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World Anthropology Day

On February 16th, the American Anthropological Association celebrates World Anthropology Day, which has been set to recognize the field of anthropology and the work of anthropologists within it.

World Anthropology Day is a day for anthropologists to celebrate and participate in their discipline with the public around them.  For more information on Anthropology day, visit the AAA website.

In support of these efforts and to mark this special day, we are delighted to showcase titles from across all strands of the subject and offer a time-limited discount of 25% off all anthropology print titles ordered via our website by 24th February. Simply enter the code WAD17 at checkout.    

Featured below are a number of new, recent and forthcoming titles from selected Series. For a full listing of all current and new anthropology titles, please see our catalog. For a complete list of all titles in the range, please visit our website.

 


 

Books

 

Paperback Original

AMERICA OBSERVED
On an International Anthropology of the United States
Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib
Afterword by Jane C. Desmond

 

There is surprisingly little fieldwork done on the United States by anthropologists from abroad. America Observed fills that gap by bringing into greater focus empirical as well as theoretical implications of this phenomenon. Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib, the essays collected here offer a critique of such an absence, exploring its likely reasons while also illustrating the advantages of studying fieldwork-based anthropological projects conducted by colleagues from outside the U.S. This volume contains an introduction written by the editors and fieldwork-based essays written by Helena Wulff, Jasmin Habib, Limor Darash, Ulf Hannerz, and Moshe Shokeid, and reflections on the broad issue written by Geoffrey White, Keiko Ikeda, and Jane Desmond. Suitable for introductory and mid-level anthropology courses, America Observed will also be useful for American Studies courses both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

Paperback Original

HUMAN ORIGINS
Contributions from Social Anthropology
Edited by Camilla Power, Morna Finnegan and Hilary Callan
Afterword by Alan Barnard

Volume 30, Methodology & History in Anthropology

 

Human Origins brings together new thinking by social anthropologists and other scholars on the evolution of human culture and society. No other discipline has more relevant expertise to consider the emergence of humans as the symbolic species. Yet, social anthropologists have been conspicuously absent from debates about the origins of modern humans. These contributions explore why that is, and how social anthropology can shed light on early kinship and economic relations, gender politics, ritual, cosmology, ethnobiology, medicine, and the evolution of language.

 

Paperback Original

VIOLENT BECOMINGS
State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

Volume 4, Ethnography, Theory, Experiment

 

Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.

 

New in Paperback

WHOSE COSMOPOLITANISM?
Critical Perspectives, Relationalities and Discontents
Edited by Nina Glick Schiller and Andrew Irving

 

“The strengths of this volume are numerous. It is interdisciplinary, contains ethnographic original data, and is extremely well organized despite its complexity and high number of chapters. It is also appealing to a large audience including the undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars in the disciplines of cultural studies, anthropology and sociology, migration, international development and religious studies…This collection, without hesitation, is an asset, a timely contribution to a number of fields.” · Anthropological Forum

 

New in Paperback

THE ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT
A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908
Edited by Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg

 

“[With this] very cohesive set of essays, Hviding and Berg h ave done an excellent job lifting an important expedition out of the archival oblivion where it reposed for the better part of a century. This is an appropriate volume to introduce the new Pacific Perspectives series. As such, this work appeals to readers interested in the histories of anthropology and Pacific worlds.” · Oceania

In 1908 Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers brought about a turning point in modern anthropology. The two pioneers’ fieldwork in Island Melanesia brought about the development of participant observation as a methodological hallmark of social anthropology. Contributors to this volume—who have all carried out fieldwork in Melanesian locations—situate the scholars’ efforts in the contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.

 

New in Paperback

INTELLECTUALS AND (COUNTER-) POLITICS
Essays in Historical Realism
Gavin Smith

Volume 12, Dislocations

 

“In this collection of intricately linked chapters, Gavin Smith continues his incisive efforts to open the boundaries between oppositions that have bedeviled anthropology almost since it began. Throughout, he refines conventional polarities the better to reveal their common origins in social being: among them are micro- and macroscales of analysis, the material production of experience and discourse, and structuralist detachment and political engagement.” · American Ethnologist

 

New in Paperback

TALKING STONES
The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland
Elisabetta Viggiani
Foreword by Hastings Donnan

 

“Viggiani’s text is a thorough examination of many of the iconic artefacts of a forty-year-long conflict that has shaped the politics and memories of generations of people from all sides of The Troubles. In addition to her text, she has developed an extensive website which more fully examines the quantitative data she has collected… her work will not only add to the compendium of extant work but expand our existing knowledge on memorialization in areas of conflict and recovery.” · Journal of Anthropological Research

 

New in Paperback

NIGHTTIME BREASTFEEDING
An American Cultural Dilemma
Cecília Tomori

Volume 26, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives

 

“This work will be useful for medical anthropologists and professionals at all levels of reproductive health care and family medicine. It offers important ethnographic analysis relevant to feminist anthropology, women’s and gender studies, and cross-cultural and bio-evolutionary perspectives on kinship and family.” · Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties.

 

New in Paperback

BEYOND THE LENS OF CONSERVATION
Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another
Eva Keller

Volume 20, Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology

 

“This book will make a great addition to undergraduate courses on Anthropology of the Environment and/or Development or Political Ecology. Keller’s highly readable style, in turn, will satisfy both those new to the subject and scholars already familiar with the topics of conservation practice in Madagascar. It could even become an important resource for those conservation experts who are trying – and (as the study shows) failing – to establish connections between distant places and people.” · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute


Series:

NEW SERIES: Anthropology of Europe

Volume 1

THE FRANCE OF THE LITTLE-MIDDLES
A Suburban Housing Development in Greater Paris
Marie Cartier, Isabelle Coutant, Olivier Masclet, and Yasmine Siblot
Translated by Juliette Rogers

 

The Poplars housing development in suburban Paris is home to what one resident called the “Little-Middles” – a social group on the tenuous border between the working- and middle- classes. In the 1960s The Poplars was a site of upward social mobility, which fostered an egalitarian sense of community among residents. This feeling of collective flourishing was challenged when some residents moved away, selling their homes to a new generation of upwardly mobile neighbors from predominantly immigrant backgrounds. This volume explores the strained reception of these migrants, arguing that this is less a product of racism and xenophobia than of anxiety about social class and the loss of a sense of community that reigned before.

 

NEW SERIES: Worlds in Motion

Volume 1

KEYWORDS OF MOBILITY
Critical Engagements
Edited by Noel B. Salazar and Kiran Jayaram

 

Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.

 

NEW SERIES: Catastrophes in Context

Volume 1 – Paperback Original

CONTEXTUALIZING DISASTER
Edited by Gregory V. Button and Mark Schuller

 

Contextualizing Disaster offers a comparative analysis of six recent “highly visible” disasters and several slow-burning, “hidden,” crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. The book argues that, while disasters are increasingly represented by the media as unique, exceptional, newsworthy events, it is a mistake to think of disasters as isolated or discrete occurrences. Rather, building on insights developed by political ecologists, this book makes a compelling argument for understanding disasters as transnational and global phenomena.

 

NEW SERIES: The Human Economy

Volume 1 – New in Paperback

PEOPLE, MONEY AND POWER IN THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
Perspectives from the Global South
Edited by Keith Hart and John Sharp

 

“A striking element of the volume is the interdisciplinarity of its textual form. While most of the contributors are in fact sociocultural anthropologists, the appropriation of templates and literary conventions within and across the fields of history, sociology, political economy and geography reflects the seriousness of the authors’ coalition building aspirations.” · Anthropological Forum

The authors of these case studies examine people’s concrete economic activities and aspirations. By looking at how people insert themselves into the actual, unequal economy, they seek to reflect human unity and diversity more fully than the narrow vision of conventional economics.

 

NEW SERIES: Studies in the Circumpolar North

Volume 2

SUSTAINING RUSSIA’S ARCTIC CITIES
Resource Politics, Migration, and Climate Change
Edited by Robert Orttung

 

Urban areas in Arctic Russia are experiencing unprecedented social and ecological change. This collection outlines the key challenges that city managers will face in navigating this shifting political, economic, social, and environmental terrain. In particular, the volume examines how energy production drives a boom-bust cycle in the Arctic economy, explores how migrants from Muslim cultures are reshaping the social fabric of northern cities, and provides a detailed analysis of climate change and its impact on urban and industrial infrastructure.

 

NEW SERIES: Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies

Volume 1 – New in Paperback

LEARNING UNDER NEOLIBERALISM
Ethnographies of Governance in Higher Education
Edited by Susan Brin Hyatt, Boone W. Shear, and Susan Wright

 

“All in all, Learning under Neoliberalism is an important contribution to the critical studies of HE transformations taking place in the Western world today. It goes some way in helping us figure out the ways the university as an institution and the student as a telling figure are changing, for better or worse, in neoliberal times. Notwithstanding the Euro-American focus, this volume has much to offer in terms of inspiring similar kinds of endeavours in other geographical and sociocultural contexts. It stands out because of the rich original ethnography and critical thoughts it offers. It is very well-edited and/or written, a delightful read, and will likely make readers feel they are taking part in an engaging conversation.” · Social Anthropology

 

NEW SERIES: Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy

Volume 3 – Paperback Original

WHEN THINGS BECOME PROPERTY
Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia
Thomas Sikor, Stefan Dorondel, Johannes Stahl and Phuc Xuan To

 

Governments have conferred ownership titles to many citizens throughout the world in an effort to turn things into property. Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, and finds that property reforms are no longer, if they ever were, miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

 

Volume 1 – New in Paperback

ECONOMY AND RITUAL
Studies in Postsocialist Transformations
Edited by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann

 

According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people’s economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising.


Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition Volume I – III

Editors: Janet Chrzan and John A. Brett

Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin

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.

BUY ALL THREE VOLUMES FOR 20% DISCOUNT

Volume I

FOOD RESEARCH
Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods

Biocultural and archaeological research on food, past and present, often relies on very specific, precise, methods for data collection and analysis. These are presented here in a broad-based review.

Volume II

FOOD CULTURE
Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies

This volume is unique in offering food-related research methods from multiple academic disciplines, and includes methods that bridge disciplines to provide a thorough review of best practices.

Volume III

FOOD HEALTH
Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health

This volume provides in-depth analysis and comprehensive review of methods necessary to design, plan, implement and analyze public health programming related to food and nutrition using anthropological best practices.


 

Anthropology Journals:

 

Anthropology Journals Catalog

 

 

Berghahn Journals is the journals division of Berghahn Books, an independent scholarly publisher in the humanities and social sciences. A peer-review press, Berghahn is committed to the highest academic standards and seeks to enable innovative contributions to the scholarship in its fields of specialty.

 

 

 

 


Open Access Articles:

 

Visions of prosperity and conspiracy in Timor-Leste
by Judith Bovensiepen
Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology
Volume: 2016 Issue: 75

 

Which community for cooperatives? Peasant mobilizations, the Mafia, and the problem of community participation in Sicilian co-ops
by Theodoros Rakopoulos
Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology
Volume: 2015 Issue: 71

 

Workshop Scribbles, Policy Work and Impact: Anthropological Sensibilities in Praxis at an FASD Workshop
by Michelle Stewart
Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice
Volume: 22 Issue: 2

 

Girlhood and Ethics: The Role of Bodily Integrity
by Mar Cabezas and Gottfried Schweiger
Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Volume: 9 Issue: 3

 

Less Than One But More Than Many: Anthropocene as Science Fiction and Scholarship-in-the-Making
by Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt and Anna Tsing
Environment and Society: Advances in Research
Volume: 6 Issue: 1

 

‘Ceremonies of Renewal’: Visits, Relationships, and Healing in the Museum Space
by Laura Peers
Museum Worlds: Advances in Research
Volume: 1 Issue: 1

 

Securitization, alterity, and the state: Human (in)security on an Amazonian frontier
Marc Brightman and Vanessa Grotti
Regions and Cohesion
Volume: 4 Issue: 3

 

Narratives of the Invisible: Autobiography, Kinship, and Alterity in Native Amazonia
Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Marc Brightman
Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice
Volume: 60 Issue: 1

 

 


 

Scholarly Blogs:

 

EnviroSociety
A multimedia site, EnviroSociety provides insights into contemporary socio-ecological issues with posts from top scholars in the social sciences that engage readers interested in current environmental topics.

 

FocaalBlog
FocaalBlog is associated with Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. It aims to accelerate and intensify anthropological conversations beyond what a regular academic journal can do, and to make them more widely, globally, and swiftly available.

 

Berghahn Blog
Berghahn Books’ very own blog page with special discount offers, info about new titles, author interviews, and more.