Customer Reviews

Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some of the reviewers of Katherine A. Dettwylers Dancing Skeletons are critical of her book because they sense that she devoted much of her study to analyzing her own thoughts, feelings, likes, and dislikes, rather than devoting her full attention to the culture itself. ...
The reviewers of Dettwylers book must have been disappointed with her study because they were expecting an objective ethnography, free from the exposure of the anthropologists weaknesses. However, in Dettwylers book, they encountered her weaknesses (such as when she unexpectedly cried after seeing a child with Down Syndrome) and accounts of her biases (especially toward Malian food). For a social scientist, such accounts deviate from the study at hand, making it more of a personal diary than an ethnography itself.
However, these reviewers seem to have forgotten that Katherine Dettwyler is approaching her field of study from the hermeneutic point of view. Unlike social scientists, who study their subjects objectively as a way to counter bias, hermeneuts use bias as an important tool to better comprehend a culture. Through the self-evaluation of ones thoughts and feelings, and negotiation between informant and interviewer, the hermeneut is able to begin drawing a complete picture of the culture at hand.
Hence, through Dettwylers questioning and self-evaluation, the reader is able to see Mali through the eyes of a human being and not from a distanced scientist gathering raw data for his or her doctorate study. Through Dettwylers journey of trial and error, the reader begins to comprehend Mali each step at a time, the very same way Dettwyler does. Instead of being lectured at scientifically, the reader is taken on a trip through Malian society, both rural and urban, experiencing with Dettwyler the joys and tragedies of life in a rural village. Her thoughts and feelings provoke thoughts and feelings on the readers, making them, along with Dettwyler, active learners of Malian culture.

As I have taken several classes from Dr. Dettwyler at Texas A&M University, I have a bit of a different view on this ethnography. She is an extremly interesting woman, and her passion for her field is amazing. This shines through in Dancing Skeletons, and I feel that despite it's "scientific" value it is a great source for understanding a culture. This is what Anthropology is all about.

Dancing Skeletons is perhaps one of the most interesting ethnographies I've come across. It's narrative style aid the reader in becoming more interested by the contents of the book. It's a charismatic narration; the reader gets a sense of the darker and lighter aspects of Malian society. It's weakness as an ethnography is the prevalence of an etic point of view. Even so, I highly recommend the book to those who are interested in the subject of malnutrition and growth problems in children.

I am not an anthropologist but a tourist who has visited Africa and is interested in learning more about African people. I found Katherine Dettwyler's book an excellent introduction to how real people live and deal with their lives in Africa. Dettwyler tells us how mothers and children interact, the way families view their children, what day-to-day life in rural Africa is really like. I found it fascinating especially because Dettwyler talks honestly about her reactions to what she found. This book shouldn't be restricted to anthropoogy students.

Dettwyler tells the story of her anthro work in Mali, and it is certainly an interesting read. But there is a tone throughout that is just kind of whiny. Definitely not an ethnography, although I'm not sure it was intended to be, but more of an account of what it is like to do work in rural villages. This is a nice easy read and should give some insight on village life in this part of west Africa, but the book shifts focus quite a bit and the author's tone grows a bit tiresome as the book goes on, but don't let that deter you if you are interested in this subject. Not great, but definitely worthwhile...

I had to read this book, and a less then enjoyeable textbook, for a cultural anthropolgy course I just got done taking. This book presents various concepts important to anthropological field work in an interesting and an understandable way. Often times reading the examples found in Dettwyler's book, helped me understand some of the concepts "defined" in my other text. I personaly recomend it to anyone taking a course concering cultural anthropolgy or anyone wondering how anthropologists do field work in foreign places.

I am a college student and just finished reading this book for my Anthropology class. I feel it is very weel written and I learned many things I had no idea about from this book. Unlike a text book teaching you, Katherine is taking her audience on a ride through Africa with her. I recomend this book to everyone.

I love this book. I first read it around 2002 or 2003 for a World Food Problems class at Baylor, but I kept my copy because the story was so compelling, and I recently had the chance to reread it strictly for pleasure. The book is a collection of a nutritional anthropologist's observations as she works in Mali, measuring people in a relatively urban community and in some smaller rural villages. She interviews women about feeding practices, infant mortality rates, and reproductive autonomy. The details about life in Mali are sobering, and I hope that the childhood nutritional situation has improved since Dettwyler's 1989 research trip, and Dettwyler also includes revealing passages about her thoughts about her own life as a wife, mother, and professional. She allows herself to come across as unlikeable at times, as she vents her frustration upon learning that a village has prepared a special meal for her research team at an inconvenient time, but those moments are balanced with real empathy for the people with whom she works and bonds. I am not a professional anthropologist in any way, so I can't comment on her methods or observations, but as someone who enjoys readings memoirs, I loved this book.

I read this book to learn more about the people of Mali--not from any scientific viewpoint. I wanted to learn more and I feel Ms Dettwyler's account was helpful. Giving her opinions and feelings made me want to keep reading. It was food for thought when she said that by vaccinating and saving very young infants we are really only postponing their deaths when they later face malnutrition. The need to educate for balanced diet is a very formitable task, I fear. Thanks for the insight!

This is a good insight into the malnutritional anthropology study of the women and children in Mali. At the very end, her work left me with the feeling that her work is just a drop of water in the wide ocean of the malnutrition dilemma worldwide. So much is needed to be done, yet the man power and the funding for this cause are very much lacking.

I read this book for my Human Diet class at UCB, and it took me a day to finish it. It is an easy read. The author however went overboard about her feelings and her financial situations, which weren't what I was expecting in an ethnographic work. She got a bit personal about her life too.

It is nothing new that Western countries' diplomats posted to the third world nations do live much well-off compared to the people in the countries that they are posted to. It just seems plain ironic to me in terms of the disparity of wealth among nations across the globe. It is just disheartening, but there is nothing we can do about it. We just hope that the situation improves as we progress => to alleviate poverty, hunger and disease.