Berghahn Books
The allure of capitalism; an ethnography of management and the global economy in crisis.
The author is a social anthropologist affiliated with Scandinavia's largest independent research organization and with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has lived with and studied closely both the dispossessed of the world and the privileged elites running large international corporations. This study investigates the structures of production, finance, and the capitalist corporation through the lens of cultural analysis, with insights pertaining to patterns that have created the systems, sustain them, and yet, could be susceptible (or vulnerable) to change. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Anthropologies of education; a global guide to ethnographic studies of learning and schooling.
This collection of thirteen articles on the anthropology of education showcases current scholarship on educational systems around the world. Bringing together varying methodologies of ethnographic study and anthropological exploration, the work attempts to give readers an overview of recent research into the cultural, national and regional particulars of education. Topics discussed include parochialism and the anthropology of education in the Anglophone world, educational processes in Mexico, ethnographies of education in the French speaking world, welfare states and education, schooling in Japan, and the ethnography of education in Israel. Contributors include academics in education, sociology, anthropology and ethnic studies from universities around the world. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The anthropology of empathy; experiencing the lives of others in Pacific societies.
Due to recent discoveries in neuroscience, notably the discovery of "mirror" neurons, various areas of science have begun to focus on empathy, says Hollan (anthropology, U. of California, Los Angeles) and Throop (anthropology, UCLA). They present an examination of the anthropological roles of empathy in Pacific societies. Contributors begin by providing a definition of empathy and detailing the need for more detailed study on this subject. The majority of the study focuses on observations and analyses of empathy in the Oceanic societies with the intent to relay a detailed collection of linguistic, cultural, comparative, and historically coherent data on empathy. This volume is intended for those studying anthropology. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Beyond conversion and syncretism; indigenous encounters with missionary Christianity, 1800-2000.
Historians, anthropologists, scholars of religion, and area scholars look at some of the nuances and complexities surrounding the surface phenomena of conversion and syncretism in Christian colonialism. Among the topics are conversion, translation, and life-history in colonial central India; coercion and conversion in southern Africa and northeastern America at the turn of the 19th century; beyond syncretism in Cuba; acculturation and gendered conversion of Afro-American Catholic women in New Orleans from 1726 to 1884; and comparative missionary/indigenous encounters in northwestern America and eastern Australia. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The challenge of epistemology; anthropological perspectives.
Anthropologists present clashing views and divergent sub-disciplinary perspectives on epistemology in order to demonstrate the current range of opinions and practices in the profession. Among the topics are the ontogeny of an anthropological epistemology in 18th-century Scotland, changing modern institutional forms (disciplines and nation states), an Afro-Brazilian theory of the creative process, intersubjectivity as epistemology, the all-or-nothing syndrome and the human condition, and perspectives from Africa on epistemology and ethics. Originally published as a special issue of Social Analysis, volume 53, issue 2. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Civilizations beyond earth; extraterrestrial life and society.
This collection of fourteen articles on extraterrestrial life examines the scientific and social ramifications of potential discoveries on human culture and future exploration. Focusing on SETI and NASA's studies in astrobiology, the essays explore three broad subject areas: whether extraterrestrial life exists, cultural reactions to extraterrestrial life, and the potential of communication with extraterrestrial civilizations. Individual essays cover topics such as estimating the theoretical prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the role of education and religion in shaping public perceptions, and cultural aspects of interstellar communication. Contributors include academics from a wide variety of disciplines including the sciences, psychology, sociology and anthropology from several universities. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Diasporic generations; memory, politics and nation among Cubans in Spain.
Berg (anthropology, U. of Oxford, England) examines how Cubans in Spain experience and construct their diasporic subjectivities, arguing that there are three generations of diasporic identity that relate to their homeland in different ways: the "Exiles," who frame their identity around the lost lifestyle of 1950s Havana; the "Children of the Revolution," an educated generation who have rejected nationalism in favor of cosmopolitanism; and the "Migrants," propelled to Spain by economic circumstances. After profiling each of these generations, she compares and contrasts their narratives and commemorative practices, focusing on changes over time and on bodily idioms of diasporic experience. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ecofeminism and rhetoric; critical perspectives on sex, technology, and discourse.
This collection of five essays, an afterward and epilogue, uses concepts and methods of rhetorical analysis to interrogate the deep connections between sexism, and the exploitation of nature, gender, science and technology. The contributors are mostly English professors with interests in rhetoric and ecocriticism, but also include a biologist and clinical psychologist. The essays map out the history of rhetoric that binds women with nature and legitimates their exploitation; explore the difference between confrontational and invitational rhetoric in feminist struggle; consider the moral and ethical status of human control over the sexual reproduction of dogs; critique how primatologists (in this case studying orangutans) naturalize sexist notions, thereby grounding the idea that certain sexual identities, practices and expectations are inevitable; and finally look at the technophobic tendencies of ecofeminism, and the gendered assumptions behind computer interface design at Microsoft. An epilogue by the editor, Vakoch (clinical psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies), revisits ideas brought up in the essays to comment on dualism, essentialism, and the possibility of a coherent ecofeminism. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Encounters of body and soul in contemporary religious practices; anthropological reflections.
This collection of ten articles on the anthropology of religion examines the role of corporeality in religious beliefs. The work is divided into sections covering bodies and souls in Catholicism, corporeality, belief and human mobility, and new spirituality and body-soul dualism. Individual essays address such topics as embodying devotion in the Italian Festa dei Gigli, representations of the body in Talimbi witchcraft and body praxes of performed religiosity in contemporary Greece. Chapters provide numerous illustrations and figures. Contributors include anthropologists from European and South American institutions. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ernst L. Freud, architect; the case of the modern bourgeois home.
Welter (history of art & architecture, U. of California, Santa Barbara) offers an intriguing study of the architect Ernst L. Freud (1892-1970), a son of Sigmund Freud and the father of painter Lucian Freud and Sir Clement Freud, a politician and broadcaster. He practiced in Berlin, and after 1933, in London, designing homes and interiors and, also, psychoanalytical consulting rooms. This investigation details Freud's work and its context. The study also looks closely at his clients — most of whom were Jewish — making this text, secondarily, a chronicle of their expulsion and relocation. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Evidence, ethos and experiment; the anthropology and history of medical research in Africa.
Anthropologists, historians of science, and researchers and practitioners in medicine explore medical research carried out in Africa by African institutions and their collaborators from Europe and the US. Considering a range of countries and types of medical research, they focus on how medical research is shaped in the interactions between global scientists and their institutions, national and transnational forms of government, and people who contribute time and effort either as temporary staff or as study subjects without remuneration. An underlying concern is how scientific investigations could be conducted in a more democratic and equitable manner. Among the topics are clofazimine and its precursors in Ireland and Nigeria 1944-66, the epistemological politics of research about medicinal plants in Tanzania, and HIV and therapeutic citizenship in West Africa. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Existentialism and contemporary cinema; a Sartrean perspective.
This book, declare the editors (both of Nottingham Trent U., England), is an attempt to revalidate the existentialist philosophical project of Jean-Paul Sartre through its application to film. They present 11 chapters exploring existentialist themes in films that have been chosen for their relative contemporaneousness and international provenance. The contributions have been grouped into two sections that, broadly speaking, address the freedom that arises out of human subjectivity in existentialist philosophy and the link between individual subjectivity/freedom and collective responsibility that is inherent in human situatedness. Films discussed include Peter Weir's The Truman Show, the corpus of Michael Haneke, Mike Leigh's Naked, the Coen Broethers' The Man Who Wasn't There and No Country for Old Men, the Dardenne Brothers' Lorna's Silence, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé, Cédric Klapisch's The Spanish Apartment and Russian Dolls, and Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Funerals in Africa; explorations of a social phenomenon.
European and North American anthropologists who have conducted research across sub-Saharan Africa on funerals and post-funerary events explore how and why the practices, meanings, and beliefs associated with death have changed over the years, aspects of social change that are little known or understood. Their topics include African funerals and sociocultural change across the continent, the transformation of death among the Kikuyu of Kenya, the rise of death celebrations in the Cameroon grassfields, burying and honoring the dead in the Celestial Church of Christ in southern Benin, and body imagery and changing technologies of remembrance in Asante funeral culture. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Grassroots memorials; the politics of memorializing traumatic death.
In this, 12th volume of the series, Margry, an entomologist with a focus on contemporary religious cultures, rituals and mutual memory and Sánchez-Carretero, an anthropologist whose research focuses on the role of heritage formation processes in contemporary societies, describe and analyze "spontaneous" gatherings, improvised memorials, and street shrines. Using examples such as anti-mafia shrines, September 11 memorials, "ghost bikes," and spontaneous vigils which form in response to accidental deaths on dangerous roads, the authors show how grassroots memorials become focal points for channeling the power of individual grief into social grief and at times into public displays of anger and protest against injustice. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Great expectations; imagination and anticipation in tourism.
This collection of eleven essays on tourism examines the expectations of tourists and host communities through an anthropological lens, exploring the ways in which the preconceived desires of both groups shape the interactions between visitor and visited. Topics discussed include confrontations with the unexpected in a Turkish community, resistance in Native American cultural tourism, experience and expectations on the Cuban dance floor, and holidays to imagine war at the Western Front battlefields. Many chapters are expanded case studies and provide primary source material as well as analysis. Contributors to the volume include academics in anthropological disciplines primarily from US and UK institutions. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Headlines of nations, subtexts of class; working-class populism and the return of the repressed in neoliberal Europe.
This collection of eight essays, bracketed by an introduction by one of the editors, Kalb (sociology & social anthropology, Central European U.), and an epilogue, looks at the emergence and spread of mostly right-wing populist movements in Europe since the 1980s. Its focus is on the working-class character of these movements, and borrowing a view from Slavoj Zizek, the contributors suggest that they indicate the return of repressed class-struggle, but notably displaced. Particular essays look at privatization in Serbia, discourses of nation and ethnicity in post-socialist Romania, football and nationalism, nationalist mobilization in transitional Hungary, the decline of the Italian Left, regional identity in the Italian Alps after the Soviet collapse, and Scottish nationalism in working-class villages. The contributors are mostly European sociologists and social anthropologists. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Imperial Germany revisited; continuing debates and new perspectives.
Müller (research group leader at Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin) and Torp (history, Martin Luther U.) collect here 21 essays from 21 academic contributors offering different perspectives on and debates about Germany's tumultuous entry into the modern era. Since the 1960s historians have vigorously debated how the culture and politics of Imperial Germany affected Germany's role in World War I and II. This book spotlights those ongoing debates and explores many different perspectives on Germany's emergence as a modern nation. The book is divided into four parts titled: The Place of Imperial Germany in German History; Politics, Culture, and Society; War and Violence; and The German Empire and the World. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Indigenous peoples and demography; the complex relation between identity and statistics.
This volume brings together anthropologists, historians, demographers, and sociologists to look at the ways that the censuses and other demographic practices construct indigenous peoples. Exploring both the historical and the contemporary, authors discuss such issues as how different social and institutional systems have defined indigenous groups in terms of exclusion and inclusion, the reasons for such decisions and how they are mirrored in the demographic sources, and how ethno-demographic tools can be used to categorize how households are constructed within complex ethnic and economic environments and how these factors can be read into statistical data. The studies examine evidence from Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, and the UK. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The legacies of two world wars; European societies in the twentieth century.
Kettenacker was deputy director of the German Historical Institute London for 30 years (1975-2004). He organized a conference titled "War and Peace in Europe's Collective Consciousness, 1900-1950" at the Evangelische Akademie Meisen. This book results from that conference and collaboration with co-editor Riotte (history, U. of Frankfurt am Main). The aim is to "...trace the moods and attitudes of the people of four Western countries [Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy] before, during and after the First and Second World Wars," write the editors in the introductory chapter. They continue: "The inspiration to look again at the attitudes of ordinary Europeans to the two wars came from the controversy surrounding the US invasion of Iraq in 2003." Sixteen contributions address these themes. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The migration-displacement nexus; patterns, processes, and policies.
Koser (Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Switzerland) and Martin (international migration, Georgetown U., US) deploy the concept of the "migration-displacement nexus" as a means of illustrating "the increasing complexities of migration and displacement; the growing difficulties of distinguishing between the two; the misalignment between existing labels, categories and constructions and migration realities; and the consequences of falling into legal, normative, and institutional gaps." They present 14 papers that illustrate these complexities of the migration-displacement nexus around the world, shedding light on the ways that categories of voluntary versus forced and economic versus political migration are too simplistic; protection gaps due to mixed flows of migrants to and from places but with differing motives; the ways that different migrant groups adopt broadly similar survival strategies and how that can lead to the invisibility of victims of forced displacement and resettlement; status and category changes for migrants resulting either through intentional acts (e.g., overstaying a visa) or through arbitrary changes in law and policies; cases where migrants simultaneously fit multiple pre-existing categories; and different levels of vulnerability and need within single categories. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
