I was passionate about anthropology in the 1970s when I was in my twenties and am still passionate about anthropology in the 2020s in my seventies. Throughout the years I have expressed my passion for anthropology in university classrooms, in public lectures, and in the 16 books I have published. As my mind has matured, I understand more and more fully just how important it is to write powerfully, cogently, and accessibly about the wisdom of others. In all my books I have attempted to convey to the public this fundamental wisdom, none more so than in my latest book, Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times.
I wrote...
Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times
Wisdom From the Edge describes what anthropologists can do to contribute to the social and cultural changes that shape a social future of wellbeing and viability. Paul Stoller shows how anthropologists can develop sensuously described ethnographic narratives to communicate powerfully their insights to a wide range of audiences. These insights are filled with wisdom about how respect for nature is central to the future of humankind.
Stoller demonstrates how the ethnographic evocation of space and place, the honing of dialogue, and the crafting of character depict the drama of social life, and borrows techniques from film, poetry, and fiction to expand the appeal of anthropological knowledge and heighten its ability to connect the public to the idiosyncrasies of people and locale.
The Vulnerable Observer is a classic work in anthropology in which the author underscores the emotional impact of being a research anthropologist.
Behar’s wonderfully crafted stories evoke the wisdom of others and demonstrate why it is important for anthropologists to describe the emotional impact of social being in the world. It is an important text for understanding the emotional contours of the human condition.
Eloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar offers a new theory and practice for humanistic anthropology. She proposes an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice. She does so in the hope that it will lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling, not only in contemporary anthropology, but in all acts of witnessing.
Hurston’s Mules and Men is a classic work in which the author returns to her hometown, Eatonville, Florida, in the late 1920s to conduct anthropological research.
In the work Hurston captures the complex texture of social life in a fully incorporated African American community. The result is a rich mix of character descriptions, masterfully crafted dialogues, and a collection of stories that reflect powerfully the deep knowledge and profound wisdom of Eatonville’s cast of characters.
Wisdom Sits in Places is a model for writers who want to describe the scope, importance, and the social and ecological applicability of indigenous wisdom.
In the book, Basso describes poetically how Western Apache elders teach us how spaces and places have histories the wisdom of which clears the mind and engenders respect for nature and for one’s fellow human beings. It is a key work for anyone who wants to write about wisdom.
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences…
Walter Mosely is one of my favorite fiction writers. His Easy Rollins mysteries, of which Cinnamon Kiss is a prime example, describe with great skill the cultural texture of street life among African Americans in Los Angeles.
He does so through sensuous descriptions of LA neighborhoods, gripping dialogue, and creative construction of character. In so doing he evokes the practical wisdom of urban street life—a model for writing about contemporary wisdom.
New York Times bestseller Walter Mosley's sizzling new novel pits Easy Rawlins against his greatest ever challenge.
It is the Summer of Love as CINNAMON KISS opens, and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armoured car. It's further outside the law than Easy has ever travelled, but his daughter Feather needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it's a cinch.
Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric,…
Anna Badkhen, a writer of creative non-fiction and fiction, publishes lyrical descriptions of people, place, and character. She has written about social life in Afghanistan as well as the challenging lifeways of people in Mali and Senegal.
Fisherman’s Blues, which is situated in the artisan fishing village of Joal, Senegal, is an inspiring story that describes how Senegalese fishermen employ practical wisdom, passed down from generation to generation, to maintain their way of life in environmentally challenging times.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR AND PASTE MAGAZINE
An intimate account of life in a West African fishing village, tugged by currents ancient and modern, and dependent on an ocean that is being radically transformed.
The sea is broken, fishermen say. The sea is empty. The genii have taken the fish elsewhere.
For centuries, fishermen have launched their pirogues from the Senegalese port of Joal, where the fish used to be so plentiful a man could dip his hand into the grey-green ocean and pull one out as big as his thigh. But…
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
