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| NEW INTERNATIONALIST 254 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| THIS MONTH'S THEME | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Death
without weeping
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| FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Foot of the factory,
foot of the cane Bom Jesus Brief lives, sudden
sadness Mother love Biu on the roller coaster Carnival and forgetting Simply -
the story of sugar in The spirit-child The cleansing fire Speaking truth to
power |
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If you're a stalwart reader of the NI (is there any other kind?) you'll have noticed that from time to time we open up a whole issue of the magazine to a single writer. Most often it's one of our own editors who is encouraged to indulge his or her writerly ambitions at greater length than usual. But there are occasions when we turn over a complete issue to an outside contributor, someone whose work is particularly arresting or whose analysis is especially lucid. That's the case this month when we feature
the work of California-based anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes. If the name
is familiar it's because we've published several articles by her over the
past few years. Shortly after it was published one of my fellow editors, David Ransom, began thinking about how to turn it into an issue of the NI. First he set out to convince the rest of us - not too hard a task since most of us were already keen on her work. Next we contacted Nancy, then her publisher (the University of California Press), and both were keen to go ahead. At this point the issue was slotted into our planning schedule and we began to think about who would do the editing work. As the publication date crept closer I confidently volunteered to take on the main editorial task of reducing the weighty tome to 20 slim pages of text. Just another editing task, I thought. Well, not quite. The challenge was daunting: how to do justice to the scope of the original? After immersing myself in the text for a few weeks I emerged content to try to capture the mood of Nancy's study and to summarize the key arguments. I think you'll find it a compelling read which reveals the complexity and richness of her research. The more familiar I became with Death Without Weeping the more I was struck by Nancy's ability to merge her academic interests with a strong, gut-level humanitarianism. As we read we gain not only knowledge but empathy and admiration for the people who appear as complex characters in her work. And we begin to understand how the shantytown dwellers survive and express themselves in an unjust, oppressive system that seeks to keep them silent. My job was made easier by Nancy's refreshingly 'un-academic' attachment to her work. Many scholars treat their prose as sacred text: obscure jargon is jealously guarded. Communicating with the general public is not their main goal - which is why academics rarely feature in the pages of NI. But Nancy is an exception. My aim is for you to find the discovery of her work as moving an experience as I did. |
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Letters FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES:
BIU, THE MIDDLE OF THE THREE SISTERS, USED TO SMOKE A PIPE, BUT HAS GONE 'UNDERGROUND'
WITH IT. |
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Wayne Ellwood
for the New Internationalist Co-operative |
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Her
book Death Without Weeping, on which this magazine is based, originally
appeared in 1992. The sprawling, 600-page hardcover is both an empirical study
and an intimate portrait of the lives of women and children in the Brazilian
shantytown she calls Alto do Cruzeiro. 
