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Berghahn New Paperbacks
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eBook available
November 2025 Moebius Anthropology
Essays on the Forming of Form
Handelman, D., Shapiro, M. (ed), & Feldman, J. (ed)
Don Handelman’s groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman’s initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on “bureaucratic logic”; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
November 2025 Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants
Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal
Kandiyoti, D. & Benmayor, R. (eds)
In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed laws enabling descendants of Sephardi Jews to obtain citizenship, an historic offer of reconciliation. Drawing from scholarly and first-person essays, Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants analyzes the memory and afterlives of those who were wronged, and how reconciliatory rights impact the lives of those affected.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2025 The Girl in the Pandemic
Transnational Perspectives
Mitchell, C. & Smith, A. (eds)
The early and critical stages of the pandemic presented exacerbated risks to the lives of girls and young women. The Girl in the Pandemic takes a diverse range of scholars across the world, particularly from the Global South, to document and contribute to a large narrative of what a post-pandemic future may bring for girls and young women.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Development Studies Sociology Sustainable Development Goals
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eBook available
November 2025 More than Mere Spectacle
Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Van Gelder, K.
More than Mere Spectacle brings together new research on the numerous coronations and inaugurations in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy, examining why so many of them still took place, what political, legal, social, and cultural significance they bore, and how they adapted to actual circumstances. It takes the flexibility of their format as the key to understanding their lasting relevance.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
November 2025 What Remains
Responses to the Legacy of Christa Wolf
Fetz, G. A. & Herminghouse, P. (eds)
In response to the legacy of Christa Wolf, What Remains addresses arguably the most important German writer in the period of since World War II until her death in 2011. Scholars across the U.S. and Europe address both the importance of her role in contributing to the cultural life of East Germany and the controversies surrounding her life and works in the aftermath of the collapse of East Germany and the process of German unification.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
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eBook available
November 2025 Oil and Sovereignty
Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States and Western Europe in the 1970s
Graf, R.
Oil and Sovereignty explores the national and international strategies formulated to deal with the first oil crises in 1973-1974, as steadily increasing prices and reduced production raised the specter of an uncertain future for many.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
November 2025 Sustaining Indigenous Songs
Contemporary Warlpiri Ceremonial Life in Central Australia
Curran, G.
Set against a discussion of the contemporary vitality of Aboriginal musical traditions in Australia and embedded in the historical background of this region, Curran lays out the features of Warlpiri songs and ceremonies, and centers on a focal case study of the Warlpiri Kurdiji ceremony to illustrate the modes in which core cultural themes are being passed on through song to future generations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2025 Integrating Strangers
Sherbro Identity and The Politics of Reciprocity along the Sierra Leonean Coast
Ménard, A.
Drawing on an ethnography of Sherbro coastal communities in Sierra Leone, this book analyses the politics and practice of identity through the lens of the reciprocal relations that exist between socio-ethnic groups. Anaïs Ménard examines the implications of the social arrangement that binds landlords and strangers in a frontier region, the Freetown Peninsula, characterized by high degrees of individual mobility and social interactions.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies
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eBook available
December 2025 Red America
Greek Communists in the United States, 1920-1950
Karpozilos, K.
Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism were integral components of 19th and 20th century immigrant life. Red America explores the relationship between the immigrant experience in the United States and political radicalism, especially as it relates to the lesser explored Greek American experience in the 20th century.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2025 The Right to Memory
History, Media, Law, and Ethics
Tirosh, N. & Reading, A. (eds)
The Right to Memory looks beyond everyday memory and commemoration practices, focusing instead on how memory relates to human rights and socio-legal constructs in order to legitimize and protect groups and individuals.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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eBook available
December 2025 The Candle and the Guillotine
Revolution and Justice in Lyon, 1789–93
Johnson, J. P.
Using Lyon as a lens for understanding the politics of revolutionary France, this book reveals the widespread enthusiasm for judicial change in Lyon at the time of the Revolution, as well as the conflicts that ensued between elected magistrates in the face of radical democratization.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
December 2025 A Sad Fiasco
Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908
Kreienbaum, J.
Comparative studies on concentration camps have tended to neglect the African colonial experience at the turn of the twentieth century. A Sad Fiasco delves deeper into the daily lives led in the colonial concentration camps in southern Africa and the motives behind the mass extinction of thousands of internees.
Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2025 The World of Children
Foreign Cultures in Nineteenth-Century German Education and Entertainment
Lässig, S. & Weiß, A. (eds)
In an era of technological advances and rapidly increasing international exchange, how did young Germans come to understand the world beyond their doorstep? Bringing together contributions from specialists in historical, literary, and cultural studies, this is a fascinating kaleidoscopic exploration of the ways that children absorbed, combined, and adapted notions of the world in their own ways.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Educational Studies
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eBook available
December 2025 A Dramatic Reinvention
German Television and Moral Renewal after National Socialism, 1956–1970
Anderson, S.
A Dramatic Revinvention sheds new light on how Germans rebuilt their moral and intellectual world after the Nazi catastrophe. The book argues that television emerged as one of the most important mediums for presenting, discussing, and working through the question of how to re-moralize Germany.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies
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January 2026 From Village Commons to Public Goods
Graduated Provision in Urbanizing China
Trémon, A.-C.
Illuminating the complex processes of China’s uneven urbanization through the lens of the transition from village commons to public goods, this book is set in three urbanized villages in Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Xi’an, which have experienced similar demographic explosions and dramatic changes to their landscapes, the livelihoods of its inhabitants, and the power structures governing their residents.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Urban Studies Sociology Sustainable Development Goals
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January 2026 Visions of Marriage
Politics and Family on Kinmen, 1920-2020
Chiu, H.-C.
Grounded in multi-generational stories from Kinmen in Taiwan, Visions of Marriage explores the historical entanglements between the pursuit of new personal and national futures. Focusing on the relational and future-making aspects of marriage, the ethnography highlights the intersection of transformations across familial generations and shifting political economies in Taiwan, and more globally. It provides comparative insights on family change and demographic shifts in Asia.>
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality
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January 2026 The Power of the Story
Writing Disasters in Haiti and the Circum-Caribbean
Joos, V., Munro, M. & Ribó, J. (eds)
A cross-disciplinary volume that combines and puts into dialogue perspectives on disasters, this book includes contributions from anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and literary studies. Offering a rich and diverse set of arguments and analyses on the ever-relevant theme of catastrophe in the circum-Caribbean, it will encourage debate and collaboration between scholars working on disasters from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
January 2026 Good Enough Mothers
Practicing Nurture and Motherhood in Chiapas, Mexico
López, JM
Motherhood in Mexico is profoundly shaped by the legacy of colonialism. This ethnography situates motherhood in a critical global health analysis of maternal health inequalities and interventions in the southeast state of Chiapas.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
January 2026 A New African Elite
Place in the Making of a Bridge Generation
Pellow, D.
Focusing on a sub-set of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, this book looks at the first generation to go through secondary school in the north. This book charts their path into elite status and argues that this generation uses the tools gained through education and social connections to influence politics back home.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Mobility Studies Development Studies
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eBook available
January 2026 Comical Modernity
Popular Humour and the Transformation of Urban Space in Late Nineteenth Century Vienna
Hakkarainen, H.
Comical Modernity looks at the years between 1857–1890, a period of dramatic urban renewal within Vienna during which the city’s rapidly changing face was a popular topic in publications. This book shows how humor provided access to understanding modernity in an era of radical change, thus broadening our understanding of the cultural history of nineteenth-century Vienna.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2026 Germany and the Middle East
From Kaiser Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel
Steininger, R.
For more than a hundred years, persistent conflict in the Middle East has led global superpowers like Germany to become involved. Germany and the Middle East encounters in detail how the nation came to accept its historical responsibility towards newer states in the Middle East, and how major developments of the twentieth century shaped its approach to the region.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2026 Pure Food
Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Collinson, P. & Macbeth, H. (eds)
Food purity and nutrition has inter-disciplinary roots in anthropological, ethnological, evolutionary, psychological and applied perspectives. Pure Food presents the theoretical and cross-cultural aspects of adopting food purity. It demonstrates variations and similarities in diverse cultural beliefs, behaviours and practices in different societies that define the pure food mindset.
Subjects: Food & Nutrition Anthropology (General)
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February 2026 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Paradoxes of State Capitalism
Ethnographies of Norwegian Energy and Extraction Businesses Abroad
Knudsen, S. (ed)
Through a series of case studies in diverse regions of the world, this book explores how transnational Norwegian energy and extractive industries handle corporate social responsibility (CSR) when operating abroad.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Environmental Studies (General) Applied Anthropology Sustainable Development Goals
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February 2026 Citizens into Dishonored Felons
Felony Disenfranchisement, Honor, and Rehabilitation in Germany, 1806-1933
de Groot, T.
Throughout the long nineteenth century felony disenfranchisement affected the moral fabric of German society and coincided with a history of honor in German legal thought. Citizens into Dishonored Felons uses uncommonly extensive archival materials to address the emotional and symbolic impact of punishment as both an enforcement of societal hierarchies and a platform for reform.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2026 Globalizing Automobilism
Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980
Mom, G.
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism, Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies
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eBook available
February 2026 Legal Entanglements
Law, Rights and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945-1989
Gehrig, S.
Drawing on wide-ranging archival research and recently declassified documents, Legal Entanglements follows the politicians, intellectuals, and other historical actors on both sides of the Berlin Wall who helped their nation to navigate volatile and uncertain legal circumstances.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2026 Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe
Representations, Transfers and Exchanges
Šístek, F. (ed)
As a Slavic-speaking religious and ethnic “Other” living just a stone’s throw from the symbolic heart of the continent, the Muslim peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long occupied a liminal space in the European imagination. This volume assembles contributions from historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and literary scholars to examine the political, social, and discursive dimensions of Bosnian Muslims’ encounter with the West.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology of Religion
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March 2026 Ibn Khaldun
Rosen, L.
Ibn Khaldun’s theory of history, economics, and group cohesion has influenced thinkers far beyond his North African homeland. His holistic approach foreshadowed modern social science, blending direct observation with cultural interpretation. A vital precursor to contemporary anthropology, his insights on solidarity, religion, and society remain relevant today.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology
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eBook available
March 2026 Kharkov/Kharkiv
A Borderland Capital
Kravchenko, V.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city located on the Ukrainian-Russian historical borderland, has often been overlooked given its historic role. Kharkov/Kharkov for the first time uncovers the city’s long history, from the 17th century to today, and its process of becoming a borderland and undergoing regional reconfiguration, modernization and development of national mythologies.
Subjects: History (General) Urban Studies
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eBook available
March 2026 The Force of Comparison
A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World
Steinmetz, W. (ed)
Drawing on a range of multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume investigates the concepts and practices of comparison from the early modern period to the present. Each contribution demonstrates how comparison has helped to drive the seemingly irresistible dynamism of the modern world, with a particular focus on what comparison looks like “in action.”
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
March 2026 Different from the Others
German and Dutch Discourses of Queer Femininity and Female Desire, 1918–1940
Sturgess, C.
Presenting for the first time a comparative and socio-cultural history of queer femininities in Germany and the Netherlands for an English-speaking audience, Different from the Others highlights this submerged history and engages queer authors and activists from the Netherlands to challenge and redress conceptualizations of queer femininity in the interwar period.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2026 Resettlers and Survivors
Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–1989
Fisher, G.
Resettlers and Survivors focuses on two groups of Bukovinians—ethnic Germans and German-speaking Jews—who navigated dramatically changed political and social circumstances in 1945. This study gives a nuanced account of how they dealt with the difficult legacies of World War II, while exploring Bukovina’s significance for them as both a geographical location and a “place of memory.”
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
March 2026 Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990
Gezen, E., Layne, P., & Skolnik, J. (eds)
Minorities and Minority Discourse in Germany since 1990 opens the question of why ethnic minorities in Germany are often discussed in isolation. Whereas most studies examine Black Germans, Jews in Germany, or Turkish Germans on their own terms vis-à-vis the majority German society, this volume takes on unique and comparative perspectives on an increasingly complex German society.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
March 2026 Cosmopolitan Refugees
Somali Migrant Women in Nairobi and Johannesburg
Ripero-Muñiz, N.
Exploring the dynamics of identity formation processes in diasporic spaces, this book analyses how gender, cultural and religious practices are renegotiated in a situation of displacement. The author presents the comparative case study of Somali migrant women in Nairobi and Johannesburg: two cosmopolitan urban hubs in the global South.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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eBook available
March 2026 Museum Times
Changing Histories in South Africa
Witz, L.
Museums flourished in post-apartheid South Africa. In older museums, there were renovations on the go, and at least fifty new museums opened. Most sought to depict violence and suffering under apartheid and the growth of resistance. These unlikely journeys are tracked as museums became a primary setting for contesting histories. The author demonstrates how an institution concerned with the conservation of the past is simultaneously a site for changing history.
Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2026 A Sea of Transience
Poetics, Politics and Aesthetics along the Black Sea Coast
Khalvashi, T. & Demant Frederiksen, M. (eds)
Transience is found in every meeting, encounter and form of coexistence between people and things that exist and live by, or move across or along, the Black Sea. With particular attention to poetics, politics and aesthetics, this volume focuses on the scales of transient moments and histories, and enables readers to see and sense the many forms of transience that occur in a given landscape, sea or space.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Environmental Studies (General)