The World Health Day is a global health awareness day celebrated every year on 7 April, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO). It provides an opportunity by the organization to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health each year. This year WHO used World Health Day to highlight the challenges and opportunities associated with food safety.
In recognition of this year’s anniversary, Berghahn would like to showcase a range of related titles, delivering scholarly, informed opinion.
We are pleased to offer a 25% discount on any of our Global Health titles on orders placed within the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code WHD16.
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Berghahn invites you to browse through its relevant titles:
NEW
COSMOS, GODS AND MADMEN
Frameworks in the Anthropologies of Medicine
Edited by Roland Littlewood and Rebecca Lynch
“The introduction to this book is very well-written and lays out the topic and scope clearly… The essays have been collected carefully and offer much to the study of religion and healing.” · Stefan Ecks, University of Edinburgh
The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.
INDIGENOUS MEDICINE AMONG THE BEDOUIN IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Aref Abu-Rabia
Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, particularly in the case of incurable diseases, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, the author gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients, and other active participants in treatments, this book will contribute to renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine — to their reciprocal enrichment.
Read Introduction
AGING AND THE DIGITAL LIFE COURSE
Edited by David Prendergast and Chiara Garattini
Volume 3, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations
Across the life course, new forms of community, ways of keeping in contact, and practices for engaging in work, healthcare, retail, learning and leisure are evolving rapidly. Breaking new ground in the study of technology and aging, this book examines how developments in smart phones, the internet, cloud computing, and online social networking are redefining experiences and expectations around growing older in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contributions from leading commentators and researchers across the world, this book explores key themes such as caregiving, the use of social media, robotics, chronic disease and dementia management, gaming, migration, and data inheritance, to name a few.
Read Introduction: Critical Reflections on Ageing and Technology in the Twenty-First Century
HEALING ROOTS
Anthropology in Life and Medicine
Julie Laplante
Volume 15, Epistemologies of Healing
Umhlonyane, also known as Artemisia afra, is one of the oldest and best-documented indigenous medicines in South Africa. This bush, which grows wild throughout the sub-Saharan region, smells and tastes like “medicine,” thus easily making its way into people’s lives and becoming the choice of everyday healing for Xhosa healer-diviners and Rastafarian herbalists. This “natural” remedy has recently sparked curiosity as scientists search for new molecules against a tuberculosis pandemic while hoping to recognize indigenous medicine. Laplante follows umhlonyane on its trails and trials of becoming a biopharmaceutical — from the “open air” to controlled environments — learning from the plant and from the people who use it with hopes in healing.
Read Introduction: Tracing the Preclinical Trial of an Indigenous Plant
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Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality Series
Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. This series includes studies by specialists in the field of social, cultural, medical, and biological anthropology, medical demography, psychology, and development studies. Current debates and issues of global relevance on the changing dynamics of fertility, human reproduction and sexuality are addressed.
Volume 32
PARENTHOOD BETWEEN GENERATIONS
Transforming Reproductive Cultures
Edited by Siân Pooley and Kaveri Qureshi
“The introduction alone is both a mini-encyclopedic coverage of this entire field and a much-needed and highly cogent call for a radical programmatic expansion in the scope of research addressing child-rearing” · Simon Szreter, Cambridge University
Recent literature has identified modern ‘parenting’ as an expert-led practice – one which begins with pre-pregnancy decisions, entails distinct types of intimate relationships, places intense burdens on mothers, and increasingly on fathers too. Exploring within diverse historical and global contexts how men and women make – and break – relations between generations when becoming parents, this volume brings together innovative qualitative research by anthropologists, historians and sociologists. The chapters focus tightly on inter-generational transmission and demonstrate its importance for understanding how people become parents and rear children.
Volume 31
ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE THIRD PHASE
Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds
Edited by Kate Hampshire and Bob Simpson
Following the birth of the first “test-tube baby” in 1978, Assisted Reproductive Technologies became available to a small number of people in high-income countries able to afford the cost of private treatment, a period seen as the “First Phase” of ARTs. In the “Second Phase,” these treatments became increasingly available to cosmopolitan global elites. Today, this picture is changing — albeit slowly and unevenly — as ARTs are becoming more widely available. While, for many, accessing infertility treatments remains a dream, these are beginning to be viewed as a standard part of reproductive healthcare and family planning. This volume highlights this “Third Phase” — the opening up of ARTs to new constituencies in terms of ethnicity, geography, education, and class.
Read Introduction: Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Third Phase?
Volume 30
THAI IN VITRO
Gender, Culture and Assisted Reproduction
Andrea Whittaker
In Thailand, infertility remains a source of stigma for those couples that combine a range of religious, traditional and high-tech interventions in their quest for a child. This book explores this experience of infertility and the pursuit and use of assisted reproductive technologies by Thai couples. Though using assisted reproductive technologies is becoming more acceptable in Thai society, access to and choices about such technologies are mediated by differences in class position. These stories of women and men in private and public infertility clinics reveal how local social and moral sensitivities influence the practices and meanings of treatment.
Read Introduction: Culture Mediums
Volume 29
ACHIEVING PROCREATION
Childlessness and IVF in Turkey
Merve Demircioğlu Göknar
Managing social relationships for childless couples in pro-natalist societies can be a difficult art to master, and may even become an issue of belonging for both men and women. With ethnographic research gathered from two IVF clinics and in two villages in northwestern Turkey, this book explores infertility and assisted reproductive technologies within a secular Muslim population. Göknar investigates the experience of infertility through various perspectives, such as the importance of having a child for women, the mediating role of religion, the power dynamics in same-gender relationships, and the impact of manhood ideologies on the decision for — or against — having IVF.
Read Introduction
Volume 28
COUSIN MARRIAGES
Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change
Edited by Alison Shaw and Aviad Raz
Juxtaposing contributions from geneticists and anthropologists, this volume provides a contemporary overview of cousin marriage and what is happening at the interface of public policy, the management of genetic risk and changing cultural practices in the Middle East and in multi-ethnic Europe. It offers a cross-cultural exploration of practices of cousin marriage in the light of new genetic understanding of consanguineous marriage and its possible health risks. Overall, the volume presents a reflective, interdisciplinary analysis of the social and ethical issues raised by both the discourse of risk in cousin marriage, as well as existing and potential interventions to promote “healthy consanguinity” via new genetic technologies.
Read Introduction
Volume 26 Forthcoming in Paperback!
NIGHTTIME BREASTFEEDING
An American Cultural Dilemma
Cecília Tomori
“In this beautifully written ethnography, based on fieldwork with a sample of first-time heterosexual parents in the Midwest United States, Cecılia Tomori provides a broad-ranging yet in-depth discussion of numerous anthropological topics, including kinship, reproduction, and personhood…This book is a pleasure to read, and will be of interest not only to scholars of gender, kinship, and reproduction, but also to those who work on the subjects of embodiment, authoritative knowledge, expertise, morality, the house, and temporality. It deserves to be read widely, both within the academy and beyond.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute
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.
Volume 25 New in Paperback
PREGNANCY IN PRACTICE
Expectation and Experience in the Contemporary US
Sallie Han
“Pregnancy in Practice is a feminist contribution to the anthropology of reproduction in that it explores the quotidian experiences of pregnant women…While her sample is by no means statistically representative of the experiences of American women, the women in her ethnography represent the normative prenatal experience in America. Han successfully demonstrates that the concept of an ‘ordinary’ or ‘norma’ pregnancy is a phantom itself. Because of this work, perhaps we can definitively say that all women have ordinary pregnancies, or perhaps none do.” · Association for Feminist Anthropology Review
Read Chapter 1. Introduction: Ordinary Pregnancy
Volume 23 New in Paperback
ISLAM AND ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Sunni and Shia Perspectives
Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Soraya Tremayne
“It is to the editors’ credit that they have been able to harness these diverse angles in such a way that the whole in fact emerges as more than its parts. ARTs and the problem of third-party donation within Islam speak to more overarching issues of policy, modernity, gender, rights, and social change… In its sensitivity to discrepancies between norms and practice, the volume not only contributes knowledge to the field of ARTs and procreative practices more generally, indicating a socio-political religious complexity that is not easily disentangled. It also and perhaps more importantly enhances our knowledge of Islam, while encouraging a continual comparative perspective.” · The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Read Introduction: Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies
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NEW IN PAPERBACK
POWERLESS SCIENCE?
Science and Politics in a Toxic World
Edited by Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas
Volume 2, Environment in History: International Perspectives
“The book will be of interest to the new wave of anthropological studies on toxic contamination and will open the door for researchers and practitioners to actively reimagine what a regulatory apparatus that is de-centered from science might look like.” · Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Read Introduction: Greatness and Misery of Science in a Toxic World
THE ETHICS OF THE NEW EUGENICS
Edited by Calum MacKellar and Christopher Bechtel
“Clearly written and highly informative about international and nations laws, as well as about past, current, and possible future eugenic practices and arguments for and against the same, this volume makes for valuable reading not only for students of medical ethics but can be recommended to anyone wanting to learn more about arguments for and against current and possible future reproductive selection procedures.” · Ethics & Medicine
Read Introduction
RECONSTRUCTING OBESITY
The Meaning of Measures and the Measure of Meanings
Edited by Megan McCullough and Jessica Hardin
Afterword by Stephen T. McGarvey
Volume 2, Food, Nutrition, and Culture
“This is not a book that seeks to discredit health research and leave others to do the work of finding a better way to conduct it; rather, it aims to improve health research by providing useful avenues for critique and suggestions for ways forward. In this sense, it works as a very practical guide for those working in the health professions, whether as researchers or healthcare providers, to better understand “obesity” and “overweight” and, importantly, fat people in social and environmental context… it makes a welcome and necessary intervention into the business of health research, provision, and discourse, as well as its public reception.” · Fat Studies Journal
TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course
Edited by Caitrin Lynch and Jason Danely
Afterword by Jennifer Cole, University of Chicago
Volume 1, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations
“This volume is full of good writing, lively situations, some wonderful photos, revealing quotes and simulating ideas. Its readability makes it appealing as a text to be used widely in the undergraduate/graduate classroom… the current volume makes for excellent reading and launches the new Berghahn book series admirably.” · Anthropology of Aging Quarterly Review
THE BODY IN BALANCE
Humoral Medicines in Practice
Edited by Peregrine Horden and Elisabeth Hsu
Volume 13, Epistemologies of Healing
“The book is a magisterial collection…In spite of the wide range of medical traditions concerned-from different continents (Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America) and at different epochs (ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary)-the book is coherently structured around a few core issues that consistently link all the chapters. Rarely will you find in a single volume so many authoritative scholars talking about the specificities of their field of research and, at the same time, constructing a comparative dialogue.” · Caterina Guenzi, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
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JOURNALS
Anthropology in Action
Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice
Editor: Christine McCourt, City University London
Anthropology in Action (AIA) is a peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology. Contributions reflect the use of anthropological training in policy- or practice-oriented work and foster the broader application of these approaches to practical problems. The journal provides a forum for debate and analysis for anthropologists working both inside and outside academia and aims to promote communication amongst practitioners, academics and students of anthropology in order to advance the cross-fertilisation of expertise and ideas.
Anthropology of the Middle East
Editor in Chief: Soheila Shahshahani, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran
Anthropology of the Middle East (AME) is published twice a year, in the spring and autumn. Issues are often themed and on occasion guest edited. Each issue contains articles on specific research projects and outcomes on Middle Eastern topics. A section titled “Notes from the Field” features research in progress. Book reviews and shorter reports on books, films and conferences are also included.
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Editor-in-Chief: Maryon McDonald, University of Cambridge
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing leading scholarship in contemporary anthropology. Geographically diverse articles provide a range of theoretical or ethical perspectives, from the traditional to the mischievous or subversive, and aim to offer new insights into the worlds in which we live. The journal will publish challenging ethnography and push hard at the boundaries of the discipline in addition to examining or incorporating fields—from economics to neuroscience—with which anthropology has long been in dialogue. The original journal of this name was an in-house publication based at Cambridge University, with a remit to provide a space in which innovative material and ideas could be tested. The new Cambridge Journal of Anthropology builds on that tradition and seeks to produce new analytical toolkits for anthropology or to take all such intellectual exploration to task.
Girlhood Studies
An Interdisciplinary Journal
Editor-in-Chief: Claudia Mitchell, McGill University
Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the critical discussion of girlhood from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and for the dissemination of current research and reflections on girls’ lives to a broad, cross-disciplinary audience of scholars, researchers, practitioners in the fields of education, social service and health care and policy makers. International and interdisciplinary in scope, it is committed to feminist, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression approaches and solicits manuscripts from a variety of disciplines.