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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.

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of California Press

ISBN-100520075374

ISBN-139780520075375

eBay Product ID (ePID)581546

Product Key Features

Number of Pages632 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameDeath Without Weeping : the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

SubjectSociology / General, Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Anthropology / General

Publication Year1993

TypeTextbook

AuthorNancy Scheper-Hughes

Subject AreaSocial Science

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.1 in

Item Weight32.6 Oz

Item Length0.9 in

Item Width0.6 in

Additional Product Features

Book TitleDeath Without Weeping : the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science

Dewey Edition21

Target AudienceCollege Audience

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal303.60981

Table Of ContentPrologue: Sugar House Introduction: Tropical Sadness Chapter 1: O Nordeste: Sweetness and Death Chapter 2: Bom Jesus: One Hundred Years Without Water Chapter 3: Reciprocity and Dependency: The Double Ethic of Bom Jesus Chapter 4: Delírio de Fome : The Madness of Hunger Chapter 5: Nervoso : Medicine, Sickness, and Human Needs Chapter 6: Everday Violence: Bodies, Death, and Silence Chapter 7: Two Feet Under and a Cardboard Coffin: The Social Production of Indifference to Child Death Chapter 8: (M)Other Love: Cultue, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking Chapter 9: Our Lady of Sorrows: A Political Economy of the Emotions Chapter 10: A Knack for Life: The Everyday Tactics of Survival Chapter 11: Carnaval : The Dance Against Death Chapter 12: De Profundis : Out of the Depths Epilogue: Acknowledgments and Then Some Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

SynopsisWhen 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.

Lc Classification NumberHv1448.B72