Questioning Misfortune

Questioning Misfortune PDF Author: Susan Reynolds Whyte
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521595582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Some of the most interesting ethnographies of experience are concerned to highlight the indeterminate nature of life. Questioning Misfortune is very much within this tradition. Based on a long-term study of adversity and its social causes in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, it considers the way in which people deal with uncertainties of life, such as sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure, and death. Divination may identify causes of misfortune, ranging from ancestors and spirits to sorcerers. Sufferers and their families will then try out a variety of remedial measures, including pharmaceuticals, sorcery antidotes, and sacrifices. But remedies often fail, and doubt and uncertainty persist. Even the commercialisation of biomedicine, and the peril of AIDS can be understood in terms of a pragmatics of uncertainty.

Questioning Misfortune

Questioning Misfortune PDF Author: Susan Reynolds Whyte
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521595582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Some of the most interesting ethnographies of experience are concerned to highlight the indeterminate nature of life. Questioning Misfortune is very much within this tradition. Based on a long-term study of adversity and its social causes in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, it considers the way in which people deal with uncertainties of life, such as sickness, suffering, marital problems, failure, and death. Divination may identify causes of misfortune, ranging from ancestors and spirits to sorcerers. Sufferers and their families will then try out a variety of remedial measures, including pharmaceuticals, sorcery antidotes, and sacrifices. But remedies often fail, and doubt and uncertainty persist. Even the commercialisation of biomedicine, and the peril of AIDS can be understood in terms of a pragmatics of uncertainty.

Forbidden Oracles?

Forbidden Oracles? PDF Author: AnneMarie Luijendijk
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161528590
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"This book centers on The Gospel of the Lots of Mary, a previously unknown text preserved in a fifth- or sixth-century Coptic miniature codex. It presents the first critical edition and translation of this new text. My book is also a project about religious praxis and authority, as I situate the manuscript within the context of practices of and debates around divination in the ancient Mediterranean world."--Preface, p. [vii].

Caring on the Frontline during COVID-19

Caring on the Frontline during COVID-19 PDF Author: Cecilia Vindrola-Padros
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811664862
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book examines the experiences of global healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shines a light on the experiences of healthcare workers during the pandemic, exploring their lived experiences of delivering care without losing sight of the emotional and symbolic nature of their work. Incorporating cutting-edge research from global experts in medical anthropology, medical sociology, medicine, psychology and nursing, it uniquely demonstrates the value of rapid qualitative research during infectious epidemics. Drawing on data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, the book explores global healthcare policies and healthcare workers’ experiences across 20 countries.

Anthropology and Climate Change

Anthropology and Climate Change PDF Author: Susan A. Crate
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315530317
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
The first edition of Anthropology and Climate Change (2009) pioneered the study of climate change through the lens of anthropology, covering the relation between human cultures and the environment from prehistoric times to the present. This second, heavily revised edition brings the material on this rapidly changing field completely up to date, with major scholars from around the world mapping out trajectories of research and issuing specific calls for action. The new edition introduces new “foundational” chapters—laying out what anthropologists know about climate change today, new theoretical and practical perspectives, insights gleaned from sociology, and international efforts to study and curb climate change—making the volume a perfect introductory textbook; presents a series of case studies—both new case studies and old ones updated and viewed with fresh eyes—with the specific purpose of assessing climate trends; provides a close look at how climate change is affecting livelihoods, especially in the context of economic globalization and the migration of youth from rural to urban areas; expands coverage to England, the Amazon, the Marshall Islands, Tanzania, and Ethiopia; re-examines the conclusions and recommendations of the first volume, refining our knowledge of what we do and do not know about climate change and what we can do to adapt.

Genetic Databases

Genetic Databases PDF Author: Oonagh Corrigan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134373341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Genetic Databases offers a timely analysis of the underlying tensions, contradictions and limitations of the current regulatory frameworks for, and policy debates about, genetic databases. Drawing on original empirical research and theoretical debates in the fields of sociology, anthropology and legal studies, the contributors to this book challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of informed consent and explore the relationship between personal privacy and the public good. They also consider the multiple meanings attached to human tissue and the role of public consultations and commercial involvement in the creation and use of genetic databases. The authors argue that policy and regulatory frameworks produce a representation of participation that is often at odds with the experiences and understandings of those taking part. The findings present a serious challenge for public policy to provide mechanisms to safeguard the welfare of individuals participating in genetic databases.

Managing Reproductive Life

Managing Reproductive Life PDF Author: Soraya Tremayne
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571815002
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In 1999, the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford held a workshop on the social dynamics of human reproduction. This volume contains 12 papers from scholars in Britain and the U.S. that were originally presented at that workshop. Topics include, for example, motherhood among young prostitutes in Thailand, the meaning of children in Hong Kong, and the reproductive health of refugees. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Anthropology and Risk

Anthropology and Risk PDF Author: Asa Boholm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317754611
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Drawing on theory from anthropology, sociology, organisation studies and philosophy, this book addresses how the perception, communication and management of risk is shaped by culturally informed and socially embedded knowledge and experience. It provides an account of how interpretations of risk in society are conditioned by knowledge claims and cultural assumptions and by the orientationof actors based on roles, norms, expectations, identities, trust and practical rationality within a lived social world. By focusing on agency, social complexity and the production and interpretation of meaning, the book offers a comprehensive and holistic theoretical perspective on risk, based on empirical case studies and ethnographic enquiry. As a selection of Åsa Boholm’s publications throughout her career, along with a newly written introduction overviewing the field, this book provides a unified perspective on risk as a construct shaped by social and cultural contexts.This collection should be of interest to students and scholars of risk communication, risk management, environmental planning, environmental management and environmental and applied anthropology.

Configuring Contagion

Configuring Contagion PDF Author: Lotte Meinert
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805399144
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Expanding our understanding of contagion beyond the typical notions of infection and pandemics, this book widens the field to include the concept of biosocial epidemics. The chapters propose varied and detailed answers to questions about epidemics and their contagious potential for specific infections and non-infectious conditions. Together they explore how inseparable social and biological processes configure co-existing influences, which create epidemics, and in doing so stress the role of social inequality in these processes. The authors compellingly show that epidemics do not spread evenly in populations or through simple coincidental biological contagion: they are biosocially structured and selective, and happen under specific economic, political and environmental conditions. This volume illustrates that an understanding of biosocial factors is vital for ensuring effective strategies for the containment of epidemics.

Ethnographic Sorcery

Ethnographic Sorcery PDF Author: Harry G. West
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226894126
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation. A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

Resurrecting Cannibals

Resurrecting Cannibals PDF Author: Heike Behrend
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1847010393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Accompanying DVD is entitled: "Satan crucified : a crusade of the Catholic Church in western Uganda / a video by Armin Linke and Heike Behrend.