Berghahn Books
Between tradition and modernity; Aby Warburg and art in Hamburg's public realm, 1896-1918.
At the end of the nineteenth century, well under five percent of the denizens of Hamburg were eligible to vote. Even some time later the number rose to slightly over five percent. The rest did not meet the requisite wealth requirements, leading one to believe the city was awash with the great unwashed and no one else. Warburg, however, knew the social reality behind the facade, and that the new middle class was based upon wage-earning rather than sitting on property. Founder of the Warburg Institute, he became one of the most influential cultural historians of the twentieth century, and Russell (Concordia U., Montreal) understands his achievements were based on his keen understanding of the needs and aspiration of the middle class and involvement with Hamburg's civil affairs. Russell makes excellent use of archival material and correspondence to explain the ideas of this complex and influential intellectual. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Changing cultural tastes; writers and the popular in modern Germany.
Waine (German and European studies, Lancaster U.) explores how perceptions and interests of common people have repeatedly intruded into the high literature of Germany over the past two centuries. He particularly looks at how changing political systems have reflected and shaped popular culture and its portrayal. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Coming of age in times of uncertainty.
Most people in Western culture think rarely if ever about what adulthood is, when it starts and stops, what its features are or should be, and the like, says Blatterer (sociology, Macquarie U., Sydney), but that makes the questions — indeed the stage of life itself — more mysterious rather than less. He acknowledges the validity of psychological approaches to studying adulthood, but insists on an approach conceptualized against the background of current forms of social life, at least partly to re-balance the tilt towards extreme individualism. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Continental Britons; German-Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, rev.ed.
A pan-European scholar of the humanities, Berghahn here examines the experience of German and Austrian Jews who fled to Britain as refugees from Nazism. It is a study of contact between ethnic minorities and the majority society, she says, a subject that has been rather neglected in Europe compared to North America. In addition, the meager historical attention that has been paid to German Jewish immigrants is disproportionate to the enormous economic, cultural, and academic impact they have had on British society. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Coping with distances; producing nordic Atlantic societies.
Informed by ice, clad in isolation, it would seem that northern Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland are unlikely places for thriving societies and communities. However, Brenholdt (environmental, social and spatial change, Roskilde U.) assures us that such things are possible if we study the spatial and temporal practices that produce and change social formations. He shows how people who have little or no control over their conditions cope, never mastering the unmasterable. He shows how Nordic Atlantic societies emerge, how they form and stabilize, how such informal networks created by tourism and fisheries work to create societies, how welfare provisions contribute to the shape of a community, how being Nordic does and does not help, and how efforts to create transnationalism and sustainable development have impacted such societies. This is a well-researched study of people thriving on the edge of the world. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Crime, Jews and news; Vienna, 1895-1914.
One of the core themes of anti-Semitic propaganda is that Jews commit ritual and serial murder, either in groups as a religious exercise or individually as a being uncontrolled by religion or sanity. Vyleta (European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin) offers an interesting comparison of the nightmarish anti-Semite popular publications of the nineteenth century in Austria and those perpetuated by the current sort of anti-Semite. He challenges historiographic assumptions about Jewish criminology, noting how much was simply an effort to neutralize the Jews under their control them, thereby deliberately destroying the epidemiological basis of society itself. He describes the "scientific" works that sought to convince a society newly built upon expert testimony that Jews were leading practitioners of horror and disruption, and examines the guilt, innocence, and often convenient arrests of Jewish "suspects." He focuses on the Hilsner ritual murder trials as examples of the triumph of prejudice over reason. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cultural diversity and the empowerment of minorities; perspectives from Israel & Germany.
This collection of articles, jointly sponsored by the U. of Haifa and the U. of Hamburg, gives both Israeli and German perspectives on dealing with internal conflicts, starting with three survey articles covering transnational advocacy and democracy education, social psychological approaches to minority/majority interaction and misunderstanding in intercultural communications. Seven articles address Israeli issues such as the teaching of history in Jewish and Arab schools, the evolving Arab reception of the Holocaust, police/minority relations, perceptions of threat, methods of fostering tolerance, gender and body shape, and postcolonial feminism. Four articles from the German perspective address bilingual classrooms, oral mistake corrections in second-language classrooms, intercultural competence amongst German managers, and the aforesaid American identity shifts in Germany. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cultures of abortion in Weimar Germany; the strategy of tension and the politics of nonreconciliation.
Building on her 1992 Politics of the Body in Wiemar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and Duties, Usborne (history, Roehampton U., London) explores how abortion featured in popular culture of the time, focusing mainly on women. She discusses how abortion affected their relations with husbands or lovers, how they experienced it, and whether it was performed by family members or friends or by professional abortionists or doctors. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Decentering America.
"Decentering America" refers to the idea that scholars of American diplomatic and cultural history should internationalize their perspective and adopt analytical techniques where the analysis of national history does not necessarily assume a center position. Gienow-Hecht (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-U. Frankfurt am Main, Germany) presents ten papers that offer examples of how to reconceptualize American history in such a fashion. Topics addressed include the role of the British in the rise of modern mass advertising, anti-German feelings in the United States in the 1950s and 60s, Chinese debates on modernity and the West in the years following World War II, the emergence of a trans-cultural folklore movement across the Americas from the 1930s to the 1950s, English-Palatine relations and the culture of diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (as analyzed through concepts typically associated with 20th century US history), competing narratives of the "American War" in Vietnam, the influence of the United States on the emergence of the West German New Left, and cultural conflicts in the Panama Canal Zone under US occupation. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The discipline of leisure; embodying cultures of 'recreation'.
Coleman (anthropology, Sussex U., UK) and Kohn (anthropology, U. of Melbourne, Australia) present ten essays from international contributors on the everyday spare time of people that is often involved in hobbies and sports, focusing on the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and the disciplined recreation of the self. Authors also consider the way rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between contemporary beliefs of freedom, choice, and self-control. The text is divided into four sections, focusing on surveying the self, temporalities of leisure, enacting nationality, and transcending the nation. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Fetishes and monuments; Afro-Brazilian art and culture in the twentieth century.
Salvador da Bahia, the former capital, is now is the cradle of Afro-Brazilian culture, disseminating the samba, capoeira and Candomblé. The origins of the term "Candomblé" are lost in time, the practice itself was considered akin to sorcery, but now it is openly practiced as a part of Afro-Brazilian culture. Sansi (anthropology, Goldsmiths College, U. of London) traces the evolution of Candomblé from a secret, suppressed crime to a part of the culture and art of Brazil expressed in such authorized settings as museum displays and public monuments. He also describes the reasons why evangelical Christians see the images of the Candomblé as signs of devil worship. He evaluates the Candomblé tradition as a case study in objectification and transition from the secret to the recognized, points out connections between modern art and Afro-Brazilian culture, and analyzes the appropriation and re-appropriation of Afro-Brazilian culture by scholars. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
France and the construction of Europe, 1944-2007; the geopolitical imperative.
Sutton (politics and international relations, Aston U.) begins with the liberation of Paris, when Charles de Gaulle assumed power at the head of the new Provisional Government of the French Republic. From there he traces the activities of successive French governments regarding European unification through the Jacques Chirac and post-Maastricht Europe in the 21st century. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Hannah Arendt and the uses of history; imperialism, nation, race, and genocide.
Historians, philosophers, and other scholars from many lands foreground aspects of Arendt's (1906-75) work that have been rather neglected in the general revival of interest in her. They look especially to her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism to explore her thinking in such areas as race and bureaucracy, the refractory legacy of Algerian decolonization, and biopolitics and the problem of violence. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A history of Oxford anthropology.
Rivière (professor emeritus, social anthropology, University of Oxford) gathers essays from administrative and chronological perspectives on the first 100 years of the study of anthropology at Oxford University. Material originated at a September 2005 workshop celebrating the centenary of the study of anthropology at Oxford. With two exceptions, all of the contributors are, or have been, closely associated with Oxford anthropology. To compensate for the book's emphasis on social anthropology, there is a chapter devoted to physical/biological anthropology, and a chapter on the Oxford University Anthropological Society and the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. Historical b&w photos are included. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Italian neofascism; the strategy of tension and the politics of nonreconciliation.
Cento Cull (Italian history and politics, U. of Bath, England) presents an account of Cold-War era political massacres in Italy that is as divided as opinion about them in the country itself. In the first section, she reports the evidence unearthed by judicial investigations and trials, and the reconstruction of stragismo and the Strategy of Tension by scholars and professionals, most of them left-of-center. The second part contains accounts by neo-fascists and post-fascists about the killings and the reasons for them, generally depicting them as self-defense against the oppressive mainstream. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Learning on the shop floor; historical perspectives on apprenticeship.
Edited by De Munck (history, U. of Antwerp), Kaplan (history, Cornell U.) and Soly (history, Vrije Universiteit Brussel), this collaborative examination of apprenticeship details the historical, economic and social origins and outcomes of "learning by doing." Seven abundantly referenced case studies of European (and one Japanese) apprenticeships explore the association between on-the-job training and migration patterns; family economy and household strategies; gender perspectives; urban identities; and general educational and pedagogical contexts. Graphs and tables of data from period records are included. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Learning religion; anthropological approaches.
The contributors of these 12 papers argue for a new perspective on the study of religion that examines the works of transmission and innovation through the standard set by learning, on the basis that religious culture is built by active agents engaged in learning processes. The result, they say, is not passive "downloading" of data from person to person but a fully active social process with its relational dimension. Their evidence and specific topics include the process of learning to believe, the lessons learned from "first blood" ritual, the workings of the accidental in religious instruction, learning to know that you mean what you do, learning it is God who speaks, learning a spirit possession religion, learning to be a proper spirit medium, ritual speech and the right to it, young Christians and catechism, Chinese versions of religion, and elements of witchcraft in religious transmission. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
London eyes; reflections in text and image.
This collection of 12 nimble essays holds London in space and time in the Victorian and Edwardian era and again in the modern age, commenting through text and image. Victorian London topics include the rise of the suburbs, John Thomson's London in photographs, the displacement of urban man in Sherlock Holmes, the Aesthetic set, agoraphobia and the Bildungsroman in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage, and Conrad's The Secret Agent on foot in literature and film. Modern London takes its turn as a blur on film and as an altered landscape in Britain's 1960s auteur cinema, represented in the lack (or not) of a map, as the dystopia of the film city, as container of class and suburban trajectories in gay London, and as the soul in Derek Jarman's Soho. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The new face of political cinema; commitment in French film since 1995.
Despite the whispers in the background that profit is the most important goal of cinema, recent French films have managed to connect with politics and social issues as closely as it did in the days following the uprisings of 1968. O'Shaughnessy (French cultural studies, Nottingham Trent U.) analyzes the development of this trend since 1995, the formal characteristics of the products, and the character and reasons for their ingenuity. Along with examinations of the work such leaders in the industry as Cantet, Dumont, Guédiguian, Kassovitz, Tavernier and Zonca, O'Shaughnessy takes a close look at the Belgian Dardenne brothers and a bevy of lesser-known but still influential directors. He closely analyzes the approach of contemporary opposition cinema to class and describes how narrative and characters work in the political and social contexts to which the directors seem to be responding as well as the contexts they are building. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
New regionalism and asylum seekers; challenges ahead.
Thirteen international academics, researchers, and policymakers contribute to a text exploring the role that regional, as opposed to national or global, institutions and relationships play in forming asylum policies and procedures. The ten papers were originally presented at an international conference on regionalism and forced migration, held at the U. of London in May 2004. Topics addressed include the causes of forced migration movements; the direction of forced migration flows and its effect on the immediate region; policy responses towards forced migration, particularly that of ASEAN and the European Community; cooperative arrangement and agreement between regional states; the protection of human rights; and future challenges. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
