“Mothers Love: Death Without Weeping.” A shantytown called the Alto do Cruzeiro (Crucifix Hill)‚ is one of the three shantytowns bordering the big marketplace area in the town of Bom Jesus in the sugar plantation district of Northeast Brazil‚ a solitary part of the countless regions of disregard that have materialized in the darkness of the now stained economic wonder of Brazil. The Alto women practice an unusual method of caring for their offspring especially when handling the death of their infants
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Response Paper: Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes As an ethnography‚ Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes presents a description and explanation of the way of life of people in Alto do Cruzeiro which is a shantytown of Northeast Brazil. It is revealed that mothers in Alto do Cruzeiro were indifferent to the deaths of their children which is puzzling. The article provides readers an anthropological enquiry of the mother-infant relationship in the shantytown and leads to more
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Taussig’s work and Nancy Scheper-Hughes ethnography Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Both works provide insight into violence as a part of
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In 1974‚ Nancy Scheper-Hughes traveled to a village in rural Ireland which she later nicknamed “Ballybran” (Scheper-Hughes 2000-128)). Her findings there led her to publish Saints‚ Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland in 1979‚ in which she attempted to explain the social causes of Ireland’s surprisingly high rates of schizophrenia (Scheper-Hughes 2000:128). Saints was met with a backlash of criticism from both the anthropological community and the villagers who had served
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The readings titled "Death without Weeping" and "When Does Life" provide quite shocking yet fascinating information regarding how different cultures and societies define when a child is considered a person. In "Death Without Weeping" the author‚ Nancy Schepper-Hughes‚ describes how poverty and desperation in Brazil’s shantytowns became the primary reason for many mothers’ indifference to the deaths of their infant children. According to Schepper-Hughes‚ the extreme poverty‚ high fertility‚ and poor
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Roy D’Andrade’s and Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ arguments oppose one another they have fundamental similarities. As stated by Laura Nader‚ both D’Andrade and Scheper-Hughes are commenting on the overall adequacy of anthropology. D’Andrade argues that moral (defined as evaluative; good and bad‚ reward and punishment‚ and completely subjective) and objective (defined as telling about object being described‚ not about the describer) models should be kept separate‚ while Scheper-Hughes argues that anthropologists
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In the ethnography‚ “Mother’s Love: Death Without Weeping” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes‚ the author discusses her fieldwork of observing the poverty-stricken mothers who refuse to care for their sickly children in Northeast Brazilian shantytown‚ Alto do Cruzeiro. She questioned the kinship system on the severe hardship of poverty in relation to a bond between a mother and infant. Two theoretical perspectives that strongly portrays in the article is cultural materialism and individual agency‚ as cultural
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Death Without Weeping Has poverty ravaged mother love in the shantytowns of Brazil? Nancy Scheper-Hughes I have seen death without weeping‚ The destiny of the Northeast is death‚ Cattle they kill‚ To the people they do something worse Anonymous Brazilian singer (1965) "WHY DO THE CHURCH BELLS RING SO often’?" I asked Nailza de Arruda soon after I moved into a corner of her tiny mud-walled hut near the top of the shantytown called the Alto do Cruzeiro (Crucifix Hill) . I was then a Peace
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Just when Hughes were gathering information for her job position in Peace Corps‚ she comes back as an anthropologist to further her studies of the women in Alto. It all began where Schepher-Hughes constantly heard the church bells ringing. When asked to her caretaker‚ Nailza de Arruda‚ Hughes was answered‚ “Just another little angel gone to heaven.” (Schepher-Hughes 2009:124). Bringing to her attention of Arruda’s answer and remembering
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Question 1 In Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s article “Death Without Weeping”‚ Nancy’s main role was to be an anthropologist who simply observes the culture she studying. However‚ the group concluded that Nancy served as both an observer and a helper. Her role as an observer was exemplified by the ethnographic work and article written about the shantytowns. On the other hand‚ she aided the culture by feeding and nursing back to health Zezinho‚ a 13 month-old toddler deemed doomed for the death by his mother
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