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Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, by Katherine A. Dettwyler
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1995 Margaret Mead Award winner! 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. (Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact the publisher directly.)
- Sales Rank: #264057 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Waveland Pr Inc
- Published on: 1993-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 6.25" w x .50" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 172 pages
Features
Review
" . . . a sobering, painful look at problems of a still-poor developing country that will be particularly instructive to international public health workers, nutrition educators, planners and clinical nutritionists concerned with Third World problems. It is a recommended reading." -- ECOLOGY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION 1995
". . . this book has two main advantages. First, it engages the reader, because it is well written. Second, it offers a broad scope for discussion of academic and practical issues." -- JOURNAL OF BIOSOCIAL SCIENCES, Vol.27 1995
"Katherine Dettwyler has written an easily accessible and particularly vibrant description of life in modern Mali . . . It offers a vivid portrait of Malian people and places as well as thoughtful account of the issues and problems that face anthropologists in the field." -- AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW, Vol. 38, No. 2 1995
"The ongoing critique of ethnography has, happily, changed the genre, and today real people walk the pages of the best ethnographies. Dettwyler's DANCING SKELETONS is surely one of the best. The text emerges as an extended meditation on applied fieldwork as a gradual melding of people and meaning." -- AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Vol. 6, No. 5 1994
From the Publisher
Also available by Katherine A. Dettwyler from Waveland Press: Cultural Anthropology and Human Experience: The Feast of Life (ISBN 9781577666813).
From the Inside Flap
"Katherine Dettwyler has written an easily accessible and particularly vibrant description of life in modern Mali . . . It offers a vivid portrait of Malian people and places as well as a thoughtful account of the issues and problems that face anthropologists in the field." (African Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1995)
". . . a sobering, painful look at problems of a still-poor developing country that will be particularly instructive to international public health workers, nutrition educators, planners and clinical nutritionists concerned with Third World problems. It is a recommended reading." (Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 1995)
"The ongoing critique of ethnography has, happily, changed the genre, and today real people walk the pages of the best ethnographies. Dettwyler's Dancing Skeletons is surely one of the best. The text emerges as an extended meditation on applied fieldwork as a gradual melding of people and meaning." (American Journal of Human Biology, Vol. 6, No. 5, 1994)
". . . this book has two main advantages. First, it engages the reader, because it is well written. Second, it offers a broad scope for discussion of academic and practical issues." (Journal of Biosocial Sciences, Vol. 27, 1995)
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A Critical Review
By Alexi Atkins
Dancing Skeletons is a different kind of ethnography. Katherine Dettwyler's story, nonfiction though it may be, cannot be equated with other ethnographies documenting women in Africa. Quite frankly, she doesn't document their lives at all, she interprets them. While this book can definitely be appreciated for its emotional appeal to help the malnourished children in West Africa, I do not believe it should be used as an academic authority on the matter.
For one thing, Dettwyler relies heavily on comparisons with Western culture, which invariably place Malian culture on the losing side of the duality. In Malian culture, women are circumcised according to custom. She says that "people seemed to accept it without question" (27), that women who she asked about sex often didn't understand "the point" of her question, and that women "had other problems to worry about; they couldn't concern themselves with the issue of sexual pleasure, or lack thereof" (29). All this rhetoric implies a superiority of female sexual practices in the West because our women are allowed sexual pleasure and understand what it means to have sexual rights. While Dettwyler immediately turns to an amusing anecdote about the Fat Lady from Timbuktu, I was left a little miffed at her treatment of this practice. While no one I know would condone it, comparing the practices of the West with Malian custom in a way that privileges the Western perspective will never help Malian women.
Dettwyler repeatedly creates this dichotomy between the way things are in Mali and the way they would be back in America. While this comparison is understandable given her social context, it has no place in an academic ethnography. As post-modern academics have come to realize, it is the Western tendency to create these dichotomies that undermines the cultural value systems of third world countries and privileges the Western perspective. We cannot effectively create positive change if we cannot see the value and importance of outside cultures. Dettwyler's biased emotional response to cultural issues turns them into tools to assert patriarchal Western authority.
Such interpretations were repeatedly emphasized throughout the work, especially when it came to food and health practices. She repeatedly admonishes their inability to understand the connection between food and health, and more generally to imagine a life outside their own. With such assertions, she limits the Malian people rather than empowering them. The insistence upon their inability to understand, their lack of imagination, and their reliance on tradition undervalues their intellectual capabilities, reinforcing the patriarchal notion of superiority. It perpetuates the idea Westerners have more resources, and therefore know more than West Africans, and therefore must have the answers to all their problems. Solutions will only come from empowering these people and educating them, not essentializing and exploiting them.
I am not arguing that this is not a good book--I merely believe that it should be read with a grain of salt. The presence of Dettwyler's opinions and emotions, especially with respect to her family and friends, makes the book a much easier, funnier, and often more enjoyable read than many other ethnographies. Yet if approach to anthropology became the norm once more, we would lose all the progress that has been made in recent years to critically analyze the social structures that keep Third World countries at the bottom of the pyramid. While I can appreciate this book as a good story about an American woman in West Africa, it cannot be validated as an authority on the Malian people.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Dancing SkeletonsBook Review
By Rahma Mkuu
Katherine Dettwyler, a medical anthropologist shares her incredible story of studying malnutrition in Mali, West Africa, through her book, Dancing Skeletons. She tells of her journey in search for growth patterns in malnourished children. As a researcher, she is interested in learning what happens to malnourished children as they grow and how they develop into healthy adults.
First, Dettwyler strongly believes that "Language is a source of immense power." (Dettwyler,1994). She shares her pride of being able to speak Bambara, the local language. She is able to convince the reader that language is the key to forming strong bonds and creating trust with the target population that one is studying. Her accounts of discussing sensitive topics from female circumcision and sexual foreplay, to the use of contraceptives in an open way with the women is proof of the importance of speaking the language. Dettwyler's ability to speak Bambara gives her an even deeper insight of the community and the reader is able to take away many aspects of the Malian culture. Conversation is not the only thing that connects her to the community. She also becomes part of the community through her actions. She rides the bache a pickup truck used as public transportation, she eats with her fingers, and even bargains at the market, Dettwyler is not just the observer in her story, but also the participant.
Second, Dettwyler is able to prove that health is a complex issue to study and that a multidimensional and ecological perspective has to be taken into consideration when conducting research or providing health services. She is shocked when she learns that lack of money is not necessarily the only issue that contributes malnutrition. When she asks women what they would do if given extra money to spend, many women respond by saying they would probably spend it on material goods and not food. She also learns that it is custom for children to eat last and adults to be fed more because adults are the ones that participate in labor. As the dire need of nutrition education becomes a reality, she becomes not just a researcher but also a health educator. The community looks up to her for advice on nutrition and other health care issues. Dettwyler's influence becomes apparent when her nutrition advice is incorporated in a local song.
Through the lens of studying malnutrition, Dettwyler is able to shed light to many other health issues. She is exposed to other health issues such as infant mortality, intestinal parasitic infections, gangrene, lack of dental hygiene, pregnancy and death. Her ability to explain and define medical terminology in such a clear way that the reader easily understands is incredible. Her genuine passion for health and anthropology results in a book that will be on the top of many people's list of favorite readings. The reader walks away from the book with the knowledge that language is powerful and that health care issues need to be addressed while taking culture and society into consideration.
Reference:
Dettwyler, Katherine A. Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1994. Print.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
It was a fun read! I know it is criticized for not ...
By D
It was a fun read! I know it is criticized for not being all facts but it was an easy yet fascinating read. I am a nutrition student and have worked with immigrants, so for me it was good read that came together in a real life account. It was evident that she learned more than just books but that she lived in a different culture. Good thoughts.
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