The World Ethnography Project: Recent Episodes
Gwyneth Talley
This is a collaborative multi-modal project that brings students of anthropology together to create a massive collection that includes a map of ethnographies from around the world, a podcast or video review link to each map pin, and a discussion and passage reading. This project is inspired by Ann Morgan’s TED talk of reading a book from every country in the world (TED Talk linked here). Together we can read ethnographies from around the world and share them a wider audience.
This book tells a story, an examination, a history, and social reflections on a seminal religious movement, which originated in Katanga, Zaire (Democratic Congo now) during the fanatically brutal period of Belgian occupation. In the backdrop of avid extraction of minerals like magnesium, gold, copper and so on, from the soil and establishment of industrial infrastructure for that purpose, there was a proliferating missionary indoctrination, and Catholic-based education. This forcible interaction of world views and cultural institutions, gave rise to the Jamaa movement in 1954, which was founded by Placeid Temple, a Flemish Catholic priest who was willing to engage with the Congolese people as community member, as a pupil seeking to learn the indigenous ways, and as a purveyor of human understanding. In doing so, Baba Temple set off this unique amalgamation of Catholic doctrine and traditional Congolese Beliefs, mores, metaphysical structures, and lore. This is a story and an insightful account about the colonial aspect of cultural psycho-assimilation, about a Franciscan priest who was intrigued and espoused the generative power of Bantu axioms, about the resilience of human culture, about the Jamaa people.
This book primarily focuses on Cuba’s society in the twenty-first century and how gender, sexuality, and ethics circle around it. Megan Daigle focuses on women’s sexuality and how men’s masculinity plays a huge factor in Cuba’s society. For instance, the emergence of jinetera is prostitution in Cuba that hasn't been officially illegal. Sex tourism has existed in the country both before and after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In Cuban slang, female prostitutes are called jineteras and gay male prostitutes are called Jineteros or Pingueros. Daigle does a great job of incorporating various types of sexualtiy that are usually not spoken of in the Cuban culture. Cuba today is overlaid with knowledge about race, gender, class, moral, and social values, ethics, and lifestyles that date back centuries.
Zona Galactica is a state-run brothel in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. This ethnography discusses the modernization of the sex industry and how the efforts of the government to modernize Chiapas are connected to its regulation of the sex industry. Patty Kelly examines how politics and economics impact sex work. She also looks at the concepts of gender and power by examining the government’s efforts to regulate the sex industry. There are cultural implications regarding sex work causing differences in power even outside of government control. Questions to eb asked include: is the government regulating sex or are they regulating women? What is expected of men versus what is expected of women? How does who is given condoms, the worker or the client, relate to gender and systems of power? The sex workers Kelly portrays are not heroes or villains, and they also are not victims. Although they are heavily stigmatized, even the people working legally, they are still people whose stories are worth telling.
Peter Kirby explores the wide variety of implications "waste" has in Japan. At first meant to be only about the contradictions between Japan's pollution problem and their fixation on nature, Kirby finds deeper roots in things like "racist self imaginings and wartime practice... contemporary outcasts, social exclusion, and ostracism." Kirby tells of his experiences in two places; firstly, the Azuma ward and its subsequent "Azuma Disease." A waste transfer facility leaked out harmful toxins, and the battle for awareness of this is recorded in depth by Kirby. The second place, Horiuchi, is a place used to being outside the limelight. However, when lettuce from nearby Tokorozawa was broadcast on the news to possibly be toxic, a new scare had erupted. Coupled with his experience recording these incidents, Kirby explores Japan's unique waste problem, everywhere from supposed societal waste to literal waste. After an in depth and multifaceted analysis, Kirby then draws this to the international environmental protection milieu.
This is an ethnography that discusses one of the most diverse buildings in the world, the Chungking Mansions of Hong Kong. Due to the unique history of Hong Kong, and the economic opportunities that reside there, people from all over the world flock to the city to try out their luck. The Chungking Mansions have become a haven for those who need a financially conscious place to stay. These people range from sex workers to entrepreneurs, to backpackers. The rates for these rooms start at around $13 U.S. a night. The apartments are very modest, usually one room with a separate area that houses a shower/toilet combo. The ethnography takes readers through the struggles business owners who work in Chungking Mansions
Dacha life in Russia is a major part of Russian society. It is something that not many many people know about either. This book does an excellent job of introducing its readers about Russian summer culture. The tradition of the summer cottage in Russia explains Russian society in ways one would usually not consider. The dachas can correlate to life, politics, and society in Russia. The importance of going to the Dacha is very important for the people of Russia because it is a break from the routine of normal life. Also, after a long, cold, Russian winter the people at a place to unwind away from the city. Melissa Caldwell does an excellent job of explaining the significance of the Dacha to the people of Russia. She explains that the dacha is a powerful tradition, and how it is so beloved by the people that attend them in the summer. Thus, the dacha is something that is very significant to life in Russia.
Japan is an epicenter for media, and the origin for a lot of these cultural exports is manga. It inspires toys, anime, video games, movies, and more. Manga has an even bigger impact on Japanese culture than any comic book does in the United States. Shojo manga is the “girls manga”, and it has been integral in forming the modern idea of a girl in Japan. Manga magazines form what is popular and promote consumerism for girls with prize incentives. Jennifer Prough conducts interviews and research at the heart of the shojo manga industry in Tokyo. She reveals the way shojo manga has progressed after the war and the different impacts it has had on girls over the years. Mangaka, or manga artists, is the second most popular dream job for young girls in Japan, and Prough explores exactly what it is in the media and industry that draws girls to join.
This ethnography is the accounts of medical and cultural anthropologist and physician Scott Stonington mainly in Nakhon Ping in Northern Thailand, but also in Bangkok and some surrounding areas in Southern Thailand. Stonington shares his research of the two phases of dying in the Thailand culture and the specifics in death in one place and how they relate to a broader world where death is changing for everyone. Through roots in Buddhism and some Hinduism he follows terminal patients in remote villages and caroming communities with urban hospitals and fully equipped technology. Through intimate stories of patients Stonington outlines the specifics such as paying the death of life, the importance of choreographing death, new thoughts on end of life in Thailand, and the beliefs of karma to the people he meets. Beautiful stories of families and their dying loved ones brings a new perspective to the differences and beauties of the world, but also how changing world affects all aspects of life across the globe.
In the early 1970’s, anthropologist Judith Okely lived around and with several Gypsy families across Southern Britain in order to perform a case study. Before performing her study, however she attempted research on the history of Gypsies, which is a rather difficult task. Their history comes from either official government documentation, or from what they have written. Gypsies are not a group that records much of their own history, so there is little available coming from the latter source. There is also some written date coming from non-Gypsies, whom they call ‘Gorgios’, that anthropologists are able to use. One in the camp, Okely tried to use surveys to collect her own data, before realizing their responses were very erratic. She then turned to participant observation, and lived with, and even became close with several of the families in which she encountered. A big part of her study was all of the common misconceptions about Gypsies that she was able to debunk. One of the most well known is the false notion that Gypsies travel around in horse drawn carriages, which was only true for a short while in their history.
The Funeral Casino is an ethnography that was written by Dr. Alan Klima during his time in Thailand after its military dictatorship had come to an end. In Thailand, the massacre of protestors spurred a coup that eventually instituted a new government, but three years later, most of the people had forgotten their sacrifice, having commemorating their deaths and moved. Having learned this, Klima researches and theorizes as to why that might be. In his ethnography, he explains the history of political protests, and violence committed against those protestors, and discusses why the Black May massacre led to the end of the Thai government's military rule. He then proceeds to explain the Buddhist roots in Thailand and its effects on discussing those who have died, as well as the funeral casino, a fusion of death, memory, gift exchange, and capitalism, that takes place whenever someone passes away. He concludes that a combination of tradition and religion is what causes the people of Thailand to consciously forget the dead, and celebrate their lives.
The ethnographic research by Daphne Berdahl takes place in the village of Kella, Germany, in the early 1990s. Kella is a small village located directly on the former border between East and West Germany. This area of the world at the time was going through many social, political, and economic changes as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Throughout several years of close interactions with citizens of Kella and surrounding areas, Berdahl examines the newfound border identity that was beginning to take form as a result of the reunification of East and West Germany. This identity was characterized by clear cultural differences between Eastern and Western German ways of life. However, a considerable amount of cultural mixing was beginning to take place at the start of the decade. Berdahl finds Western lifestyle to be the dominant culture in the area, but finds that East Germans have considerable nostalgia for Eastern ways of life, and still identify with more socialist ideals. The entire concept of identity, which revolves around Eastern or Western ways of life, is found to be closely intertwined with concepts like gender, religion, economic ideology, and political views.
Life Without Lead discusses the crisis that started in La Teja, a neighborhood in Montevideo, Uruguay. Over many decades, a company that makes batteries caused lead to infect the water and grounds of many neighborhoods in Montevideo. After many children began to get sick, they were discovered to have lead poisoning and it was linked back to Radesca S.A. storage-battery company. This disaster caused a health crisis among families, destroyed agriculture and hope. In light of these events, many activists spoke out about the crisis and the Uruguayan government’s response. Renfrew details the changes in the government from the military dictatorship to the protest of neoliberalism that followed. But Renfrew reflects on his experiences living in Montevideo and experiencing their culture while learning about personal stories of the lead contamination crisis. The people of La Teja and the rest of Montevideo face such adversity but remain hopeful in times of recovery.
In this ethnography, the author Morgan James Luker explores the connection between the historically rich culture of Argentina and tango. Even though tango is not nearly as popular as it was back in the 1940’s and 1950’s, many Argentine people still value the preservation of tango. In fact many people still visit the grave of Carlos Gardel, and leave offerings for him such as cigarettes between the fingers of a statue of Gardel. In his ethnography Luker explores what he calls the simultaneous dual trend of detachment and connection to tango. This connection explains the different actions taken by people and the different governmental regimes in order to preserve tango. Although not all government leaders share the sentiment that most of the public appears to have, because there have been cuts to budgets and even at one point the President of Argentina at the time said tango wasn't important domestically, only internationally where tango generated lots of revenue for the country of Argentina.
In 2004, one of the last remaining groups of voluntarily isolated native americans stumbled out of their woodland home in northern Paraguay, fleeing the bulldozers destroying their land, and stepped directly into the public eye. They thus became suddenly and violently inundated with a world that was incompatible with everything they previously knew, which eviscerated and forcibly eclipsed their former beliefs, leaving them without a ground to stand on. They were shamed and discriminated against by the locals and previously-contacted Ayoreo for being too primitive, and unconsciously discriminated against by NGOs and the anthropological world for not being primitive enough. Caught in this web of contradictions, a land of strangers, inescapable poverty and the soul-crushing loss of everything they knew and refused to speak of, mixed with small remnants of their previous values, created a rather unique culture of collective hope and trauma set on the backdrop of a war, large-scale death, ethnocide, and the highest deforestation rate in the world. This book is an in-depth exploration of a seemingly self-contradictory values system created around the destruction and rebirth of Ayoreo society post-contact in the face of an unforgiving world and the trauma of apocalypse that haunts the Gran Chaco.
This book goes into detail about the daily lives of those who live in a shantytown called Flammable in Argentina. It mostly focuses on and goes into the environmental suffering they go through, since the area is very polluted. It discusses the health effects of being in such an area, why the area is like that in the first place, and how the people themselves live with/adapt to the place. It also goes into the roles of gender and class inequality, as well as the economy.This book shows you that there is no one simple answer as to why everything is the way it is, it is a factor of various problems within systems. As well as taking perspectives of not just the residents of the area, but the companies that take space in the shantytown, and the health officials that have to treat the illnesses caused by living in the area as well.
Geneviève Zubrzycki is an assistant professor of Sociology that in 1989, spent over 36 months conducting fieldwork in Oświęcim, Poland where the remnants and museum of Auschwitz is located. The event labeled “The Crosses of Auschwitz” is what brought her to Poland in particular. In 1988, when a group Nuns were asked to move after setting up a convent outside Auschwitz, a local priest planted a tall cross in the gravel pit outside the gate as a protest to the relocation. The Jewish religion forbid followers to pray where “other Gods stand” meaning they were unable to pray for the victims lost, who were a majority Jewish. Meanwhile, Catholics spread to word to “defend the cross” through events such as masses and prayers outside the date camp gates for around 5 years. Zubrzycki explores this controversy through the relationship between Polish Nationalism and Catholicism. She describes the anti-Semitism that is present in identifying Polish identity as Jews are seen as not Polish enough and Catholicism becomes an increasing part of politics in Post-Communist Poland.
This book discusses the early practices of the everglades such as alligator hunting slowly became outlawed and the way of life in the everglades changed forever. She also discusses how over time the landscape was changed by rhizomes, and in turn, the inhabitants were affected by the changing land so severely that many aspects of their daily routines had to change. This brings up one of the main themes of the book which is the importance of treating landscapes as not just humankind's "progress", but as an active participant in humans' encounters with the environment. She also discusses a major fight between the people who live in the everglades called "gladesmen" and the hunting and fishing commision of the state of Florida. This is a major conflict because the way that the gladesmen lived life was not well liked by the committee but they learned to respect each other because the gladesmen were part of the everglades and they needed to be preserved just as much as the land needed to be preserved.
Katherine McCaffrey's research focuses on the interaction between the United states military, specifically the Navy, in an outlying island of Puerto Rico called Vieques. Vieques is a small island and home to only 10,000 or so residents. Since World War Two, the United States has used Vieques as a training site for bombings and amphibious landings. McCaffrey begins with a description of a history of the island. She then examines a similar grassroots movement against the Navy in the 1970's. Finally she discusses the events that took place during her fieldwork in the mid to late 1990's and concludes with a section on Vieques's concerns moving forward.
Zora Neale Hurston’s experience of daily life & voodoo/obeah rituals in Haiti And Jamaica. She learns about Jamaican burial rituals, visits the first freedmen settlement in the world, describes the Haitian people as extreme liars, writes about Haitian politics (specifically one president who practiced voodoo in office with the help of his daughter and her goat named Simalo), exposes a cannibalistic cult, describes many voodoo rituals & gods, lists multiple methods of poison used in Haiti, & hangs out with a white man well known in voodoo circles. She describes how the god Guede, who lives in cemeteries, possesses or "mounts" people (like a horse) to say what he wants, saying through them "Tell my horse," followed by whatever's on his mind, which is where the title comes from, and how many people feign possession by him to vent themselves freely. Hurston also sees and actually photographs a "Zombie," someone who died but came back to life unable to speak or think.
Peter Kirby explores the wide variety of implications "waste" has in Japan. At first meant to be only about the contradictions between Japans pollution problem and their fixation on nature, Kirby finds deeper roots in things like "racist self imaginings and wartime practice... contemporary outcasts, social exclusion, and ostracism." Kirby tells of his experiences in two places; firstly, the Azuma ward and its subsequent "Azuma Disease." A waste transfer facility leaked out harmful toxins, and the battle for awareness of this is recorded in depth by Kirby. The second place, Horiuchi, is a place used to being outside the limelight. However, when lettuce from nearby Tokorozawa was broadcast on the news to possibly be toxic, a new scare had erupted. Coupled with his experience recording these incidents, Kirby explores Japan's unique waste problem, everywhere from supposed societal waste to literal waste. After an in-depth and multifaceted analysis, Kirby then draws this to the international environmental protection milieu.
This ethnography depicts how a cancer diagnosis impacts the social lives of the patients and their families by exacerbating decades of martial abuse and fragile family relationships. Drawing on the ethnographical fieldwork conducted in 2011, Dwaipayan Banerjee highlights the familial strain and focuses on a not-for-profit organization that focuses on palliative care because of the lack of treatment. Here the author portrays first-hand how shame, pride, adultery, domestic violence and the vastly different gender responsibilities, are either resurfaced or amplified by the cancer diagnosis. The strain of the diagnosis is aggravated the lack of public and private infrastructure to receive a timely cancer diagnosis and affordable treatment options. In the second half of the book, Banerjee connects the secrecy surrounding the cancer diagnosis to popular cancer novels and films. The films and novels often reflect the attitudes of post-colonial India and paint the cancer diagnosis as a sin and a Western disease, leading to continued concealment.
Amahl A. Bishara explores the influence and relationship journalists have with Palestinian people around Israel and the West Bank. She explores a number of anthropological ideas of power, use of language and globalization. Studying a group of people who are considered “stateless” introduces a power dynamic through both the interpretation of western media and the political struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. Bishara explains that Palestinians' social status often makes them rely on western media to accurately portray them and their cause. There are a number of obstacles that Palestinians face in their statelessness, both physical and metaphorical. The Israeli government continues to move their borders further and further into where Palestinians live; military checkpoints are put in place and walls are built. She describes this complicated relationship between Palestinians and Israelis through the observation of journalistic professionals and the reactions of Palestinians regarding news stories published in western media.
Migrants from areas south of the Maghreb are caught in transition on their way to Europe. Through the externalization policies of Spain and the EU, migrants are beaten down the fences of Spanish enclaves - Ceuta and Melilla - bordering Morocco. Alexander-Nathani’s ethnography explains that this physical beating by the Guardia Civil is the least of the burdens in their journey north. From their sending country, traveled usually through human smuggles or by foot, and in the climate of Morocco’s police enforced and citizen-spread racism toward black Africans through deplorable brutality, migrants see the three-layered fence as one more obstacle on their journey - a journey that they will start again from wherever they’re dropped off, be it Algeria, their home country, or Morocco once more. Exploring concepts of home, identity, and communitas, the book details the migrant experience from start to finish and those they encounter along the way, including the stories of wealthy and working class Moroccans, wealthy and traditional migrants (rather, optional and forced migration), and the families left behind.
This ethnography navigates the social structures of the Caribbean which are deeply rooted in colonialism, sexism, and classism demonstrated by the taboo practice of Voodoo. During Hursten’s time in Haiti and Jamaica in the 1930’s, she explores the secrecy and mystery shrouding African rituals and knowledge of medicine and poisons brought by enslaved ancestors to the islands. The irony of a population majority black and mixed trying to attain white status and European features is not lost, but is highlighted by the fact that Voodoo has been driven underground. This work is meant to uncover the real Voodoo that has been cautioned and misrepresented in Hollywood and other stories. She is uninterested in fake ceremonies and affairs shown to other foreigners. She wants to see it as it is. Hurston's flair for writing, which is also shown in several of her other literary works, is captured here and flows more like a storytelling as opposed to a scholarly paper.
In the Metro presents an ethnography of the subway and public transportation, a place where you are alone, yet surrounded by other people. This creates an interesting social paradox which Auge analyzes throughout the book, through observation, philosophical analysis, and personal experience. Describing the average rider of the metro is impossible, there is no average rider. People of all classes use the metro, and each person has their own perceptions and memories associated with the metro, thus conclusions made about a rider by an observer can never be understood as average. Auge speaks of ethnography, and how this sort of social paradox offers opportunities for interesting observation and research. Auge speaks of the metro with fondness, and has memories associated with certain stops along the lines, just as many others do. Just as well, the stops are often named after historical events in Paris, which provides another layer of a sense of collective. Throughout this book, Auge presents various musings and descriptions of the comings and goings of the metro, its people, and their histories, as well as a philosophical based introduction to a new form of social paradox, a solitude among other solitudes.
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine is an ethnography in which John K. Nelson experiences the practices and happenings in a Japanese Shinto Shrine. The Shrine Nelson does his studies at is the Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki, Japan. He observes Shinto practices by priests, as well as worshippers of the religion that visit the Shrine for prayer and or rituals. At the beginning of the book Nelson explains the basics of the Shinto religion, including how ancient it is, what the Gods/Spirits called Kami are, and how impactful this old religion has remained today. He then goes on to organize the rest of his chapters into the seasons of the year he was there, starting with Spring and ending with Winter. Nelson immerses himself in not only the ongoings of the Shrine, but also Japanese culture in general. He is currently a professor of Asian religion and has written multiple other works on the subject.
Since the invention of the ventilator and the adaptation of defining death, "Western" countries have had to determine when and how to define death and organ transplants. The first heart transplant occurred in South Africa in 1967 sparking the beginning of the exploration of the organ transplant industry in other countries. In the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, society, medical professionals, the legal system, and the government were able to quickly come to a consensus on brain death and organ transplants. Overall, the leading opinion was that brain death was established when the person's brain had suffered irreversible brain damage and can no longer live without the help of the ventilator. In North America and Western Europe, life is centered in the brain, so once brain death is declared, the patient/cadaver can be used for organ transplants with the patient/cadaver's and the family's consent. In Japan, this new definition of death is not as simple. Life is not completely centered in the brain. In addition, there has been more media coverage about the dark side of organ transplants compared to North America. There have been plays, cartoons, advertisements, and shows covering organ transplants and brain death. People in Japan have complex feelings about organ transplants that do not always make sense to the average American. A combination of tradition, religion, and the understanding of ancestors and the afterlife effect these complex feelings.Throught this book, the author includes personal stories of anyone involved with organ transplants in Japan, the United States, or Canada. Throughout this book, Margaret Lock examines the complexity of brain death and organ transplants in Japan from a social, medical, legal, and political perspective. Overall, this ethnography explores humans attempting to define life and death through a rigid binary comparison, when in reality, life and death are part of a complex spectrum of humanity.
The Na people, also called the Moso, live in Yunnan Province in southern China. Family is very important to the Na, but their families are different from the way we know family in the west. Brothers and sisters live together their whole lives, and the uncles take on the “father figure” in the children’s lives. There are no official marriages in the Na culture. Incest is prohibited and they respect that prohibition. Men visit women at night and they leave to work during the day. They have more flings. Long-term relationships are allowed and not unusual. They are called “walking marriages.” They are not binding and can be ended whenever either of the members lose interest or just want to end it. When a woman becomes pregnant and has a child, the biological father has very little to no part in the child’s life. A lot of the time the only way to know who the father is is if the child looks like him.
In “Meeting the Other,” Crins introduces her unique journey into the small country of Bhutan. After a brief background and introduction to the country, she gives several details before diving into her observations and experiences. The author explains her 17 years of experience in Bhutan throughout the entire book, constantly using the term: the “other.” This word should be understood as the people and culture of Bhutan. Crins records several conversations between Bhutanese citizens that vary between ages, education, location, views, and opinions. Throughout the book, these conversations are referred to compare different topics and analyzes their ways of thinking compared to the “western way” of thinking. The importance of Bhutanese culture is analyzed, along with how it’s affected by the changing world today. Topics of focus included values in society, gender, sustainability, religion, and many more. Crins connects these topics while explaining the deep history and culture of Bhutan. She is able to reflect everything that she learned over the years of living in Bhutan and how her point of view has changed throughout the entire experience. After following along with her journey, the reader will be able to understand that there isn’t only one way of thinking that exists in the world.
This ethnography takes place in The Netherlands where euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is legal and a fairly common practice. The main points of this ethnography were: to identify the purpose and importance of huisartsen (general practitioners) in the end of life of Dutch people, to show the significance family has in end of life decisions, the relationship between social death and biological death, what euthanasia talk is and why it is necessary in order to carry out euthanasia requests, and why the people of the Netherlands seek an “ideal death” and how euthanasia can fulfill that desire. Death can be difficult to talk about, but what I learned from this book is that death should be talked about more. I think if we talk about it more, it won’t be as scary when our time comes.
This ethnography focuses on the “worlding” of Chinese traditional medicine from Shanghai to the San Francisco Bay Area over a 10-year period between 1995-2005. Mei Zhan argues that what has become known as “Chinese Traditional Medicine” has shifted and changed as a result of the various encounters it has come across in the globalized world of the 20th / 21st century. In the ten years, Zhan follows the encounters of teachers, practitioners, and advocates of Chinese medicine through hospitals, schools, and grass root organizations in Shanghai and the San Francisco Bay Area. This ethnography explores the encounters of Chinese medicine and the reinvention in efforts to create an alternative medicine in the “proletariat world” in the Western world. The unexpected encounters and entanglements of Chinese medicine from cosmopolitan middle-class influence, clinical miracles in bioscience, marketing strategies, etc., all contribute to the complex world of Chinese medicine.
Alavo Jarrín explores a variety of topics in his ethnographic research, The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil. The ethnography can be summarized by one quote. “Não tem feio, só tem pobre” or in other words There are no ugly people, only poor people. Jarrin touches on the subjects of gender identity, colorism, sexuality, race, social class, and health. The author explores these themes and carefully winds up dissecting Brazilian culture, society, politics, and the economy. Beauty is conceptualized as a tangible and metaphysical series of opportunities. Physical beauty is desired by many Brazilian men and women. In turn, the ideas of social mobility and the Western beauty ideal are thoroughly intertwined. Power and beauty are at the center of Brazilian politics and social capital. To be poor in Brazil is to be considered ugly in a series of dimensions. Thus the solution sought out by many is cosmetic surgery. However, Jarrin investigates the complications and problems directly related to health care systems that plague the working class Brazilians.
Ian Lambot and his co-illustrator Greg Girad travel to Hong Kong’s “Walled City of Kowloon”. They conduct many interviews with people who have lived within the city or were a part of the seedy dealings taking place within it. They live in Hong Kong doing research for four years talking to locals, living in Hong Kong, and getting a real understanding of the city as well as the culture. They cover issues of the youth, drugs, poverty, and mostly the eventual demolition of the city itself, and the impact that it would have in the Hong Kong. The two of them together use amazing photographs and many, many interviews with the locals to cover their many stories and inevitable displacement. It is a surprisingly well written ethnography and the imagery that they are able to capture and provide add a completely different layer of emotion in the narrative that ultimately creates itself.
The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail is an ethnography that uses photography, forensic anthropology, archeology, and linguistics to educate the public about illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States. The book mostly focuses on the journey of illegal immigration through the Sonoran Desert. The book is split into three interesting parts and talks about Prevention through Deterrence, people’s personal experiences in crossing the Sonoran Desert and how people crossing the desert had an impact on the environment of the desert. Jason De Leon talks a lot about how the United States government and border patrol use the desert for our country’s Prevention through Deterrence program. The United States put this program in place to cut down on illegal immigration around urban zones and to either deter people from crossing the dangerous desert or make an example with people dying trying to cross through the Sonoran Desert.
In Brazil, African slaves developed capoeira, an acrobatic and deceptive martial art designed to disguise itself as a dance to allow slaves to practice without suspicion. Throughout the centuries, capoeira has evolved and grown into an essential part of Afro-Brazilian culture. From its use by freedmen and street gangs as a weapon, the Capoeira Regional focus on self defense, to the more contemporary vision of the art, capoeira has always been a ritual that focuses on fluidity, rhythm, and cunning above all. In Learning Capoeira, anthropologist Greg Downey uses over ten years of experience with capoeira to look at how the art affects the culture around it, as well as how it affects each player individually and psychologically. Downey explores the history, music, emotion, psychology and practice behind capoeira, taking lessons from different teachers to see what makes the art’s blending of dance, music, martial arts and ritual so unique.
My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century is an “intimate ethnography” involving an anthropologist’s vivid account of her father’s journey across continents, countries, cultures, generations, and wars. Waterstone creates a “moving portrait” of her father as a charming, funny, wounded, and difficult man. Providing a scholarly reflection which discusses the dramatic forces of history, the experiences of exile and immigration, the legacies of culture, and the enduring power of memory. “I am a daughter who chronicled a family narrative, and I am an anthropologist who contextualized the story.” (Waterston 2013:XV). The ethnography successfully combines the dualities of the author’s perspectives or lenses as both the daughter and the ethnographer, thus bringing forth a new intricate way to analyze a subject matter within anthropology. My Father’s Wars acts as an excellent example for Anthropology and Sociology courses in reference to qualitative methods, ethnography, violence, migration, and ethnicity.
Anne Chambers and her husband, Keith Chambers, recount the experiences they had when encountering the small island community of Nanumea over 25 years. Their first visit lasted for two years from 1973-75 as part of a British colonial project to learn about island communities. The second in 1983 was also for research but lasted just a few months, and the third in 1996 was not primarily for research and was only for two months. With their deep understanding of the community through living there for years and seeing it change across a quarter of a decade, the two write about how the community thinks about itself and functions, and how that culture is being challenged by incoming modernization.
In his late-thirties, Jonathan Gottschall unhappy about his current job as an adjunct community college professor who decides to join a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym. Throughout the book, we follow as Gottschall trains to fight in a cage match. As he is training, he also goes into detail about the history of fighting as leisure or sport. Gottschall dives into how fighting culture has come along throughout history along with why people enjoy fighting and watching fights. Gottschall covers all the nuances of fight culture from how strategies in fighting have developed, how fights are broken down, how fighting relates to sports and the world at large, femininity and masculinity and how that translates to sports, and “bloodlust” the real reason why people enjoy watching people fight and fighting themselves. Through Gottschall journey, you learn more about the culture and the men (and women) who like to fight.
The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan, details the changing landscape of the Japanese youth and education system in an ever changing modern Japan. This evolution, one of rapid modernization and industrialization, has made Japan one of the most economically and technologically proficient nations in the whole world, yet has had a drastic impact on the overworked youth, who's whole being is devoted to the prospect of finding a career in the nation's gargantuan economy. But the larger something is, the harder it falls, and the Japanese economy is no different. During the 1990s the country would be faced with a terrible economic recession. This wave of change had forced the culture in Japan to reexamine how childhood was treated and perceived. Beginning from educational practice reform, the whole country would have to undergo a cultural transformation to ensure the success of the next generation of it's nation's citizens.
In Empowering Women in Russia, Julie Hemment explores the different phases of women’s groups had to go through after the fall of the Soviet Union. She explains how Russian women’s groups, such as Zhenskii Svet, were influenced by the United States and Western European organizations' ideals to establish democracy in a country that was under state socialism. Hemment tells about how she wanted to explore the participatory action research style in efforts to learn more about Zhenskii Svet. In this form of research, Hemment took equal parts in observing her target group and lending a hand to help the group move forward in their efforts for social change. She goes to follow some of the women that started Zhenskii Svet and their passions for wanting to start such a movement in a country that claimed there were no problems with how women were being treated. She talks about the concepts of gender mainstreaming, the third sector, and civil society to name a few. Throughout her ethnography, she explains the process women of Zhenskii Svet took to achieve two different projects. The first project was starting up a Center of Women’s History and Gender Studies because in Russia the topic of feminism was somewhat taboo and looked at as being unnecessary. The second was setting up a crisis center for women, this was more challenging because there were more legal channels to go through, but once this crisis center was set up many women were willing to come and seek help.
Joyriding in Riyadh perfectly encapsulates the youth subculture in Saudi Arabia. The author, Pascal Menoret identifies key youth ideologies through a web of informants that he connected with over years of work. Traveling throughout Saudi Arabia, Pascal discovers many complex relationships between the youth, the economy, and the government. In his journey, many issues arise as he tries to investigate the unique relationship between elders and the youth in the steppe of Saudi Arabia. The radicalized youth force Pascal to flee from the steppe to the city of Riyadh. In Riyadh, Pascal investigates the connection between the youth, urban planning, and the government. Quickly after beginning his investigation, he discovers the pastime of "joyriding". Joyriding has taken over the city of Riyadh, representing the youths revolt against the authority. A complex relationship between the authorities and the youth arises, as the youth openly disobey laws, causing more conflict and political unrest.
Maggie Reickman Reviews Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece
Through thick description, statistical research, interviews, her own narrative, and inclusivity of Greek voices and language, Paxson explores motherhood and femininity in contemporary Athens, Greece. Athens is a changing city, stuck between ancient familial tradition, religious values, and patriarchal stigmas and modernization due to the globalization of Western ideology through tourism, media, legal system, economy, etc. Paxson tracks and interprets change through evolving abortion regulation, family planning in birth control, biomedicine in fertility technology, capitalism advertising pregnancy, etc. This ethnography focuses on the middle, working class female experience during this shift. In the 1990’s, feminism entered the Athenian space and challenged the previous meanings of what it means to be a “good woman,” a role that intersects with motherhood. She aims to answer questions that confront contradictions of culture, such as: Why is the abortion rate in Athens and Greece high when marriage and motherhood are seen to elevate a woman’s status?
This book covers the sport of Lucha Libre wrestling in the country of Mexico, form the time of its inception until the modern age. Author Heather Levi studies all aspects of the sport: the wrestlers themselves, officials/referees, spectators and fans, and media members. She examines themes of national identity, unity, class differences and structure, gender roles, and issues with how entertainers navigate everyday life.
Livingston describes the cancer ward in terms of politics, need, power, biomedical science, death, and hope that shape contemporary experience in southern Africa. She talks of her time in the death and desolation of the overworked, understaffed, and in need of aid hospital. As she writes she talks about her experiences and how they affect each life around her. She interviews patients and nurses while doing a lot of work herself. Livingston writes about how nurses on the oncology ward show deep empathy for patients during failing times, but Livingston does not allow these nurses to become angered and harsh like many healthcare workers her in the United States. Livingston’s writing recognizes individual pain and collective suffering.
This book by John Bale dives into the body culture of Rwanda, and how it was used during the colonization of Rwanda during the 1900's to set the ethnic groups against each other, to elevate one above the others, and how it was reflected in and changed by Europe. The specific body culture being gusimbuka-urukiramende, a form of jumping. The book also discusses the ways that European and American travelers took photos of gusimbuka-urukiramende and how that reflected, or was intended to reflect the power dynamic between the colonizers and the colonized. Overall, diving into body culture, sport vs exhibition, and how Europe handles colonizing people when some of their culture is a bit too familiar, John Bale does a fantastic job.
World of Warcraft, a massively-multiplayer-online role-playing game set in the Warcraft universe, has been a major player in the gaming industry since its inception. It has captivated millions of dedicated players from all over the world and all walks of life with its expansive game world and in-depth character progression system. In this book by Bonnie Nardi, emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, she explores World of Warcraft through an anthropological lense in order to find what draws people back again and again. Nardi delves deep into the many facets of WoW’s world, including the parts that gender, age, and nationality have to play within the game’s ecosystem, the many ways players modify the game to their liking, and even the relationships that people build in and around the game. Nardi also provides her unique insights as a novice to video gaming and a stranger to the MMO genre.
This book focuses on the world of street markets in Florence, Italy, specifically in the neighborhood of San Lorenzo. It focuses on certain vendors that have been working in the street vending business for many years. The book attempts “to explore how cultural identities are formed in periods of profound economic and social change” (Schiller 2016), and examines the street vending culture in the area as a whole. It breaks this discussion into specific chapters, focusing on the San Lorenzo neighborhood specifically and its history, how street vendors in the neighborhood came upon the job, the nuances of how the street vending business works, and hardships the neighborhood and city as a whole have endured that have affected the street vending business. It focuses a lot more on the cultural side of things, but since the culture it is focusing on is business, it does discuss a lot of the economic factors that have influenced the culture.
Death Without Weeping is an ethnography written by Nancy Scheper-Hughes about the high infant mortality rates in Northeastern Brazil and the social, psychological, political, and cultural factors behind it. The author begins by giving a background of the region such as the major industry (sugar), and the class breakdown. The rest of the book analyzes the poorest class, particularly the mothers and their children. The overall health of the people is very bad. Hunger is always present in the lives of the people of Alto do Cruzeiro. The constant hunger has turned into a part of the culture. Due to the lack of food, poor healthcare systems, and overall poverty infants and children die at an alarming rate. Mothers don't get attached to infants and often experience relief when they pass away. Many rationalizations exist as to why these babies die. Common rationalizations are that they weren't meant for this life, they had an illness, there wasn't enough food for them, etc. The author closely follows the lives of three sisters and tells their stories to get an in-depth understanding of what goes on in everyday life there. As the book progresses, the author encourages the reader to not label the mothers in this region as cold or unfit. The situation they are in causes this type of cultural understanding of child death. The people and mothers in this region are just trying to survive the despair all around them. The book closes with the description of protest that the people of this region have tried. Scheper-Hughes concludes by encouraging readers to try and find a middle ground to relate to the people of Northeast Brazil.
Barbara Myerhoff’s ethnography sheds light on the life of a small Jewish community who frequently gather at the Aliyah Senior Citizens’ Center. Myerhoff joins this group to begin her understanding of what cards life has delt these individuals, many of whom journeyed to America to escape the Holocaust. As a practicing Jew herself, she begins to understand what is in store for her in the future, as she looks to the past and present conditions of others. Her ethnography documents the lives of many who join her ‘Living History’ class to share their struggles, achievements, and knowledge of how to enjoy your remaining days. Throughout this ethnography, the Center brings life to the dwindling Jewish community of which Myerhoff gives justice to as she learns from the members who gladly share their history. Myerhoff allows the members to recount their past without interference which gives the audience a full view into their lives.
A Different Kind of War Story is an ethnography by Carolyn Nordstrom. Her research takes her to the frontline s of the most brutal wars in recent history. The setting takes place in Mozambique located in East Africa. The war took a million lives, mostly civilians, and destroyed homes, crops, hospitals , schools, and even water access. Nordstrom explores the nature and culture of violence experienced and the remarkable creativity that ordinary people bring to surviving violence and rebuilding humane worlds. When it comes to writing people’s experiences it begins to make up the cultures of violence and survival that shape the lives of Mozambicans. The people in Mozambique stress that if violence is made, it can be unmade. Take the violence out of these people and teach them how to live nonviolent lives as they did before the war. If violence is learned, it can be unlearned. Teach them how to relearn healthy ways of thinking and acting.
Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice boxer covers one anthropologist’s dive into the all-encompassing boxing world located within the black American ghetto in Southern Chicago. Wacquant covers all of the lessons that he learned through the sport both about himself and about how the culture of the boxer works as a whole and what it does for the members of the gym. He highlights the inner workings of the gym he was a part of and how the community he found in three sections of text. The first section delves into the relationship of the street and the gym and how the two influence the boxer and the various norms and rules held within training and the gym. The second section takes the reader through a boxing “card” or match from beginning the early morning to postgame following the match. The third section is the grand finale, summarizing the author’s journey as a boxer leading up to his appearance in the Chicago Golden Gloves tournament.
Alan M Klein is an American anthropologist who studied the relationship between baseball in the Dominican Republic and baseball in the United States. He studied how baseball is seen as an opportunity to all of the Dominican Republic. It represents hope and ambition to leave the poverty and lack of true freedom seen in the Dominican Republic. Baseball is also a form of America's colonial rule over Dominicans. This complex relationship is better understood through Klein's interviews, surveys, & observations in the Dominican Republic. He primarily conducted his research at Quisqueya, the MLB academies in the country, and through interviews of baseball fanatics and local legends alike. He examined elements of race, eugenics, ethnocentrism, colonialism, political conflict, and economic disparities between the US and the Dominican Republic. As seen through Sugarball, all of the elements end up in an intricate lattice. Surprisingly, baseball finds its way to the center of all of these relationships.
In the book Renaissance Festivals: Merrying the Past and Present, author Kimberly Tony Korol-Evans dives into the Maryland Renaissance Festival. She explores how it differs from smaller fairs and discusses what the atmosphere of the fair looks like as a whole. Also in this book, she discusses how the festival was affected by the events of September 11, 2001. Since this was during the time of her research, the attack had a big impact on her experiences. The majority of this book focuses on how the actors and directors use the five senses to create an unforgettable experience for the guests and visitors. In addition to this, she also describes how the actors interact with the guests and how everyone works together to make the fair as realistic and enjoyable as possible. Overall, the book talks about all of the work and effort that goes into the making of the Maryland Renaissance Festival.
In Hip Hop Times: Music, Memory, and Social Change in Urban Senegal is an ethnography about how the influence of hip hop music changed the culture and affected the people of Senegal and the surrounding countries. Catherine M. Appert, the author of the book, spent 4 years in Senegal studying the ways that hip hop affects the lives of musicians and non-musicians alike. They also learned a lot about the history of music in Senegal including traditional styles, how hip hop made its way to Senegal, and how it was altered to fit the musical styles and traditions of the native Senegalese people. Hip hop in Senegal has given a voice to those in low-income neighborhoods, and because of Senegal’s long history of music and politics being highly intertwined, the book outlines how the artists have used this voice to inspire social and political change. Hip hop isn’t original to Senegal, but its influence has been widespread across the country and the continent as a whole.
Gary Alan Fine went around to five little league baseball leagues around the United states. There were three leagues in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts, and one in Rhode Island. He was interested in studying different aspects of Little League and how they affect preadolescent culture. One of the main areas of study Fine focused on was parental and adult involvement in the leagues and in the boys’ lives. Pretty much every aspect of the leagues are controlled by adults. Adult parents are the audience watching the games. Adult coaches are teacher and being examples. Adult umpired regulate the game. Another large aspect of Fine’s studying was sex and sexuality in Little league. Even though most of the kids the little leagues were 11 or 12, sex and sexuality talk were prevalent among the boys. Boys used homosexual terms in jokes and insults but rarely talked about homosexuality in serious conversations. The boys also spent a lot of time talking about girls. Talk of the opposite sex was very popular. How much you knew about girls or how experienced you are with girls was almost a measure of social class among the boys in their mini societies of their teams and leagues.
This ethnography aims to see the practices of folk healing in the borderlands through an anthropological lens. Elizabeth De La Portilla is a native anthropologist discovering the meaning and responsibility of being a healer primarily in San Antonio, Texas. She also looks back to historical trauma and people’s inner turmoil to fully encompass the important cultural lengths that Curanderos go to in order to protect and heal their society. This book is a mix of memoir, history, and ethnography as the reader weaves their way through this exciting new world view.
How do young men in Saudi Arabia view themselves in the world? This book aims to uncover the identities young men hold and how these identities affect their everyday lives. Mark C. Thompson conducted his field work in focus groups of young Saudi men from across the kingdom. Each group was asked about several important topics. These topics include Preserving Islamic and Saudi Socio-Cultural Values, The Social Contract in an age of 'Austerity,' Relationship between the Governing and the Governed, Educational Reform, Gender Issues, Marginalization and Fault Lines, and Participation in Decision-Making Processes. The insight the young men offer on the issues they are facing show how young men deal with their problems. The young men of Saudi Arabia deal with similar issues as young men from other countries do. This book serves to break down barriers that have been built up by society and popular media about what Saudi Arabia and its inhabitants are like.
Anthropologist Tobias Hecht explores, in this book, how the street kids in Recife, Brazil view themselves and compares this to the perception of the kids by the world. Whereas street children believe their escape to the street is a sign of their independence and initiative in taking care of themselves, many see these same children as victims of circumstance with parents who abandoned or abused them. This is not always true. Examples of several instances where caring mothers take their kids off the streets and back into the home are repeatedly shown; however, the kids will most likely flee back to the streets within a few days. Street kids have other reasons besides being abused and abandoned (though this could be the case) for living on the streets. Despite popular belief, street kids are better fed than those living in the favelas, and it’s actually surprising how few street kids there are given the conditions of many poor homes in Recife. This book analyzes the relationship of the children with street life and how a cultural perspective of motherhood permeates life in the street, affecting what they say, what they say they do, their hopes and dreams, and, at times, what they do.
In Born to Run, award-winning journalist Chris McDougall sets off to find the secret of the Tarahumuara Indians after years of his own running injuries and asking the question, why does my foot hurt? The Tarahumara Indians are a secluded, ancient tribe who lead a simple life in the Copper Canyons of Mexico and are somehow able to run hundreds of miles at a time despite living the opposite lifestyle of a typical elite runner, most notably by the fact that they wear thin sandals with little to no cushioning. This discovery makes McDougall question the current state of modern running and running shoes, and through his discoveries wonders if we are all born to run. Throughout his novel McDougall takes us on his adventure to the Copper Canyons as he searches for the Tarahumara himself and takes part in perhaps the greatest endurance race in history. He also takes us through the science labs of Harvard who are searching for the mystery of the Tarahumara and ancient runners as well.
In Nasser Abufarha’s ethnography on Palestinian resistance, he explores three areas with respect to the martyrdom operations (suicide bombings) in Palestine: the cultural poetics of political violence in Palestine; the nature of state and violence (by Israel) and the mimetic violence carried out by resistance groups; and the relevance of globalization, modernity, and the consequent resurgence of traditions in shaping this form of violence. Abufarha does this by using ethnographic observations (details about the quantities of attacks observed, examining materials, interviews, and conducting a literature review of the region. Abufarha also explains the culture of Palestinians and how Palestinians view their own history in order to understand the basis and the causes for martyrdom operations to be performed. Lastly, Abufarha discusses some possibilities for negotiating a solution for both Palestinians and Israelites in the region and why both sides are resisting coming to an agreement.
In Gut Check! An Anthropologist’s Wild Ride into the Heart of College Football, Dr. Robert Sands goes back to college in California at Santa Barbara City College. Dr. Sands wanted to dive deep into the heart of college football, so he did what he thought was the best way to do that – join the team and experience it firsthand. The book tells of his last game in his two year career against the best team in the state. In between telling us what happened in the game, he fills us in about people on the team and describes their lives and how football has saved a majority of them from bad influence. He also tells of unique experiences he has witnessed or been a part of during his time on the Santa Barbara City College football team. Sands also discusses the importance of sports and why they play such a big role in American culture.
Hanna Garth experienced and shared the difficulties of food acquisition for families in Cuba, a place where food and meals are so valued. From outsiders, people living in other countries, Cuba looks well off in regards to food due to their low rates of the hungry, but that doesn’t take into account the amount of time and work it takes to find and prepare food without the ability of using refrigeration. Women are typically the ones who find and walk to markets, get the best deal and prepare it all, while also usually having another job. There are certain rules that the cook of the house likes to follow to provide their families with what they classify as ‘decent meals.’ Garth lived with each family for two weeks and ate what they did, and nothing more. She tried to live how they all did, and interviewed members of the family. These interviews are embedded into the novel. This book shows the struggles of families of all incomes and situations when it comes to preparing and eating a decent meal.
This enthography examines the use of Korean television dramas and K-pop music to promote urban and rural places in South Korea. Building on the phenomenon of Korean pop culture.
This ethnography explores the nomadic Bedouin tribes of northern Egypt, and the importance of poetry in expressing individual feelings.
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“An Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine in Southern Togo Of Spirit, Slave and Sea” depicts the religious traditions, values, and practices of the Ewe people in the community of Gbedala, a small beach fronted fishing village off the coast of Togo and near the town of Lomé. Gorovodu, a sub-sect of vodu, is practiced in the region where performative rituals and shrines are common. Within this ethnography specific focus is given to religious shrines found in the households and other areas of the community. These shrines not only reflect the religious values of Gorovodu but also the past and present experiences of the people in the community, causing each community to have slightly different shrines and practices. These traditions and practices also change and adapt within the community as time and the concept of what possesses importance shifts. Large factor like colonialism, slavery, and and economic activity are involved in the creation and tending of Gorovodu shrines.
This ethnography paints a picture of the centuries-long interactions between Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt, specifically after the 2011 Arab Spring
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This ethnography examines the difference between traditional and Christian singing in South Korea. Songs of Seoul is an ethnography that studies the voice that is associated with Evangelical Christian worship. Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. The ethnography also goes into the economic relations that is associated with this religion. It goes into detail about the relationship of the transformation of voices to emotion and wanting of a voice that does not sound like pain and suffering
This ethnography gives the readers an inside look into the lives of Hadendowa women, their daily lives, their beliefs, and how fertility affects all of it. Amal Hassan Fadlalla talks to many different women, from varying backgrounds and ages about their lives. The Hadendowa people are pastoralists that live in the very rural part of Sudan. They are the most affected by droughts and famines, they are the people who are harmed the most. Because of their lifestyle, children are vital to their community. The ultimate goal for a woman is to have multiple children. Boys are preferred, but women also want girl children too. Hadendowa people are hesitant and wary of foreigners. Fadlalla, who is from Northern Sudan, is considered a foreigner to them. Because of this distrust of foreigners, the Hadendowa people do not trust doctors or medicine. They have their own way to get rid of the spirits that infect their people, especially the women, that cause them to die or be infertile. This ethnography gives the readers an inside look into the lives of Hadendowa women, their daily lives, their beliefs, and how fertility affects all of it.
The ethnography focuses on a spanish soccer club who's roster is only filled with local individuals. Despite this unique strategy, the football club has never been relegated from the top league. The author explores the different themes of ethnicity, nationality, kinship, etc. and their relationships to football.
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This ethnography follows the author Daniel Everett on his journey to central Brazil. He originally came as a missionary to attempt to translate the bible to a tribe called the Pirahas. He quickly learned that learning to speak their language was going to be an immense challenge to overcome as the Piraha language is like no other. He came there to show them god and he never really left. He continued to move his wife and children there and lived amongst the Pirahas for many years on and off. He faced many more challenges than just learning their language. The pirahas changed him as a person and opened his eyes to a new outlook on life.
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This ethnography follows the daily life of Elizabeth Fernea, known as Beeja by the village folk of El Nahra, while she learns how to adapt to life in a polygamist village that has never been exposed to a white woman. In her two years there, she learns the customs and traditions and adapts to living a veiled life and with separation from the men.
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This ethnography is a detailed survey of present-day feminist witches in New Zealand. It examines the attraction of witchcraft for its practitioners, and explores witches rituals, views, and beliefs about how magic works. The book provides a portrait of undocumented section of the growing Neo-pagan movement, and compares the special character of New Zealand witchcraft with its counterparts in the United States. Kathryn Rountree traces the emergence and history of feminist witchcraft, and links witchcraft with the contemporary Goddess movement. She reviews scholarly approaches on the study of witchcraft and deal with the key debates which have engaged the movement’s adherents and their critics, and ultimately presents what Mary Daly declared was missing from most historical and anthropological research on witchcraft: a “Hag-defined vision.”
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In this ethnography, Manduhai Buyandelger focused a subset of the population in Mongolia. The Mongolian Buryats, who reside in the northeastern region of the country, have a long and complicated relationship with both Mongolia and their ancestral homelands in Russia. There have been repeated incidents of persecution, migration, and a part of their people who were separated from the Mongolian people after their expulsion from Russia. Several, however, were able to remain in the region of their origins and have continued their practices since. Buyandelger concentrates on the relationship of shamanic practices within the context of communism. She asks, at the core of her research, How have the Mongolian Buryat population’s shamanic practices been adapted to the post-socialist state and revitalization of pre-communist traditions, as these changes are related to practices of forgetting, remembering, and the place of gender roles among that tradition.
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Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in rural Ireland is an ethnographic study of Irish bachelors and others in the small rural community. This ethnography takes the reader into the landscape of rural Ireland in the late ’70s. In the 20th anniversary edition, author Nancy Scheper-Hughs discusses the reception of the book after publication and the impact of honest ethnography on the people that are being analyzed, she describes the impact on the community of her work and the fact that the community has largely read her critical analysis of their lives. Her research is centered around mental illness in rural Ireland and the immense amount of schizophrenia diagnoses found there. She analyzes the impact of kinship relationships, socialization issues, sex roles, and the impact of inheritance. The author uses TAT testing, thick description, and relevant fieldwork observations to provide evidence to the reader. In the twentieth-anniversary edition, there is a strong emphasis on the duty of anthropologists to conduct honest ethnographic work and the fallout of this work.
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This ethnography follows the lives and experiences of the women of the Bedouin Awlad Ali tribe in Egypt's Western Desert. Lila Abu-Lughod adopts a storytelling style in this ethnography, allowing the readers to be completely immersed by the stories of the Bedouin women. The ethnography explores patrilineality, polygyny, reproduction, patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, honor, and shame as they occur within Bedouin society exclusively from the point of view of the women of the tribe. The ethnography is intended to explore how cultural norms within Bedouin society and women's interactions with them intersect with ideas of feminism and how different cultural experiences create different ideologies of what feminism means, while also preserving the notion that culture and one's experience with culture is unique and varies from person to person.
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This ethnography uses an anthropological lense to examine the hijras of India, with a focus on major questions in gender studies. This ethnography is based on the fieldwork Serena Nanda did in India between 1981 and 1986. The ethnography follows four hijras: Kamladevi, Meera, Sushila, and Salima.
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This ethnography focuses on the topic of gender in urban Egypt. It also focuses specifically how masculinity is constructed by both men and women under changing norms.
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This ethnography offers a glimpse at different aspects of assisted reproduction in Ecuador, through a series of vignettes that highlight the personal relationship to the procedure. The seemingly ironic tie between science and religion permeates all parts of the experience, and Roberts seeks to uncover how such a conservative state embraces assisted reproduction, as well as understand the quiet race project occuring.
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"This ethnographic study of the decorated long yams made by the Nyamikum Abelam in Papua New Guinea examines how these artefacts acquire their specific properties through processes that mobilise and recruit diverse entities, substances and domains. All come together to form the ‘finished product’ that is displayed" (Google Books). Coupaye investigates the long yams through the lens of: having lives and agency, being valuable and having ancestral representations, as a botanical species, as food, having agricultural dimensions, and aesthetics and art.
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In this ethnography, Laura Lewis explores the formation of identity in ‘Moreno’ or ‘Afromestizo’ or ‘Afromexican’ or ‘Mexicans of African descent’ populations, and works to delineate how each of those terms are a function of Mexican culture and how they came to be. ‘Moreno’ is the self-ascribed term of the communities she worked most closely with, so that term is what she used for most of the book. The ethnographic portrait that she paints is based in the Costa Chica area where the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca meet, and the majority of the moreno population of Mexico resides, and gave the most personal and detailed analyses from the town of San Nicolás, where she spent most of her time. The ethnography goes into great depth explaining how the ‘moreno’ identity came to be in the first place. She starts by detailing the history of how Africans arrived in Mexico in the first place, and how social ideas about race and class sculpted identities and changed through the years, and most importantly, how the current Moreno population makes sense of this history. Lewis also focuses on how cultural revitalization and the implementation of ‘culture work’ by ‘la cultura’ in Mexico, has resulted in a culture being change through the process of being studied; making this ethnography at times a bit closer to a metaethnography. Lewis also fully explores the relationship that morenos have to the places they live, and in current times their relations to the United States, which is a result of the constant flow of immigration from Mexico to the US. The book is a thorough examination of the moreno identity, and includes lenses of varying degrees, including kinship, celebration, government, phenotype, religion, ritual, food, and work.
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This ethnography follows the interactions of the lala community of Beijing China.
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Caravan of Martyrs: Sacrifice and Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan is an ethnography by the anthropologist, David B. Edwards. Edwards taught in Kabul, Afghanistan from 1976-1978 and was shocked by the changes he saw when he returned in 1982, after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the rise of freedom fighters. This ethnography was published in 2017, yet it draws from Edwards previous experiences in Afghanistan, dating back to the 1970’s. Edwards examines when and why the shift regarding sacrifice and martyrdom took place in Afghan culture, and it’s ties to honor, Fedayeen, virtue and vice.
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Book description: This ethnography looks at the adolescent girls in Samoa. Mead explores the daily life in Samoa and how young girls grow up in this society. Each chapter has a specific focus such as how they are educated, what households look like, how girls interact with others in their age group, how they engaged in sexual relations, how they engage in conflict and more. The book offers criticism to how America interacts with their adolescent girls and the great stress they are put under. This ethnography was very influential in the field of Anthropology and its effects can still be seen in modern time.
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For those listening, this is the original example I gave to my students in Spring 2020 for them to model their podcasts.
This podcast reviews Rachel Newcomb's book Everyday Life in Global Morocco (2017), published by Indiana University Press.