Title: Dancing skeletons : life and death in West Africa /
Authors: Dettwyler, Katherine A.,
Year: 2014
Subjects: Malnutrition ethnology; Fertility; Cultural Characteristics; Child Welfare; Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena ethnology; Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena ethnology; Nutritional anthropology Mali Case studies.; Infants Nutrition Mali.; Children Health and hygiene Mali.; Fertility, Human Mali.; Children Health and hygiene; Fertility, Human; Infants Nutrition; Nutritional anthropology; Mali ethnology; Mali; Mali
Abstract: 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.
Contents: Return to the field -- Of mosquitoes and men -- Female circumcision : not just another bit of exotic ethnographic trivia -- Of worms and other parasites -- The Grande Marché -- Rural Africa at last -- Children, snakes, and death -- Bad breath, gangrene, and God's angels -- Poulet bicyclette -- I give you rural Africa -- Turtles all the way down -- Dancing skeletons -- Mother love and child death -- Postscript, 1993 -- Q&A with the author -- Update on Mali, 2013.