Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, 20th Anniversary Edition

Katherine A. Dettwyler

Sep 2013 · Waveland Press

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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. 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 facing emotionally draining realities. Readers will
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. The 20th Anniversary Edition includes a 13-page
“Q&A with the Author” in which Dettwyler responds to typical
questions she has received individually from students who have been
assigned Dancing Skeletons as well as audience questions at lectures on
various campuses. The new 23-page “Update on Mali, 2013” chapter is a
factual update about economic and health conditions in Mali as well as a
brief summary of the recent political unrest.