Synopses & Reviews
"
In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, Seth Holmes offers up an important and captivating new ethnography, linking the structural violence inherent in the migrant labor system in the United States to the social processes by which it becomes normalized. Drawing on five years of fieldwork among the Triqui people from Oaxaca, Mexico, Holmes investigates local understandings of suffering and illness, casting into relief stereotypes and prejudices that he ties to the transnational labor that puts cheap food on American tables. Throughout this compelling volume, Holmes considers ways of engaging migrant farm workers and allies that might help disrupt exploitation that reaches across national boundaries and can too often be hidden away. This book is a gripping read not only for cultural and medical anthropologists, immigration and ethnic studies students, students of labor and agriculture, physicians and public health professionals, but also anyone interested in the lives and well-being of the people providing them cheap, fresh fruit."and#151;Paul Farmer, Co-founder of Partners In Health and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
and#147;Dramatically portrays the harsh physical and emotional conditions under which farm workers labor. As they complete their brutal work, they suffer long-term disabilities in their senior years. This can be avoided with reasonable and decent working conditions. Let us remember them as we eat our daily meals.and#8221;and#151;Dolores Huerta
"This book takes concepts from the world of scholarship to enrich the understanding of people's lives; and the vivid detail, and empathetic portrait of the reality of people's lives enrich scholarship. The book leaves the reader in no doubt that economic arrangements, social hierarchies, discrimination, poor living and working conditions have profound effects on the health of marginalized people. It is all done with the touch of a gifted writer. The reader lives the detail and is much moved."and#151;Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director, UCL Institute of Health Equity
"Provides a unique understanding of the political economy of migrant labor and of its human cost."and#151;Didier Fassin is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the author of Humanitarian Reason.
"Here in the U.S., we both utterly rely on immigrants from the South to feed us, and erect walls and employ militias to keep them out. In this groundbreaking new book, Holmes goes underground to explore what this bizarre duality means for the people who live it. A brilliant combination of academic rigor and journalistic daring."and#151;Tom Philpott, Food and Agriculture Correspondent, Mother Jones Magazine
and#147;Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is a powerful exposand#233; of the social and political realities that mark the bodies and limit the life prospects of Mexican migrant farmworkers in the worldand#8217;s richest economy. An absorbing read and a resolute call for just labor relations and health equity as key to a common and sustainable human development.and#8221;and#151; Joand#227;o Biehl, author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment
and#147;Holmes' book is a lyrical ethnographic rendition of Robert Chailloux's "Still Life with Strawberries," revealing the back stage, back-breaking work of indigenous Mexican pickers trapped in patron-client relationship to Japanese-American farm owners who are themselves trapped in price wars with global competitors to produce the beautiful abundance that we take for granted."and#151;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping
and#147;A tour du force ethnography. Holmes gives us the rare combination of medical, anthropological, and humanitarian gazes into the lives of Oaxacan migrant farmworkers in the United States. Their agricultural field work and his anthropological fieldwork intersect to produce a book full of insights into the pathos, inequalities, frustrations, and dreams punctuating the farmworkersand#8217; daily lives. Through Holmes' vivid prose, and the words of the workers themselves, we feel with the workers as they strain their bodies picking fruit and pruning vines, we sense their fear as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border, we understand their frustrations as they are chased and detained by immigration authorities, and cheer at their perseverance when faced with bureaucrats and medical personnel who treat them as if they are to blame for their own impoverished condition. A must read for anyone interested in the often invisible lives and suffering of those whose labor provides for our very sustenance.and#8221;and#151;Leo R. Chavez, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine
and#147;In his first book, anthropologist and doctor Seth M. Holmes gives us an intimate look into the lives of migrant farmworkers. Through his exhaustive research, Holmes reveals the struggles of the millions who work in our fields, every year, to put food on our tables. In deliberations about immigration and farm policy, these are the stories that should be at the center. Holmes' helps us put them there.and#8221;
Anna Lappand#233;, author Diet for a Hot Planet and founder, Real Food Media Project
and#147;Like the reporting of Edward R. Murrow and the labors of Cesar Chavez, Seth Holmesand#8217; work on these modern-day migrants reminds us of the human beings who produce the greatest bounty of food the world has ever seen. They take jobs other American workers wonand#8217;t take for pay other American workers wonand#8217;t accept and under conditions other American workers wonand#8217;t tolerate. Yet except for the minority of farm workers protected by United Farm Workersand#8217; contracts, these workers too often donand#8217;t earn enough to adequately feed themselves. Seth Holmesand#8217; writing fuels the UFWand#8217;s ongoing organizing among farm workers and admonishes the American people that our work remains unfinished.and#8221;and#151;Arturo S. Rodriguez, President, United Farm Workers of America
and#160;
Review
"By giving voice to silenced Mexican migrant laborers, Dr. Holmes exposes the links among suffering, the inequalities related to the structural violence of global trade which compel migration, and the symbolic violence of stereotypes and prejudices that normalize racism."
Review
"The reader is left with a deep understanding of how injustice in the United States is produced and the strength of the individuals that persevere through it."
Review
"Holmes brings an unusual expertise to his writing about migrant Mexican farmworkers. . . .and#160;[He] goes far beyond mere observation."
Review
"The insights gleaned by [Holmes's] participation-observation are priceless."
Review
"Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in food and the food system. . . .and#160;To say that the book provides a vivid look at farm labor is an understatement."
Review
"A compelling and frightening account of the lives of [Mexican migrant] workers. . . . [Holmes's] tales of crossing the border, doing backbreaking work in the fields, and exploring relationships with these dislocated and largely invisible workers is well worth a read."
Review
"A provocative, important new book. . . . Part heart-pounding adventure tale, part deep ethnograhic study, part urgent plea for reform. . . . Holmesand#160;brings an enlightening complexity to the issue of migrant workers."
Review
and#8220;A deeply nuanced picture of a population that cannot escape social reprobation, but deserves social inclusion. . . . The collage of case studies, field notes, personal narratives and photography is nothing short of enthralling.and#8221; - Starred Review
Review
and#8220;Get this book and read it. . . . A hell of a story. . . . These people walk by you every day and should not remain invisible.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Leaders and readers alike should pay attention to - and heed its warnings and advice. . . . Unflinching and objective. . . . Must be read - and seen.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The authors dare you to ignore the subculture in their field notes and arresting black-and-white images, urging that our failed social systems need repairing and we cannot continue to let these outliers remain invisible.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Recommended.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;One of the most original and important works of its kind. . . . A pathbreaking photo-ethnography, powerful in presentation, content and scope. . . . A must-read, [it] will rock the world of the sheltered middle class and shed new light on the pervasive structural inequalities plaguing contemporary society.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Truly remarkable book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Powerfully candid.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;With a combination of photographs, dialogue, field notes and critical theory, the book provides a detailed analysis of the social structure of an underground society in contemporary America.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This book offers as complete and disturbing a view as can be had of just how awful and intractable street life in San Francisco can get.and#8221;
Synopsis
Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of lifeand deathin extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the worlds poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.
Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmers disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmers urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the worlds poor should be of fundamental concern to a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.
Synopsis
"This is an angry and a hopeful book, and, like everything Dr. Farmer has written, it has both passion and authority.
Pathologies of Power is an eloquent plea for a working definition of human rights that would not neglect the most basic rights of all: food, shelter and health. This plea has special potency because it comes from Dr. Farmer, a person who has proven that the dream of universal and comprehensive human rights is possible, and who has brought food, shelter, health, and hope to some of the poorest people on this earth."Tracy Kidder, author of
The Soul of a New Machine and
Home Town"Farmer's brilliance and charisma leap from the pages of his book. He challenges us to face the urgent theoretical and political challenges of the twenty-first century by linking structural violence to embodied social suffering and in the process calls for a new definition of human rights. Once this book is out, we will no longer be able to remain complacently--or rather, complicitly--on the sidelines."Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
"A passionate critique of conventional biomedical ethics by one of the world's leading physician-anthropologists and public intellectuals. Farmer's on-the-ground analysis of the relentless march of the AIDS epidemic and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis among the imprisoned and the sick-poor of the world illuminates the pathologies of a world economy that has lost its soul."Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
"In his compelling book, Farmer captures the central dilemma of our timesthe increasing disparities of health and well-being within and among societies. While all member countries of the United Nations denounce the gross violations of human rights perpetrated by those who torture, murder, or imprison without due process, the insidious violations of human rights due to structural violence involving the denial of economic opportunity, decent housing, or access to health care and education are commonly ignored. Pathologies of Power makes a powerful case that our very humanity is threatened by our collective failure to end these abuses."Robert S. Lawrence, President of Physicians for Human Rights and Edyth Schoenrich Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
"Farmer has given us that most rare of books: one that opens both our minds and hearts. It stands as a model of engaged scholarship and an urgent call for social scientists to forsake their cushy disregard for human rights at home and abroad."Loïc Wacquant, author of Prisons of Poverty
"Paul Farmer is an original: a powerful writer, an insightful theorist, and a human rights activist on behalf of the health needs of some of the poorest and most excluded people on the planet. Pathologies of Power brings together all his strengths, as a thinker and an activist. Every health worker, human rights teacher, and government official who seeks to improve the health status and life chances of their fellow human beings simply must read this book."Michael Ignatieff, author of Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry
"Paul Farmer is a great doctor with massive experience working against the hardest of diseases in the most adverse circumstances, and at the same time he is a proficient and insightful anthropologist. Farmers knowledge of maladies such as AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis, which he fights on behalf of his indigent patients, is hard to match. But what is particularly relevant in appreciating the contribution of this powerful book is that Farmer is a visionary analyst who looks beyond the details of fragmentary explanations to seek an integrated understanding of a complex reality."Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Economics
Synopsis
When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing - and controversial - is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.
Synopsis
This book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. Based on five years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca up the West Coast), Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, uncovers how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmesand#8217; material is visceral and powerfuland#151;for instance, he trekked with his informants illegally through the desert border into Arizona, where they were apprehended and jailed by the Border Patrol. After he was released from jail (and his companions were deported back to Mexico), Holmes interviewed Border Patrol agents, local residents, and armed vigilantes in the borderlands. He lived with indigenous Mexican families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals, participated in healing rituals, and mourned at funerals for friends. The result is a "thick description" that conveys the full measure of struggle, suffering, and resilience of these farmworkers.
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies weds the theoretical analysis of the anthropologist with the intimacy of the journalist to provide a compelling examination of structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of a vertical slice of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers, farm owners, doctors, and nurses. This reflexive, embodied anthropology deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which socially structured suffering comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, especially through imputations of ethnic body difference. In the vehement debates on immigration reform and health reform, this book provides the necessary stories of real people and insights into our food system and health care system for us to move forward to fair policies and solutions.
Synopsis
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmesand#8217;s material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the U.S., planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This and#147;embodied anthropologyand#8221; deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which social inequalities and suffering come to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care.
Synopsis
Donna M. Goldstein challenges much of what we think we know about the "culture of poverty." Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns. These women have created absurdist and black-humor storytelling practices in the face of trauma and tragedy. Goldstein helps us to understand that such joking and laughter is part of an emotional aesthetic that defines the sense of frustration and anomie endemic to the political and economic desperation of the shantytown.
Synopsis
"Goldstein returns anthropology to what it does best while taking the reader on a no-holds-barred ride through the tragicomic world of a Rio favela. She captures the bittersweet laughter of Brazil's vast subterranean underclass of domestic servants who keep their anger and despair at bay by laughing and spitting into the face of chaos, injustice, and premature death. In this affecting and deft 'comedy of manners,' Goldstein emerges as urban anthropology's new Jane Austen."and#151;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of
Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil"Goldstein takes us right to where anthropology should be: into the blood, sweat, tears of shantytown life. Laughter Out of Place tells the story of a Brazilian family on the edge of survival where women and children struggle, not just to stay alive, but also for joy in the face of poverty, men, and mutual betrayal."and#151;Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
"A stunning ethnographic achievement that should become an urban anthropological classic. Goldstein brings us close to women who under extraordinary circumstances of poverty use humor to reveal the penetrating truth of their relationship to structures of power and the ironies of their raced, classed, and gendered lives. Superb and engaging ethnographic analysis is framed by sophisticated social theory and a comprehensive treatment of the literature on contemporary Brazilian society."and#151;Judith Goode, co-editor of The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Power, Politics and Impoverished People in the United States
Synopsis
This powerful study immerses the reader in the world of homelessness and drug addiction in the contemporary United States. For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers on the streets of San Francisco, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photographs with vivid dialogue, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, race relations, sexuality, family trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the addicts' determination to hang on for one more day and one more "fix" through a "moral economy of sharing" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.
Synopsis
"Based on over a decade of field research, Righteous Dopefiend is a searing portrait of the lives of homeless injection drug users in San Francisco and an analysis of the powerful forces that shape their lives. ...This book brings into our visual and moral field the plight of those whom we have condemned to the margins, documenting the struggle that is the condition of their daily existence and exploring the social structures that enforce their suffering." and#151;Angela Garcia,
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande"Calling this book ethnography would be like calling The Wire a cop show: what comes roaring out of its pages is almost as visceral and devastating as spending a night in 'the hole' itself."and#151;Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
"Plunge beneath the surface of America's no-man's lands. Find in the dead-end alleyways, storage lots, and overgrown embankments the terrifying but strangely ordered world of homeless heroin injectors. This book will test your cultural relativism to destruction, but along the way you will learn a great deal about destitution, about homelessness, about addiction, and about violence at all levels. These dopefiends are 'made in America'."and#151;Paul Willis, author of Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, and co-founding editor of Ethnography
"Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg provide a riveting narrative of the daily struggles for survival of homeless people with a physical and emotional addiction to heroin. The authors' poignant account of these experiences features sophisticated analytic themes that enable them insightfully to integrate discussions of agency and moral responsibility on the part of homeless addicts with an analysis of the powerful structural forces that shape the addicts' lives. Righteous Dopefiend is a must-read."and#151;William Julius Wilson, author of More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City
and#147;Bourgois and Schonberg deliver luminous images and intimate portraits of unforgettable Dickensian charactersand#151;a host of late-modern hobos, hustlers, dumpster divers, and sweet-talking jiversand#151;whose addiction consigns them to lives of public ignominy and private pleasures transacted under the concrete freeway overpasses of a totally indifferent San Francisco. This tough book is a must-read for all.and#8221;and#151;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death Without Weeping
and#147;If Pierre Bourdieu, George Orwell, and Walker Evans had met in a homeless encampment under a San Francisco highway, they could not have produced a more penetrating portrait of America's urban outcasts than Righteous Dopefiend. Fusing ethnography, photography, and social theory, Bourgois and Schonberg take the reader on the frantic roller coaster ride of daily subsistence among a clique of indigent heroin addicts. This searing anthropology of everyday violence in the underbelly of the American metropolis will challenge social scientists and public health experts, stun lay readers, and shame public officials oblivious to the social dereliction their failed policies are spawning.and#8221;and#151;Loand#239;c Wacquant, author of Urban Outcasts and Punishing the Poor
Synopsis
Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manzand#151;an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemalaand#151;tells the story of the village of Santa Marand#237;a Tzejand#225;, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this villageand#151;its birth, destruction, and rebirthand#151;embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today.
Drawing on interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, Manz creates a richly detailed political portrait of Santa Marand#237;a Tzejand#225;, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. Manz describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country. After their village was viciously sacked in 1982, desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further, to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With great insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa Marand#237;a Tzejand#225;, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives.
Synopsis
"Manz captures one of the most tragic periods of Guatemalan history with truly extraordinary insight, intimacy and brilliance. Myrna Mack, her friend and colleague, was murdered by the military, but ultimately the epic story of these isolated areas could not be extinguished. This outstanding, courageous and committed anthropologist has given us a precious gift in these pages--a masterpiece that is sure to become a classic of this troubled time."and#151;Helen Mack Chang, President of the Myrna Mack Foundation and recipient of the 1992 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Peace Prize."
"Much more than the ethnography of a beleaguered village in Guatemala, Paradise in Ashes is about how international politics, in this case, the Cold War, played itself out within a culture that is every bit as 'foreign' as that of Iraq or Afghanistan. Combining a lifetime of uncommonly solid scholarship with a lively, accessible style, Manz has produced a genuine landmark, blending the local with the global into a compelling new approach to problems that continue to bedevil our world."and#151;Lars Schoultz, author of Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America
"Manz reads the larger political, national, and international contexts into the gripping and nail-biting horror stories she tells about the life, death, and rebirth of Santa Marand#237;a Tzejand#225;, a tough little village in Guatemala to which she is emotionally and politically bound for life. More than any anthropologist of her generation Manz is both ethnographer and compaand#241;era."and#151;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
"Paradise in Ashes is a masterpiece. Written with a lucid and sensitive anthropological eye it is a work of scholarly and literary excellence. There is no happy ending to this remarkable, revealing story. Nonetheless, the strength, courage and hope of the Mayans, poignantly revealed by Beatriz Manz, makes this, after all its horrors, an up-beat, even inspiring, story. Manz brings back to us the best, the most illuminating of the legendary Latin American anthropology."and#151;Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's ambassador to the United Nations, and member of the Security Council
"Beatriz Manz has written a moving chronicle of Guatemalan villagers who have endured unspeakable injustice, yet remarkably look to the future with hope. This splendid book is a beautifully written human story that is framed by the passions and devastating consequences of the cold war. The narrative is a testament to the power of public anthropology and a must read for those concerned about the marginalized of the South."and#151;Isabel Allende
"The violent overthrow of democracy in Guatemala in 1954 by the army, with CIA backing, spelled the end of FDR's 'good neighbor' policy. In its stead, cold war ideology transformed Guatemala into one vast death camp. No wonder President Clinton apologized to the victims of that genocide. Beatriz Manz, as both an anthropologist and a human being, gives us the precise account of the high price of a political mistake."and#151;Carlos Fuentes
"No one could have written this book but Beatriz Manz: she understood the villagers in the most perceptive of ways, and she gained their trust. Her passion and lifetime of dedication to Guatemala shine through as she brings alive these exceptional human beings and the fire they walked through. Paradise in Ashes is an extraordinary achievement and a defining document of this genocidal period."and#151;Rigoberta Menchand#250; Tum
Synopsis
Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer answers in the affirmative with this, the first full-length ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society.
Synopsis
Praise for the first edition:Farmers sensitive exploration of the lives and deaths of the people at [the village of] Do Kay give his study a distinctly human face and an emotional edge.... The book is at the same time fiercely personal and coldly objective. The result is both moving and illuminating.” Science
Farmer renders a richly layered and nuanced ethnographic portrait.” Harvard Educational Review
This superbly crafted volume is dedicated to explaining and refuting a popular U.S. belief that AIDS came to the United States from Haiti. . . . Farmer has made an outstanding scholarly contribution to the anthropology of suffering, the assessment of illness as perceived and experienced by a patient embedded in an interlocking fabric of culture and history.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Synopsis
In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De Leandoacute;n sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our timeandmdash;the human consequences of US immigration policy.and#160;
The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.
Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De Leandoacute;n uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of andldquo;Prevention through Deterrence,andrdquo; the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and high risk of death. For two decades, this policy has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field.
In harrowing detail, De Leandoacute;n chronicles the journeys of people who have made dozens of attempts to cross the border and uncovers the stories of the objects and bodies left behind in the desert.
The Land of Open Graves will spark debate and controversy.
Synopsis
"Jason de Leand#243;n has written a remarkable book. I know of no other ethnography of life and death on the borderlands that is more moving, theoretically ambitious, or powerful than this eagerly awaited work." and#151;Marand#237;a Elena Garcand#237;a, Director of the Comparative History of Ideas program at the University of Washington, author of
Making Indigenous Citizens "An impressive piece of scholarship, Jason De Leand#243;n has written a brilliant and important book that humanizes the realities of life and death on the migrant trail in southern Arizona." and#151;Randall H. McGuire, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton University
"This book sears itself into your memory.and#160; You literally canand#8217;t put it down."and#160;and#151;Stanley Brandes, Robert H. Lowie Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Synopsis
andquot;De Leandoacute;n confronts us with a vivid indictment of the killing fields on the US-Mexico border and reveals the brutality of global inequality in all its goriness and intimate suffering. A self-described refugee from archaeology, De Leandoacute;n is revitalizing the field of anthropology by blowing apart the traditional subdisciplinary boundaries. With no holds barred, he offers new paths for theory, methods, and public anthropology.andquot; andmdash;Philippe Bourgois, author of
Righteous Dopefiend and
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio andquot;Jason De Leandoacute;n has written a remarkable book. I know of no other ethnography of life and death on the borderlands that is more moving, theoretically ambitious, or powerful than this eagerly awaited work.andquot; andmdash;Marandiacute;a Elena Garcandiacute;a, author of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru
andquot;This book sears itself into your memory. You literally canandrsquo;t put it down.andquot; andmdash;Stanley Brandes, Robert H. Lowie Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
andquot;An impressive piece of scholarship, The Land of Open Graves is a brilliant and important book that humanizes the realities of life and death on the migrant trail in southern Arizona.andquot;andmdash;Randall H. McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action
andquot;Jason De Leandoacute;n has written that rare and precious bookandmdash;a masterful deployment of tools from across the broad spectrum of anthropology.andquot; andmdash;Danny Hoffman, author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia
andquot;The Land of Open Graves is a politically, theoretically, and morally important book that mobilizes the four fields of anthropology to demonstrate beyond a doubtand#160;how current US border defense policy results in deliberate death.and#160;Beautifully written and engaging, it is a must-read for the general public and students across the social sciences.andquot; andmdash;Lynn Stephen, author of Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, andand#160;Oregon and We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements
and#160;
About the Author
Paul Farmer is Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School and Founding Director of Partners In Health. Among his books are Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (California, 1999), The Uses of Haiti (1994), and AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (California, 1992). Farmer is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award and the Margaret Mead Award for his contributions to public anthropology. He recently held the Blaise Pascal International Chair at the College de France. Amartya Sen, whose work challenges conventional market-driven economic paradigms, is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics. He teaches at Trinity College, Cambridge University.
Table of Contents
Preface to the 2006 Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Part I: Misfortunes without Number
2 The Water Refugees
3 The Remembered Valley
4 The Alexis Advantage: The Retaking of Kay
5 The Struggle for Health
6 1986 and After: Narrative Truth and Political Change
Part II: AIDS Comes to a Haitian Village
7 Manno
8 Anita
9 Dieudonné
10 "A Place Ravaged by AIDS"
Part III: The Exotic and the Mundane: HIV in Haiti
11 A Chronology of the AIDS/HIV Epidemic in Haiti
12 HIV in Haiti: The Dimensions of the Problem
13 Haiti and the "Accepted Risk Factors"
14 AIDS in the Caribbean: The "West Atlantic Pandemic"
Part IV: AIDS, History, Political Economy
15 Many Masters: The European Domination of Haiti
16 The Nineteenth Century: One Hundred Years of Solitude
17 The United States and the People with History
Part V: AIDS and Accusation
18 AIDS and Sorcery: Accusation in the Village
19 AIDS and Racism: Accusation in the Center
20 AIDS and Empire: Accusation in the Periphery
21 Blame, Cause, Etiology, and Accusation
22 Conclusion: AIDS and an Anthropology of Suffering
Notes
Bibliography
Index