Assisted Dying is an ethnographically based murder mystery that uses the unexplained deaths of elderly people on Florida’s Gold Coast as a way of examining American cultural values. Diversity, ...immigration and the American Dream, aging, retirement, death, and dying are just some of the issues that are illuminated. Cultural anthropologist Julie Norman is drawn deeper into the mystery when her aunt becomes the latest victim. Julie’s ethnographic methodology and cultural perspectives, her previous involvement in a murder case recounted in The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder, along with the insights of Detective Mike Cardella and the Miami police department, all help to solve the mystery. Assisted Dying engages students as a supplementary text to apply concepts from the social sciences, literature, and communications to issues of current interest in the United States and beyond. The novel is part of a popular movement toward using alternative and creative forms to convey academic information and concepts in the classroom. To further this aim, the social and cultural content of each chapter is extended in a bibliographic essay and discussion questions. This book will be welcomed in courses on cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, sociology, gerontology, American studies, psychology, gender, ethnic studies, and other social sciences.
Museums are important sites of national cultural production, collective memory making, and the construction of national narratives. Contemporary South Africa is a particularly interesting place to ...study these processes. With the demise of apartheid, South Africa faces the difficult challenge of creating a new national identity that incorporates an examination of past oppression yet leaves the way open for building a national identity that incorporates all its diverse groups. The museums reviewed below, the Robben Island Prison Museum, the District Six Museum in Capetown, and the Kwa Muhle local history museum in Durban all make important contributions to this process.
Life on the Margins Serena Nanda
Everyday Life in South Asia, Second Edition,
07/2010
Book Chapter
Hijrasin India are defined as an alternative gender role, neither man nor woman. The cultural sources for the hijras as a powerful and meaningful gender derive from both Hinduism and Islam (see Nanda ...1999). Hijras are born males, and become hijras by adopting women’s clothing and behavior, formally joining the hijra community, and (except in the case of born hermaphrodites) undergoing emasculation, or surgical removal of the genitals, as part of their identification with the Mother Goddess. This identification gives hijras the power to bless newlyweds and infants with prosperity and fertility, which is the basis of their traditional
The Hijras of India Nanda, Serena
Journal of homosexuality,
1/28/1986, 1986-01-28, Letnik:
11, Številka:
3-4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The hijra (eunuch/transvestite) is an institutionalized third gender role in India. Hijra are neither male nor female, but contain elements of both. A devotees of the Mother Goddess Bahuchara Mata, ...their sacred powers are contingent upon their asexuality. In reality, however, many hijras are prostitutes. This sexual activity undermines their culturally valued sacred role. This paper discusses religious meanings of the hijra role, as well as the ways in which individuals and the community deals with the conflicts engendered by their sexual activity.
