Synopses & Reviews
"Didier Fassin makes a compelling case against behaviorist approaches that dominate AIDS research. Using a vivid mosaic of public controversies and ethnographic vignettes, Fassin works through the controversial denials of South African President Thabo Mbeki and the precautionary policies of his Health Ministers within histories of apartheid, epidemics which justified segregation, and secret biological warfare plans of Project Coast, as well as wider battles over the ethical protocols of AIDS testing and widening inequalities. Fassin writes with compassion and deep moral inquietude."and#151;Michael M.J. Fischer, author of
Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice"When Bodies Remember is an extraordinary exercise in counterpoint between the disquieting politics and the subjective experience of AIDS in South Africa. Didier Fassin deftly leads his readers into the 'heart of darkness' that we may comprehend this monstrous tragedy, literally unspeakable for so many, as one that touches our shared humanity. He insists that recognition of inequality rather than difference, and of embodied history rather than culture, are the keys to overcoming indifference, inciting in its place moral outrage and action. This brilliant, sensitive ethnography should be read by everyone who cares about the kind of world we live in."and#151;Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death
"A gracefully written and politically astute account of one of the world's greatest AIDS tragedies, the arrival of a full-blown AIDS epidemic in South Africa on the cusp of political victory and jubilation over the end of apartheid. The cultural and political logic of President Mbeki's refusal to accept the international public health model of the virus and his pursuit of an alternative explanation of the epidemic is given a fair and just hearing by France's leading critical medical anthropologist."and#151;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping
"This is a remarkable book. As Fassin dissects the deadly powers of today, he also unrelentingly looks for human alternatives to turn the AIDS tragedy around. Multi-layered and deeply moving, When Bodies Remember sets new standards for anthropological theory in the 21st century. The book's interpretive care and hope will stay with you in times to come."and#151;Joand#227;o Biehl, author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment
Review
and#8220;This ethnography is comprehensive and nuanced in its approach. . . . Fassinand#8217;s ethnography is ambitious and provocative. It is recommended to anyone interested in exploring how the past critically shapes the present characterization of AIDS in South Africa.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Unique [and] innovative. . . . Captures the excitement and crucial nature of oceanographic research. . . . Perhaps Alien Ocean will inspire the next generation to fulfill the promise of environmental genomic sequencing.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Intriguingly, Alien Oceanand#8217;s main characters are arguably not the scientists, nor Helmreich, but the sea itself and the bizarre microbial communities recently found there.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Erudite, widely ranging account of currently important aspects of marine microbiology and their broader implications.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;One of the pleasures of Alien Ocean is Helmreich's playfulness.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Opens new vistas, creates fresh associations, and raises profound questions. . . . Helmreichand#8217;s work is a brilliant piece of scholarship.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An engaging treatise of a fascinating topic.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Alien Ocean opens up whole new exciting realms of connections.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A new and refreshing study. . . This is a powerful testament, and Garcia presents a vision of where we need to go when it comes to preventing the slow suicide of addictions.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Stunningly written and deeply intelligent. This is anthropology at its best.and#8221;
Synopsis
Dengue fever is the worldand#8217;s most prevalent mosquito-borne illness, but Alex Nading argues that people in dengue-endemic communities do not always view humans and mosquitoes as mortal enemies. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in urban Nicaragua and challenging current global health approaches to animal-borne illness, Mosquito Trails tells the story of a group of community health workers who struggle to come to terms with dengue epidemics amid poverty, political change, and economic upheaval. Blending theory from medical anthropology, political ecology, and science and technology studies, Nading develops the concept of and#147;the politics of entanglementand#8221; to describe how Nicaraguans strive to remain alive to the world around them despite global health strategies that seek to insulate them from their environments. This innovative ethnography illustrates the continued significance of local environmental histories, politics, and household dynamics to the making and unmaking of a global pandemic.
Synopsis
In this book, France's leading medical anthropologist takes on one of the most tragic stories of the global AIDS crisisand#151;the failure of the ANC government to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Didier Fassin traces the deep roots of the AIDS crisis to apartheid and, before that, to the colonial period.
One person in ten is infected with HIV in South Africa, and President Thabo Mbeki has initiated a global controversy by funding questionable medical research, casting doubt on the benefits of preventing mother-to-child transmission, and embracing dissidents who challenge the viral theory of AIDS. Fassin contextualizes Mbeki's position by sensitively exploring issues of race and genocide that surround this controversy. Basing his discussion on vivid ethnographical data collected in the townships of Johannesburg, he passionately demonstrates that the unprecedented epidemiological crisis in South Africa is a demographic catastrophe as well as a human tragedy, one that cannot be understood without reference to the social history of the country, in particular to institutionalized racial inequality as the fundamental principle of government during the past century.
Synopsis
Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Braziland#8217;s big citiesand#151;places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist Joand#227;o Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the and#147;dictionaryand#8221; she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form.
As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarinaand#8217;s words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropologyand#8217;s unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields. Vitaand#8217;s methodological innovations, bold fieldwork, and rigorous social theory make it an essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought and ethics in the contemporary world.
Synopsis
"Joand#227;o Biehl's Vita is a greatly arresting work. The tale of Catarina is one that haunts the reader. This book's central character is sure to become an anthropological classic, her humanity reaffirmed by the author."and#151;Arthur Kleinman, author of Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine
Synopsis
Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in Monterey Bay, Hawai'i, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Sargasso Sea and at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics, bioinformatics, and remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions, such microbes have become key figures in scientific and public debates about the origin of life, climate change, biotechnology, and even the possibility of life on other worlds.
Synopsis
"Since I first read, and then taught, Helmreich's extraordinary essay on alien kinship and the biopolitics of gene transfer in marine biology and biotechnology in 2003, I have been swimming eagerly in his alien oceans, waiting for this book, eager to feast. A multi-sited and deeply sounded ethnography of ocean microbiologists and their subvisible critters,
Alien Ocean dunks the reader in seas of blue-green capital and rampant globalizing viral traders in gene currency. Tangled in sentiment and science, salty microbial webs infuse dreadful and promising figures of aliens and familiars. In this rich study of microbial oceanography we meet the extremeophiles of a mortal earthand#151;an earth better named ocean, where deep-sea dwelling, heat-loving archaea are dredged to tell stories of unlikely kin, extraordinary technology, planktonic globalizers, and Hawaiian indigenous activists. This is a book about networks of loves and disciplines that is hard to put down."and#151;Donna Haraway
"This book is as wondrous as the otherworldly creatures whose apperception it recounts, from one of the most innovative cultural anthropologists writing today. Helmreich shows how the water covering the earth demands of scientists a planetary optic haunted always by the figure of that which lies just outside the limits of the imaginationand#151;the alien. Deep-sea creatures turn out to be connected to networks of knowledge, economy, politics, and culture that reshape everything from the shifting shorelines of Georgian barrier islands to the postcolonial futures of Hawai'i. Alien Ocean challenges longstanding constructs of causation, system, and replication that are the foundation of scientific knowledge itself."and#151;Bill Maurer, University of California, Irvine
"Taking us from laboratory workbenches to the cramped confines of the Alvin submarine, Helmreich immerses readers in his ethnographic account of a scientific field, marine microbiology, concerned with questions of fundamental importanceand#151;what is life? what is a planet? is there a difference? Alien Oceanand#151;inviting and challenging in its empirical and theoretical scope, in its humor and serious play, in its deft handling of scientific materialand#151;will set a new standard for the anthropology of science."and#151;Mike Fortun, author of Promising Genomics: Iceland and DeCODE Genetics in a World of Speculation
Synopsis
The Pastoral Clinic takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscapeand#151;northern New Mexicoand#8217;s Espaand#241;ola Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Espaand#241;ola Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.
Synopsis
"Timely, disturbing, and luminously written,
The Pastoral Clinic is anthropology at its best, bringing into view a devastating piece of reality, highlighting larger processes and human singularities, and calling for a new public and ethics of care."and#151;Joand#227;o Biehl, author of
Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment"Garcia calls for a new ethics of care for heroin addicts, exposing the insufficiency and lack of continuity of rapidly privatizing faith-based services for the rural poor. Her heartfelt ethnography of the geography of addiction in New Mexico reveals how formerly agricultural communities and families find themselves painfully embedded in a land of dispossession and displacement with an unresolvable past, and an unlivable present."and#151;Philippe Bourgois, author of Righteous Dopefiend
"Angela Garcia has expanded the roots and basis of addictions to the great lossesand#151;personal, cultural, economic, of birthright and landand#151;that few would dare to explore. I've sought a book like this for years, addressing my own addictions and those of the young men and women I've worked with for decades. A formidable thinker, a wrench-in-the-works activist inside and out of the industry, Angela understands that addictions are not a 'always has been and always will be' fate, but a collective, individual, and even 'intimate,' funneling into the web. And how the path toward healing, reconciliation, and wholeness is in the land, in the hand, and the capable heart of every addict and broken community."and#151;Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA
About the Author
Didier Fassin is Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris North and Director of Studies in Anthropology at the and#201;cole des hautes and#233;tudes en sciences sociales in Paris. He is the Director of CRESP (Centre de recherche sur les enjeux contemporains en santand#233; publique) and, until 2003, was vice president of Doctors without Borders. Among his books are Pouvoir et maladie en Afrique, L'espace politique de la santand#233;, Les enjeux politiques de la santand#233;, Des maux indicibles and Faire de la santand#233; publique.
Table of Contents
Introduction: and#147;Dead alive, dead outside, alive insideand#8221;
PART ONE. VITA
A Zone of Social Abandonment
The Politics of Death
Citizenship
PART TWO. CATARINA AND THE ALPHABET
The Life of the Mind
A Society of Bodies
Brazil
Ex-Human
The House and the Animal
and#147;Love is the illusion of the abandonedand#8221;
Social Psychosis
An Illness of Time
God, Sex, and Agency
PART THREE. THE MEDICAL ARCHIVE
A Deadening Language
Schizophrenia
The Right to Health and Psychiatric Reform
Life Determinations
Catarina and Medical Science
No Human Relations
Dead Voices
The House of Mental Health
The Model City
An Epidemic of Mental Illness
and#147;I am like this because of lifeand#8221;
The Typical Symptom
Pharmaceutical Abandonment
PART FOUR. THE FAMILY
Unused Words
A Medical Visit
Semblance
The Fraternal Tie
The In-Laws and Ex-Husband
A Family Business
The Pharmakos
Temporality
PART FIVE. BIOLOGY AND ETHICS
Reason
Jurisprudence and Morality
Currency
The Biological Complex
The Family Tree
A Genetic Population
A Lost Chance
PART SIX. THE DICTIONARY
and#147;Underneath was this, which I do not attempt to nameand#8221;
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII
Book XIII
Book XIV
Book XV
Book XVI
Book XVII
Book XVIII
Book XIX
Conclusion: and#147;A way to the wordsand#8221;
Postscript: and#147;I am part of the origins, not just of language, but of peopleand#8221;
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index