Can I read Dancing skeletons : life and death in West Africa on EtoBox?

Dancing skeletons : life and death in West Africa by Katherine A. Dettwyler is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Dancing skeletons : life and death in West Africa about?

This personal account by a biocultural anthropologist illuminates important, not-soon-forgotten messages involving the more sobering aspects of conducting fieldwork among malnourished children in West Africa. With nutritional anthropology at its core, Dancing Skeletons presents informal, engaging and oftentimes dramatic stories from the field 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 the realities involved in researching emotionally draining topics. Readers will alternately 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. -- Publisher description

Who reads Dancing skeletons : life and death in West Africa?

Author

Katherine A. Dettwyler

Publisher

Waveland Press, Incorporated

Published

1993

Language

EN

ISBN

9780881337488

Category

history

Subjects

Anthropology, Social Science, Fiction

Rating

3.78 / 5 (889 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14