante SJ Ponce (Vol. 30, Issue 1)
Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Berghahn recognizes the significance of indigenous cultures and in the spirit of this day, we have collected some of our relevant titles below.
Performing Knowledge in an Australian Indigenous Community
Franca Tamisari
“This is an excellent exploration and exegesis of Yolngu performance in all its varied forms from ceremonial to popular song and dance … This book is a highly satisfying and compelling read as its penetrating argument utilizes a sophisticated interweaving of theory and ethnography to demonstrate how learning ‘The Law’ is a foundational sense of being in and part of the boneland, (ngaraka), knowing the stories, being able to relate appropriately to kin and country and having the skills, knowledge, rights and ability to perform the songs and dances.” • Fiona Magowan, Queen’s University Belfast.
Volume 15, ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America
Anthropological Perspectives
Edited by Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz
“This volume is an outstanding piece of scholarship, which, from the standpoint of the processes of creation and creativity, accomplishes, in a good measure, a critique and reassessment of current styles on analyzing Amazonian sociality.” • Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Read freely available introduction.
Open Access
Decolonialization and Movements for Environmental Justice
Edited by Jaskiran Dhillon
“Although the essays were already published a while ago, they have not lost any of their relevance, and one can only wish that thanks to the volume being available through Open Access many people will discover this topical publication.” • Amerindian Research
Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.
Kaniuekutat: The Life of an Innu Hunter
Georg Henriksen
“Through his own life story, Kaniuekutat speaks to many issues of importance facing the Innu in contemporary times, with an eye on tradition and the lessons of the past…A valuable text for students of anthropology, Native studies, and history.” · Choice
Read freely available introduction.
Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North
Edited by David G. Anderson, Robert P. Wishart, and Virginie Vaté
“Each chapter offers something interesting for the reader…One can list bright and sometimes provocative ideas put forth by each contributor…The main advantage of this book is the ability to spark interest among the most diverse groups of specialists in the field of indigenous cultures.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
Edited by Jóhann Páll Árnason and Björn Wittrock
“…the articles, taken together, provide an exciting picture of the diversity that is unified in the Nordic region… [and] a significant contribution to the discussion of multiple modernities.” · Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études scandinaves au Canada
Read freely available introduction.
Animism in Rainforest and Tundra
Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia
Edited by Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva
“This thoughtful volume is extraordinarily rich and will prompt all of us interested in these questions to think about them from fresh perspectives.” • Anthropological Forum
Read freely available introduction.
The 1926/27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions
Edited by David G. Anderson
“The contributors have made excellent use of recently opened archives and interviews with descendants of the people surveyed to provide a uniquely human portrait of this seminal project. While the chapters focus most thoroughly on the Nenets, Khanty, and Yakut, the analysis is of broader relevance to an understanding of Siberian peoples during the first stages of the sovietization of the Far North. This book will prove of unique value to historians of the Soviet period as well as to cultural anthropologists specializing in polar peoples. Highly recommended.” • Choice
Indigenous Peoples and Demography
The Complex Relation between Identity and Statistics
Edited by Per Axelsson and Peter Sköld
“This interesting collection looks at changes in population studies and examines indigeneity in contexts as different as Australia and Norway. It is particularly valuable with respect to two broad geographic categories: countries originally settled by British colonists, and states in northern Europe… the study of categorization and enumeration offers valuable insights on how ethnic boundaries are established, and how–inevitably–they are challenged and contested.” · Choice
Read freely available introduction.
Narrating the Future in Siberia
Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among the Eveny
Olga Ulturgasheva
“This thought-provoking and highly original work, relevant especially for students of the anthropology of childhood, supplies an important new chapter to native Siberian ethnography. Highly recommended for anyone seriously interested in today’s Siberia, all levels.” · Choice
Indigenous Peoples and Global Communication
Valerie Alia
“In sum, New Media Nationoffers scholars of minorities, of digital media and of globalizing indigeneities the opportunity to understand how the practices of producing meanings through discourses of resistance contribute over time to the development and re-invigoration of alternative discourses often thought to have been dissolved by the spread of ‘mass media’. By engaging in micro-analyses of specific cultural discourses and their elaboration in specific emergent media situations, Alia alerts her readers to the importance of the complexity of the local.” • Discourse & Communication
Volume 2, Anthropology of Media
Read freely available introduction.
The Naskapi on the Edge of the White Man’s World
Georg Henriksen
“Valuable as an example of the anthropology of development and modernization prevalent in northern Canada at the time, the book transcends this genre in the acuity of its ethnographic analysis and beautifully captures a moment – Henriksen began fieldwork in 1966 – when Mushuau Innu were making the transition to permanent communities… This book is important for Algonquian and circumpolar specialists, as well as for students wishing to understand dynamics of hunting societies in modernity. It has also become significant as a historical record both of the Innu people and of anthropology in northern Canada.” · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Read freely available introduction.
Culture and Identity in the Inuit Homeland
Valerie Alia
“…a thought-provoking book. Alia lays out the intricacies of Inuit naming so clearly, describes the Arctic environment so vividly, and conveys such a rich sense of Inuit values, concerns, and humour that readers are likely to hunger for more information and to pose ethnographic and on mastic questions that press forward the horizons of Inuit ethnography. Names and Nunavut is a welcome addition to Arctic ethnography and should be of interest not only to linguists and anthropologists working in the Arctic but to anyone interested in the relationship between onomasty, personhood, and cosmology and to anyone looking for fresh insights to the micropractices of linguistic and onomastic colonialism” · NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics
Read freely available introduction.
Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North
Edited by David G. Anderson and Mark Nuttall
“The edited work contains one of the most interesting sets of northern papers to appear in a very long time…each paper is excellent…this book will hopefully provoke considerable thought…This is a work that should be discussed in terms of the particulars of the various papers, but also for the overview it provides.” – Polar Record