Tag Archive

João Biehl - Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment

João Biehl, Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, U of California Press, 2005.
What makes a human being an ex-human? How can a life of a human being expelled from the family, related institutions, and society, as if there were secrete conspiracy between them? Where can this story about a woman begin and end?… »

Rayna Rapp - Testing Women, Testing the Fetus

Rayna Rapp, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis inAmerica, London: Routledge, 2000. 

Rayna Rapp’s Testing Women, Testing the Fetus is led by her own failed motherhood after a prenatal diagnosis of Down’s. To investigate the social construction and cultural meaning of amniocentesis as reproductive medical technology, she conducts a quite broad ethnographic research on “pregnant… »

Talal Asad - On Suicide Bombing

Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, New York: Columbia UP, 2007.

Talal Asad’s short but powerful book, On Suicide Bombing (New York: Columbia UP, 2007) is not a detailed description or an ethnographic storytelling about suicide bombers, but a series of philosophical (ethical and aesthetic) questions when we encounter the killing of human beings by terrorism (especially Islamic suicide… »