Books published by Berghahn Books

Providing a comprehensive spectrum of case studies in relevant contexts, this volume raises the issue of the rehabilitation of vision and contextualizes vision in the contemporary debate on the construction of local knowledge versus the hegemony of the socio-technical network. It gives practical examples that are useful to undergraduate students.

Using case studies, focusing on nation and nationalism, military and war, colonialism, politics and protest, class and citizenship, religion, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, the Holocaust, and the body and sexuality, this work demonstrates the power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

Explores a diversity of circumstances and motives towards contemporary mobility, ranging from expatriates to peripatetic professionals to middle class migrants in search of extended educational and career opportunities to people seeking self-development through travel.

Addresses questions of how to deal with internal issues of social inequality and cultural diversity and, at the same time, how to build a shared civility among their different national, ethnic, religious and social groups.

Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. In his provocative study of interrelations between friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israel, the author follows selected stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. He explores the symbolism of friendship in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. He concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political "e;blood pact"e; between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.

By the early twenty-first century neo-nationalist forces have established themselves in a number of the world's large regions and subcontinents. Prompted by a near-simultaneous rise to political influence of apparently similar parties across Western Europe, this collection offers a range of European case studies with selected global examples.

Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. This book examines how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture.

In neo-liberal political and economic climate, it is suggested that a state stands in opposition to an autonomous civil society. This book offers insights into the dynamics of state and civil society relations, against trends of undermining the importance of the welfare state, and presents autonomous civic participation as the only way forward.

Although Spain is an important member of the EU, relatively little is known about its economy and its interrelationship with political forces. This book analyzes its ever-changing relationship throughout the 20th century with its various upheavals, such as the crisis of the democratic republic and the civil war in the 1930s.

Since the late nineteen sixties, transnational adoption has emerged as a global phenomenon. Due to a sharp decline in infants being made available for adoption locally, involuntarily childless couples in Western Europe and North America who wish to create a family, have to look to look to countries in the poor South and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to locate transnational adoption within a broad context of contemporary Western life, especially values concerning family, children and meaningful relatedness, and to explore the many ambiguities and paradoxes that the practice entails. Based on empirical research from Norway, the author identifies three main themes for analysis: Firstly, by focusing on the perceived relationship between biology and sociality, she examines how notions of child, childhood and significant relatedness vary across time and space. She argues that through a process of kinning, persons are made into kin. In the case of adoption, kinning overcomes a dominant cultural emphasis placed upon biological connectedness. Secondly, it is a study of the rise of expert knowledge in the understanding of 'the best interest of the child', and how the part played by the 'psycho.technocrats' effects national and international policy and practice of transnational adoption. Thirdly, it shows how transnational adoption both depends upon and helps to foster the globalisation of Western rationality and morality. The book is an original contribution to the anthropological study of kinship and globalisation.

Considers the cultural power of magic, from early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean to the film career of Buffalo Bill, focusing on topics such as Surrealism, France in the classical age, alchemy, and American fundamentalism. This book ranges from theory to practice, from demonology to exoticism, and from the magic of memory to stage.

Explores the reasons behind the introduction of part-time work in West Germany and shows how it took root in factories, government authorities and offices. This book covers the period from early 1950s, a time of optimism during the first postwar economic upswing, to 1969, the culmination of the legislative institutionalization of part-time work.

Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe, this book suggests that in order to analyze meaning productively, we need to consider its limits.

A tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre, this volume aims to enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world. It reflects the depth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. It is useful for Sartre scholars, and those who have an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature.

On the surface, naming is simply a way to classify people and their environments. The premise of this study is that it is much more - a form of social control, a political activity, a key to identity maintenance and transformation. Governments legislate and regulate naming; people fight to take, keep, or change their names. A name change can indicate subjugation or liberation, depending on the circumstances. But it always signifies a change in power relations. Since the late 1970s, the author has looked at naming and renaming, cross-culturally and internationally, with particular attention to the effects of colonisation and liberation. The experience of Inuit in Canada is an example of both. Colonisation is only part of the Nunavut experience. Contrary to the dire predictions of cultural genocide theorists, Inuit culture - particularly traditional naming - has remained extremely strong, and is in the midst of a renaissance. Here is a ground-breaking study by the founder of the discipline of political onomastics.

Contrary to the negative assessments of the social order that have become prevalent in the media since 9/11, this collection of essays focuses on the enormous social creativity being invested as collective identities are reconfigured. It emphasizes on the reformulation of ethnic and gender relationships and identities in public life.

Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian, and critical history, this book examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989. It also looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists).

Focusing on the growth of racism in large cities and urban areas, this volume represents views by scholars from around the world, who work in different social sciences. It shows that labour politics, cultural selectionism, separate education for minorities and majorities and other projects point in the direction of more exclusion and racism.

Migration and multiculturalism are hotly discussed in public debates across Europe. Whereas ethnographic research has begun to examine the Right in this context, the Left remains largely unexplored. This book provides fresh perspectives on how the contemporary Left "frames" these issues in practice and how such framing has changed.

Focusing on terminally ill people in a German hospice, this study addresses the question, how meaningful experience is constructed for these patients in an attempt to preserve their dignity as persons. It is based on material from diary texts and active participation of the author in the role of a nurse.

At the turn of the millennium the state of Europe is fluid and contested, yet how this affects the everyday lives of European peoples and the ways they experience the social world they live in remains largely unexplored. Drawing upon ethnographic information from diverse European settings, this volume points to the contradictions that the project of a "Europe without boundaries" involves. In illustrating how the removal of political boundaries can create other boundaries, the articles in this volume provide alternatives to recent theorising on complexity, which takes little account of human agency.

Through the concept of "e;social navigation,"e; this book sheds light on the mobilization of urban youth in West Africa. Social navigation offers a perspective on praxis in situations of conflict and turmoil. It provides insights into the interplay between objective structures and subjective agency, thus enabling us to make sense of the opportunistic, sometimes fatalistic and tactical ways in which young people struggle to expand the horizons of possibility in a world of conflict, turmoil and diminishing resources.

A translation of Louis Dumont's lectures on kinship, which provide a comprehensive overview of descent theory and alliance theory for students. This work features these two theories of kinship which are associated with the British and French schools of social anthropology, as well as the theoretical tendencies of functionalism and structuralism.

Featuring contributions from historians, geographers, economists, ecologists, business management experts, public policy specialists, and community organizers, this book examines environmental issues ranging from national and regional policy and macroeconomics to local studies in community regeneration.

During the 1990s, the Eastern Caribbean was caught in a bitter trade dispute between the US and EU over the European banana market. When the World Trade Organization rejected preferential access for Caribbean growers in 1998 the effect on the region's rural communities was devastating. This volume examines the "e;banana wars"e; from the vantage point of St. Lucia's Mabouya Valley, whose recent, turbulent history reveals the impact of global forces. The author investigates how the contemporary structure of the island's banana industry originated in colonial policies to create a politically "e;stable"e; peasantry, followed by politicians' efforts to mobilize rural voters. These political strategies left farmers dependent on institutional and market protection, leaving them vulnerable to any alteration in trade policy. This history gave way to a new harsh reality, in which neoliberal policies privilege price and quantity over human rights and the environment. However, against these challenges, the author shows how the rural poor have responded in creative ways, including new social movements and Fair Trade farming, in order to negotiate a stronger position for themselves in the in a shifting global economy.

Whether rising up from fiery leaders such as Venezuela''s Hugo Chavez and Cuba''s Fidel Castro or from angry masses of Brazilian workers and Mexican peasants, anti U.S. sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean today is arguably stronger than ever. It is also a threat to U.S. leadership in the hemisphere and the world. Where has this resentment come from? Has it arisen naturally from imperialism and globalization, from economic and social frustrations? Has it served opportunistic politicians? Does Latin America have its own style of anti Americanism? What about national variations? How does cultural anti Americanism affect politics, and vice versa? What roles have religion, literature, or cartoons played in whipping up sentiment against ''el yanqui''? Finally, how has the United States reacted to all this? This book brings leaders in the field of U.S. Latin American relations together with the most promising young scholars to shed historical light on the present implications of hostility to the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. In essays that carry the reader from Revolutionary Mexico to Peronist Argentina, from Panama in the nineteenth century to the West Indies'' mid century independence movement, and from Colombian drug runners to liberation theologists, the authors unearth little known campaigns of resistance and probe deeper into episodes we thought we knew well. They argue that, for well over a century, identifying the United States as the enemy has rung true to Latin Americans and has translated into compelling political strategies. Combining history with political and cultural analysis, this collection breaks the mold of traditional diplomatic history by seeing anti Americanism through the eyes of those who expressed it. It makes clear that anti Americanism, far from being a post 9/11 buzzword, is rather a real force that casts a long shadow over U.S. Latin American relations.

Wilma and Georg Iggers came from diverse backgrounds, Wilma from a Jewish farming family from the border area of Czechoslovakia, Georg from a Jewish business family from Hamburg. This book relates their experiences of childhood and adolescence and then their lives together. It presents a history of changing conditions in US and Central Europe.

Silence is normally perceived as an absence and a withholding. The practice of silence turns it into an instrument of power. This volume examines how silence works in the perception and manipulation of sound, of speech, and of perspective in areas, such as music, language, race, work dislocations, and the construction of anthropological subjects.

The story of the miners of Zonguldak presents a particularly graphic local lens through which to examine questions that have been of major concern to historians-most prominently, the development of the state, the emergence of capitalism, and the role of the working classes in these large processes. This book examines such major issues through the actual experiences of coal miners in the Ottoman Empire. The encounters of mine workers with state mining officials and private mine operators do not follow the expected patterns of labor-state-capital relations as predicted by the major explanatory paradigms of modernization or dependency. Indeed, as the author clearly shows, few of the outcomes are as predicted. The fate of these miners has much to offer both Ottoman and Middle East specialists as well as scholars of the developing world and, more generally, those interested in the connections between economic development and social and political change.

Edith and Victor Turner were among the most influential researchers and teachers and social and cultural anthropology in the twentieth century. This memoir is a testimony to a remarkable partnership and to Edie Turner's own achievements during more than two decades after Victor's untimely death.