John Borneman Livres

An anthropologist cuts through the political fuss surrounding one of the most significant events of our time to provide an examination of the disorienting changes in everyday life brought on by reunification of the two Germany's.

Employing ethnographic methods, this work delves into the political turmoil and its portrayal during the concluding phase of the Cold War. It explores the complexities of political disorder, offering insights into how these events were perceived and represented in society. The analysis provides a nuanced understanding of the interplay between culture and politics in a transformative historical context.

This absorbing book of interviews takes one to the heart of modern German Jewish history. Of the eleven German Jews interviewed, four are from West Berlin, and seven are from East Berlin. The interviews provide an exceptionally varied and intimate portrait of Jewish experience in twentieth-century Germany. There are first-hand accounts of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the Holocaust, and the divided Germany of the Cold War era. There are also vivid descriptions of the new united Germany, with its alarming resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Some of the men and women interviewed affirm their dual German and Jewish identities with vigor. There is the West Berliner, for instance, who proclaims, "I am a German Jew. I want to live here". Others describe the impossibility of being both German and Jewish: "I don't have anything in common with the whole German people". Many confess to profound ambivalence, such as the East Berliner who feels that he is neither a native nor a foreigner in Germany: "If someone asks me, 'Who are you?' then I can only say, 'I am a fish out of water.'"

Features ninety of Audubon's most stunning bird paintings highlighted by nature prose by such classic authors as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry James.

The book explores the concepts of accountability and "regime change" in the context of the American occupation of Iraq, analyzing how these ideas shape democratic authority in Europe and North America. Borneman delves into the mechanisms that underpin governance and the implications of these political dynamics on both sides of the Atlantic. Through this examination, the author provides insights into the complexities of modern democracy and the challenges faced in establishing effective governance.

There is no more seemingly incorrigible criminal type than the child sex offender. Said to suffer from a deeply rooted paraphilia, he is often considered as outside the moral limits of the human, profoundly resistant to change. Despite these assessments, in much of the West an increasing focus on rehabilitation through therapy provides hope that psychological transformation is possible. Examining the experiences of child sex offenders undergoing therapy in Germany—where such treatments are both a legal right and duty—John Borneman, in Cruel Attachments, offers a fine-grained account of rehabilitation for this reviled criminal type.             Carefully exploring different cases of the attempt to rehabilitate child sex offenders, Borneman details a secular ritual process aimed not only at preventing future acts of molestation but also at fundamentally transforming the offender, who is ultimately charged with creating an almost entirely new self. Acknowledging the powerful repulsion felt by a public that is often extremely skeptical about the success of rehabilitation, he challenges readers to confront the contemporary contexts and conundrums that lie at the heart of regulating intimacy between children and adults.