Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, 20th Anniversary Edition - Softcover

Katherine A. Dettwyler

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1478607580 ISBN 13: 9781478607588

Publisher: Waveland Press, Inc., 2013

Synopsis

One of the most widely used ethnographies published in the last twenty years, this Margaret Mead Award winner has been used as required reading at more than 600 colleges and universities.

This personal account by a biocultural anthropologist illuminates not-soon-forgotten messages involving the sobering aspects of fieldwork among malnourished children in West Africa. With nutritional anthropology at its core, Dancing Skeletons presents informal, engaging, and oftentimes dramatic stories that relate the author's experiences conducting research on infant feeding and health in Mali.

Through fascinating vignettes and honest, vivid descriptions, Dettwyler explores such diverse topics as ethnocentrism, culture shock, population control, breastfeeding, child care, the meaning of disability and child death in different cultures, female circumcision, women's roles in patrilineal societies, the dangers of fieldwork, and facing emotionally draining realities. Readers will laugh and cry as they meet the author's friends and informants, follow her through a series of encounters with both peri-urban and rural Bambara culture, and struggle with her as she attempts to reconcile her very different roles as objective ethnographer, subjective friend, and mother in the field.

The 20th Anniversary Edition includes a 13-page "Q & A with the Author" in which Dettwyler responds to typical questions she has received individually from students who have been assigned Dancing Skeletons as well as audience questions at lectures on various campuses. The new 23-page "Update on Mali, 2013" contains facts about economic and health conditions in Mali as well as a brief summary of the recent political unrest.

Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact publisher directly.

Title also available by Katherine Dettwyler: Cultural Anthropology and Human Experience: The Feast of Life (ISBN 9781577666813). Title of related interest also available from Waveland Press: Holloway, Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali (ISBN 9781577664352).

"Its vivid descriptions and the pathos that lies at the book's heart will touch many readers." African Studies Review

"An outstanding, well-written book that should be read by students preparing to work in anthropology. It reflects what I would like to think is anthropology at its best." Mark Cohen, Distinguished Professor, SUNY Plattsburgh

"... a sobering, painful look at problems of a still-poor, developing country that will be particularly instructive to international public health workers, nutrition educators, planners, and clinical nutritionists concerned with Third World problems." Ecology of Food and Nutrition

"Dettwyler has used the reflexive style that our students love to read and that our colleagues in public health or international development would be well advised to hear." American Anthropologist

"Katherine Dettwyler does an excellent job of weaving together the realities of fieldwork with the discipline of nutritional anthropology. This is a book that, at times, reads more like a novel than a text, making it all the more enjoyable as an introductory text." Journal of Nutrition Education

"A compelling, provocative, and engrossing book." Man

"The anniversary edition has excellent recent materials on Mali to make this a much more up-to-date study for my Crosscultural Medicine course." Dominique Coulet du Gard, Western Washington University

About this title

From the Publisher:

Also available by Katherine A. Dettwyler from Waveland Press: Cultural Anthropology and Human Experience: The Feast of Life (ISBN 9781577666813).

From the Inside Flap:

"Katherine Dettwyler has written an easily accessible and particularly vibrant description of life in modern Mali . . . It offers a vivid portrait of Malian people and places as well as a thoughtful account of the issues and problems that face anthropologists in the field." (African Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1995)

". . . a sobering, painful look at problems of a still-poor developing country that will be particularly instructive to international public health workers, nutrition educators, planners and clinical nutritionists concerned with Third World problems. It is a recommended reading." (Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 1995)

"The ongoing critique of ethnography has, happily, changed the genre, and today real people walk the pages of the best ethnographies. Dettwyler's Dancing Skeletons is surely one of the best. The text emerges as an extended meditation on applied fieldwork as a gradual melding of people and meaning." (American Journal of Human Biology, Vol. 6, No. 5, 1994)

". . . this book has two main advantages. First, it engages the reader, because it is well written. Second, it offers a broad scope for discussion of academic and practical issues." (Journal of Biosocial Sciences, Vol. 27, 1995)

About this edition

• Publisher: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1478607580
• ISBN 13: 9781478607588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208