Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Author of Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
About the Author
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Image credit: UC Berkeley
Works by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Updated and Expanded (1979) 137 copies, 1 review
Child survival : anthropological perspectives on the treatment and maltreatment of children (1987) 4 copies
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Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1944
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
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Reviews
Much has been said about how poorly this research was done, particularly as to revealing personal details about the 1970s rural Ireland subjects, and including the admissions by the author herself in the introduction to this edition. Still, that does not make it any less fascinating not only about the stressed population left back on struggling farms but about the craft of this sort of anthropological field study as applied here.
For instance, I did not know of the Thematic Apperception Test show more (TAT) card set that shows figurative settings to invite story-telling. Is it not telling that an unusually high number of local respondents read incest into a mildly sexual posing? This is directly summoning views more indirectly drawn form lore. Such as in this case of the nearly barren community from which many superstitions can be gathered about assuring pregnancy, but none about contraception.
'I like that author refer to R.D. Laing and documents a willingness to consider something like schizophrenia a social disease - a role enforced by extreme necessity on a crumbling society and not just an organic fault arising individually.
This is explored in greater detail in the "Concluding Observations: Toward a Responsive Human Community". show less
For instance, I did not know of the Thematic Apperception Test show more (TAT) card set that shows figurative settings to invite story-telling. Is it not telling that an unusually high number of local respondents read incest into a mildly sexual posing? This is directly summoning views more indirectly drawn form lore. Such as in this case of the nearly barren community from which many superstitions can be gathered about assuring pregnancy, but none about contraception.
'I like that author refer to R.D. Laing and documents a willingness to consider something like schizophrenia a social disease - a role enforced by extreme necessity on a crumbling society and not just an organic fault arising individually.
Within this paradigm, schizophrenia is seen, not as a disease, but rather as a desperate strategy adopted by a family in trouble. The complex web of emotional transactions and communications between family members is a self-regulating system; when the internal pressures mount and threaten to blow the family apart, one member (usually a child) tacitly agrees to become "mentally ill". he is the family scapegoat, and by locating the disorder in him, the other members can preserve the illusion of normalcy for themselves. By taking on the sins of the family,. so to speak, he releases them from guilt.
This is explored in greater detail in the "Concluding Observations: Toward a Responsive Human Community". show less
The author worked as a community nurse in a pueblo in the NE of Brazil and returned there to do her thesis. It's a heartbreaking book to read (unless you're a vegan, and used to the heartlessness of humans), because the people she writes about are so very poor that it doesn't mean much to them when one of their babies dies. One less mouth to feed.
What is infuriating is the attitude of capitalists towards the poor here, whose poverty they caused, as their attitude is everywhere.
What is infuriating is the attitude of capitalists towards the poor here, whose poverty they caused, as their attitude is everywhere.
Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Centennial Book) by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Scheper-Hughes is a social anthropologist, but she´s also a very good narrator. The book is an original ethnography, but it´s a kind of roman, too, and it´s full of very critical theory.
The main point of the book (among a lot more) is the deconstruction of motherhood/health-illness/death... as natural.
The main point of the book (among a lot more) is the deconstruction of motherhood/health-illness/death... as natural.
Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Centennial Book) by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
This book is very sad, but very good. Its a cultural anthropology first person ethnography. I read it when writing my undergraduate thesis and quite liked it. I would be a good read for people who like Brazil, people who like cultural anthropology, or people who like to know about how different cultures deal with death. This book is quite long for an ethnography, but manages to stay interesting throughout!
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- Rating
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