Declare Appertaining To Books Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
Title | : | Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil |
Author | : | Nancy Scheper-Hughes |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 632 pages |
Published | : | November 9th 1993 by University of California Press (first published May 13th 1992) |
Categories | : | Anthropology. Nonfiction. Ethnography. Cultural. Brazil. History. Sociology. Social Science |
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Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Paperback | Pages: 632 pages Rating: 4.18 | 976 Users | 44 Reviews
Interpretation As Books Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.Mention Books In Favor Of Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
Original Title: | Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil |
ISBN: | 0520075374 (ISBN13: 9780520075375) |
Edition Language: | English |
Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1992), J.I. Staley Prize (School for Advanced Research) (2000) |
Rating Appertaining To Books Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
Ratings: 4.18 From 976 Users | 44 ReviewsCrit Appertaining To Books Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
Very interesting book... probably her best (or at least her most famous thus far in her academic career). Nancy Scheper-Hughes get a lot of important work done and she write so well too! But Arthur Kleinman still takes the cake as the coolest of medical anthropology scholar. Maybe Paul Farmer too... (because they are also docs as well as activists... how do some of these people do it all?)beautifully written book, but I felt it had questionable ethics in terms of the ethnography conducted and the research question asked. It felt like voyeurism at one point and I was not comfortable reading it.
My Anthropology class used this as one of my reading topics this semester. I found the content of the book very interesting and the discussions that came out of the book equally so.In this book, Nancy Scheper-Hughes delves into the lives of the people of Bom Jesus (name changed for privacy) and how they and their children are starving to death every day. It goes very deep into the reasons behind the daily actions of the people living in Bom Jesus and the ways they handle the trauma of death that
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Although very depressing, this book paints a very real picture of the struggle of everyday life and how people deal emotionally with the very high rates of child death in Brazil.
Besides the description of the violence in Brazil she gives very interesting insights of the strategical functions of this violence to establish control and sustain inequalities. Her theory has applications in other contexts of marginalisation such as the police management of drug issues and reinforment of penal systems in the european liberal democracies.
I dont even know how or what to say about this book. It just speaks to how difficult it was to read this book. I wish everyone would read the insights on motherhood.All I can say is, I love that ethnographers are subtly (or not) undermining the work of analytic philosophers... and the philosophers wont ever find out because I doubt theyre reading ethnographies.
This is a brave book, if not for its subject matter, then at the very least for its broad interpretive strokes. While you may not agree with every interpretation, you have to give NSH credit for her boldness. Good to argue with yes, but even better to think with.
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