Mothers, Medicine and Morality in Rural Mali

Mothers, Medicine and Morality in Rural Mali
Author: Lianne Holten
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2013
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3643903014

How to understand the simultaneity of parental love and care with inaction when a child is ill? This question inspired author Lianne Holten to conduct the ethnographic study presented in this book. Holten worked and lived in the isolated village of Farabako (Mali) to help establish a maternity clinic. She clearly describes the tension between Western biomedical thinking and local ideas on health. Holten explains how biomedical assumptions make the mothers' actions appear incomprehensible, but she also shows the logic within the local context. This study contributes to the understanding of the importance of local moralities in health and will be useful for public health initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. (Series: Mande Worlds - Vol. 6)

The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology

The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology
Author: Lenore Manderson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 620
Release: 2016-05-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317743776

The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology provides a contemporary overview of the key themes in medical anthropology. In this exciting departure from conventional handbooks, compendia and encyclopedias, the three editors have written the core chapters of the volume, and in so doing, invite the reader to reflect on the ethnographic richness and theoretical contributions of research on the clinic and the field, bioscience and medical research, infectious and non-communicable diseases, biomedicine, complementary and alternative modalities, structural violence and vulnerability, gender and ageing, reproduction and sexuality. As a way of illustrating the themes, a rich variety of case studies are included, presented by over 60 authors from around the world, reflecting the diverse cultural contexts in which people experience health, illness, and healing. Each chapter and its case studies are introduced by a photograph, reflecting medical and visual anthropological responses to inequality and vulnerability. An indispensible reference in this fastest growing area of anthropological study, The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology is a unique and innovative contribution to the field.

Reproductive Governance and Bodily Materiality

Reproductive Governance and Bodily Materiality
Author: Corinna Sabrina Guerzoni
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2022-04-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800714386

Reproductive Governance and Bodily Materiality explores the growing centrality and power of the medical professional and lay practices within the field of human reproduction as they entangle with political economic processes, providing examples from multiple countries.

In Search of Tunga

In Search of Tunga
Author: André Chappatte
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0472220748

This volume on Muslim life focuses on young male migrants of rural origin who move to build better lives in Bougouni, a provincial town in southwest Mali. Describing themselves as “simply Muslims” and “adventurers,” these migrants aim to be both prosperous and good Muslims. Drawing upon seventeen months of fieldwork, author André Chappatte explores their sense of prosperity and piety as they embark on tunga (adventure), a customary search for money and more in a tradition that dates back to the colonial period. In the context of the current global war on terrorism, most studies of Muslim life have focused on the politics of piety of reformist movements, their leaders, and members. By contrast, In Search of “Tunga” takes a perspective from below. It opens piety up to “simply Muslims,” although the religious elites have always claimed authority and legitimacy over piety. Is piety an exclusive field of experiences for those who claim to strive for it? What does piety involve for the majority of Muslims, the non-elite and unaffiliated Muslims? This volume “democratizes” piety by documenting its practice as going beyond sharply defined religious affiliations and Islamic scholarship, and by showing it is both alive and normative, existential and prescriptive. As opposed to studies that build on the classic historical connections between the Maghreb and the Sahel, the southbound migration from the Sahel documented in this book stresses the overlooked historical connections between the southern shores of the Sahara and the lands south of those shores. It demonstrates how the Malian savanna, this former buffer-zone between ancient Mande kingdoms and thereafter remote areas of French Sudan, is increasingly becoming central in today’s Sahel contexts of desiccation and insecurity.

The Semiotic Field of the Garden

The Semiotic Field of the Garden
Author: Teppei Tsuchimoto
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

This book is not only a direct study of gardens, but also an exploration of the relationship between personal and collective culture, an important component of cultural psychology. This perspective leads to the strange but fascinating question: "How does gardening relate to human development?" Exploring the meaning of “garden” for a human being offers profound insights on the relationship between personal and collective culture. In the process of constructing of a garden, nature becomes the object, on which various liminal, aesthetic, and symbolic activities are directly performed. The term “garden” encompasses a multitude of meanings. It is a place for recreation as well as a symbol of social status and prosperity. For the gardener, it is a place of work. Feelings aroused by a garden are deeply rooted in people’s hearts and have an aesthetic significance. Throughout the book, readers will be awakened to how deeply the garden is connected to the human psyche. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural psychology, as well as to anyone interested in the relationship between people and gardens (gardeners, architects, artists, farmers). Readers are encouraged to look back at their own experiences to deepen their understanding of personal and collective culture. Imagine the garden you are familiar with, be it a home garden, neighborhood park, cemetery, or schoolyard. You may find that facets of your experiences are reflected in the colorful and diverse gardens featured in this book.

Affective Circuits

Affective Circuits
Author: Jennifer Cole
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2016-11-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 022640515X

In recent decades, Africans have migrated to Europe in larger numbers than ever before; Africans are now a visible part of Europe s multiethnic landscape. The present volume brings together essays by an international group of social scientists which focus on economic and affective flows of goods, resources, and people, with careful attention to the regulatory forces of state and non-state (kin/friends/partners) actors. The aim is to integrate a scattered, but overlapping, set of literatures addressing care and intimacy in a variety of different ways among which are marriage migration, domestic labor, global care chains, romance travel, and moving for health resources. While any one paper may focus more on what the editors call affective circuits --the circulation of migrants, kin and goods--or on regulatory regimes, for example regulation of migration, labor, and material flows through state apparatuses, each addresses the complex intersections of the two dimensions of African migration to Europe. Each chapter focuses on the spaces between Africa and Europe and backs up arguments with ethnographic data and descriptions ranging across numerous different countries. This volume promises to become a benchmark in the burgeoning field of migration studies in anthropology. "

Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God
Author: Robert D. Miller II
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2021-03-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647540862

Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblical claim that there were Yahweh-worshipers other than the Israelite people. Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, with an exhaustive survey of ancient Near Eastern literature and inscriptions discovered by archaeology, and using anthropology to reconstruct religious practices and beliefs of ancient Edom and Midian, this study proposes an answer. Yahweh-worshiping Midianites of the Early Iron Age brought their deity along with metallurgy into ancient Palestine and the Israelite people.

The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa

The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa
Author: Friederike Lüpke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 785
Release: 2024-11-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191056154

This volume presents the first book-length overview of the Atlantic languages, a small family of languages spoken mainly on the Atlantic coast of West Africa. Languages in this area have been used in diverse multilingual societies with intense language contact for the whole of their known history, and their genealogical relatedness and the impact of language contact on their lexicon and grammar have been widely debated. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an introduction to language ecologies in the area and includes two accounts of the genealogical classification of Atlantic languages. Chapters in the second part offer grammatical overviews of individual languages, including the most important non-Atlantic contact languages (Casamance Creole and Mandinka), while the third part explores Atlantic languages from a typological perspective, with chapters that explore formal and semantic aspects of their nominal classification systems, nominalization strategies, their rich system of verbal extensions, and the stem-initial consonant mutation that is attested in a subset of languages. The final part of the book investigates Atlantic languages in their social environments, including the creation of creole identities, secret languages, Ajami writing practices, language acquisition, the spread and use of Fula as a lingua franca, digital language practices, and language ideologies. The volume is an essential tool for linguists interested in the languages of West Africa, language history and classification, patterns of language use in Atlantic societies, and typology and language contact more broadly.

The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics

The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
Author: James Laidlaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1165
Release: 2023-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108759300

The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter-century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established and emerging leaders in the field and makes the results of this fast-growing body of diverse research available in one volume. Topics covered include: the philosophical and other intellectual sources of the ethical turn; inter-disciplinary dialogues; emerging conceptualizations of core aspects of ethical agency such as freedom, responsibility, and affect; and the diverse ways in which ethical thought and practice are institutionalized in social life, both intimate and institutional. Authoritative and cutting-edge, it is essential reading for researchers and students in anthropology, philosophy, psychology and theology, and will set the agenda for future research in the field.

Silent Violence

Silent Violence
Author: Vinay R. Kamat
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816529523

"Seeking to link social, economic, and political forces to local experiences of sickness and suffering, Silent Violence analyzes the experiences and practices of people most deeply affected by malaria. Vinay Kamat explores the experience of individuals and households confronted by malaria against the backdrop of social and health issues"--Provided by publisher.