Victor Turner:Isoma

Victor Turner’s Planes of Classification in a Ritual of Life and Death is an analysis of his field work among the Ndembu (Northwestern Zambia).  He provides a definition and description of Isoma, a ritual performed around the occurrence of female reproductive issues, for example Turner says Isoma is a “manifestation of a shade that causes a woman to bear a dead child or brings death on a series of infants” (Turner 17). These issues are believed by the Ndembu to be caused by the sufferer forgetting their matrilineal lineage, as Turner explains the aims if Isoma rites are “to remove the effects of…misfortune or illness due to the displeasure of ancestral shades or a breach of taboo” (Turner 19).

                When Turner speaks of a “union of ecology and intellect” (Turner 27), it is in reference to the musoli tree, which “makes animals appear” due to its fallen fruit. This tree is used in Isoma ritual to “make children appear” (27). My understanding of what Turner is saying is that Knowledge is influenced by and intertwined with environment, the result being a materialized idea. Both human intellect and environment and ecology influence the result of a materialized idea (Turner 27).  Musoli, as a symbol, represents the union of ecology and intellect, because it shows the Ndembu have interpreted a medicine for their environment as making something appear and intellectually use it with that knowledge as a base.

                As for whether this union of ecology and intellect has any effect on the effectiveness of the ritual, I believe it does. I see the ritual system of the Ndembu to be extremely complex (I had to reread several times, and still unsure I fully comprehend the meaning). I illustrate this complexity with a quote from Turner, where it is illustrated the interconnectedness and complexity, of the ritual process:

Liminality, Marginality, and structural inferiority are conditions in which are frequently generated myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works of art.  These cultural forms provide men with a set of templates or models which are, at one level, periodical reclassifications of reality and man’s relationship to society, nature, and culture (Bowie 156).

The meaning of the ritual symbols used by the Ndembu would be significantly different if they were in a different environment. I envision a change in the ritual system as traveling down a fuse; affecting every part of the ecosystem.

                Fiona Bowie provides an interesting distinction I would like to comment on, between intellectualists, and symbolists. Intellectualists subscribe to Turners ideas, and view religions primary function as a way to explain the universe. Symbolists follow Durkheim, who heralds that religion reflects society (Bowie 143). To put both views together (an intellectual symbolist) would say that religion is an intermix of both ideas, which can be shown explicitly in the Isoma ritual. For example, Isoma reflects the importance of matrilineal descent to the Ndembu, although they are politically patriarchal.

                The Isoma ritual is symbolically complex, I have not been able to grasp it’s full meaning from this article alone (something to keep in mind for future research, when I am not taking a full unit load). The symbols of a society can provide insight into not only their explanations of the universe, but their reflections on their own society.

Ishi in Two Worlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Native Life

The perspective brought by the Kroebers and Waterman is primarily an anthropologist perspective, where in taking Ishi in, their main objective was to salvage his culture so that the world could learn about his extinct people. This is a major fallacy in the thinking of anthropologists, who assume that since other cultures seem interesting to them, they will be interesting to everyone regardless of whether the culture wants to be studies or not.

Theodora Kroeber writes her book in the dichotomy perspective, and frequently refers to Ishi leaving one life and entering another. She claims that Ishi’s arrival into the “ordeal of civilization” began when he wandered, “sick of life” to the slaughter house. She says he now had a new “personal myth, powerful enough to replace the old one of the Yahi people as plunderers, murderers and savages” (Kroeber 117). First of all, I am unsure whether in this passage she is calling Ishi these things, or noting that it was the ideology of the times. In my opinion, the constant opposition of ideas tells a romantic story, and Theodora took advantage of it.  I do believe Ishi felt a good deal of this dichotomy, that he was transitioning to a new type of life, however I think his two lives are more intertwined than Kroeber’s romantic dichotomy of savagery to civilization. Ishi adopted some of western culture, but did not abandon his Yahi culture. For example, he never spoke his name, nor the name of any of his relatives, Ishi was given to him by Waterman.

In regards to Waterman and Alfred Kroeber, they were interested in Ishi both as a person, and as a specimen. Kroeber took on the role of Ishi’s protector, deciding where and when he could go places, and attempting to find some “Indian” friends to aid in Ishi’s transition (Kroeber 150). The main goal was to salvage this last remaining man of the Yahi culture. Although it sounds demeaning to be on display at a museum for spectators, I believe Ishi may have actually enjoyed it on occasion. For example, he would hold demonstrations where he would make an arrowhead in front of a crowd, and then present the finished piece to a crowd member. Ishi probably relished the notion that something that was necessary for his survival in the past was now a show, it was making him famous. I am not claiming that he had a great life as a living display, especially having a room next to the dead, but there are times he probably got a kick out of White people being so fascinated with his everyday life.

Ishi’s new life may not have been his ideal choice of lifestyle (I assume he would want to go back and have his family and live on his land), but nonetheless there were advantages of not wandering alone anymore. He now had contact with other people, even if they were White anthropologists and food, even though his own food choices would have been different. I believe Ishi adapted and made the best of what life threw at him.

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds; a Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America.     Berkeley: University of California, 1961.

A Brief History of Anthropologists..

Herbert Spencer
In “The Social Organism,” Herbert Spencer stated that social organization is consequent on general natural causes, that actions appearing personal are, in fact driven by social force and the pressures of humans most basic wants. He has said that through the pursuit of self-interest, people will gradually all have necessities and be able to provide certain necessities to others, creating a mutually dependent society.

Spencer compares the evolution of societies with that of an organism. Just as every organism (plants, animals) increase in size, and progress from simple to complex, so do societies. That each becomes a collection of individual parts, working together as a singular entity. He states that the “survival of the fittest” will lead to a more perfect society. He compares the best and most developed societies to complex organisms, and those which were “unevolved” to more simple living things.

Franz Boas
Boas compares the development of cultures to that of plants and animals. He uses the example of analogous structures (those that develop independently, but serve similar functions). In trying to define anthropology as a science however, there is the problem of what criteria to use. Race, he says is an unreliable source of data, due to the fact that there are no distinct lines dividing race, and that more variation occurs within races genetically. He does mention environment as a variable (for example, Bergmann and Allen's rules on size of body and limbs in relation to climate) - but states that culture is in most cases, a stronger influence on development. He concludes that while there are certain data (population, diffusion of practices and ideas) that can be measured, the variability of the individual makes anthropology a "historical science", without a specific set of laws. The goal of anthropology, according to Boaz, is to "discover among all the varieties of human behavior, those that are common to all humanity."

Emile Durkheim
In "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life," Durkheim speaks to the truth that is inherent in religions of any structure. He states that religions "fulfill given conditions of human existence," and even those archaic religions serve a similar function as those that may be more complex in structure. He also makes this point in saying that "There is no religion that is not both a cosmology and a speculation about the divine." While opposing religions may see each other falsely, the same purpose is being achieved, and is the truth of those who pursue it.

Claude Levi-Strauss
The main idea Levi-Strauss took from structural linguistics is looking past the independent entities and into the relationships between them (269). Many terms "aquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems"(269). He used the example of the avuncular (uncle) term. This single word can have many different meanings depending upon the relationship given by a specific kinship system. Kinship systems have two aspects of their reality: the terms and the attitudes. While Radcliffe-Brown stated that "it is descent that determines the choice of oppositions," (273) Levi-Strauss argues that "Different forms of avunculate can coexist within the same type of descent" (275). Thus, he says kinship systems, like language are symbolically arbitrary, existing solely within human consciousness, and it is the meaning we prescribe which anthropologists should focus their study on (278).

Karl Marx/Frederick Engels
Marx and Engels say that history is defined through the modification and action of men. That mankind achieves separate distinction from animals the moment they start producing their own means of subsistence. The beginning of social organization evolved from this need to control and produce from the environment and eventually, leads to increasing population density, and to a greater necessity to produce for the population. In other words, men have created the society they now need to produce for. (P. 69-70)

I agree that this argument is sustainable to a certain extent. Societies are determined by the material culture they choose to produce, however production may not come from the individual society itself. There is a greater society of globalization in which certain individual societies interact with one another to achieve production for all.

Kathleen Gibson
Might primates be said to have culture? According to Kathleen Gibson, it really depends on the definition of the word culture. If the capacity to repeat and transmit information socially is considered to be culture, then yes. However, Gibson points out that there is no symbolism involved in these practices(196). Thus the use of complex forms of thinking and creating, or hierarchical mental construction (198) is at this time an exclusive characteristic of humans. This is not to say that somewhere down the evolutionary line (or branch) that non-human primates will be capable of developing such modes of thought, especially since many possess the same neural plasticity for learning ability (198).

Sherry Ortner
Ortner's article reminded me of a bit of reading by Ken Wilbur I had a couple of months ago for my Religious Studies class. He claims that horticultural societies were matrifocal egalitarian, with men still hunting, but women beginning agriculture with digging sticks and other methods that did not require strenuous labor. The momentus shift to agarian plowing required more physical strength, and thus the "power" of male dominance began. He says that this was a mutual descision for group benefit, that the males did not "decide" to oppress females. This parallels what Ortner said about male dominance being a "side effect, an unintended consequence of social arrangements made for other purposes" (439). I agree with her statement that men simply "lucked out" in being better suited for the types of cultural changes that came to be. My question is, could male "dominance" have become so popular had another cultural path been chosen? For example, if a technology other than one requiring physical force come about, would more societies have stayed matrifocal?

I believe that we as humans need several different perspectives in order to develop ideas of ourselves. How many times have your parents taught you their idea of how to best accomplish a task, only for you to realize years later that there is another way that works much better and more efficiently for you? What is best for one may not be for some. I find the same within social sciences, if we were to one day find the one perfect theory of culture, or power, or agency and retaught it over and over, it would eventually become so skewed and incorrect, because humans have such a great deal of fluctuation inherent to them. In providing several differing perspectives and theories, it allows the mind to look at culture and power holistically, not as a stagnant entity. I think there is greater experimental flavor to be experienced than the singular mush of a spoon-fed black or white theory.

*Page References correlate to Anthropology in Theory (Moore and Sanders)

Nancy Scheper-Hughes: Catholic Schoolgirl Turned Militant Anthropologist

Those of us who make a living observing and recording the misery of the world have a particular obligation to reflect critically on the impact of the harsh images of human suffering that we foist on the public. ~Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Nancy Scheper-Hughes

This is a biography piece I wrote for my History of Anthropology course. Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a cultural anthropologist, and a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California Berkeley (Scheper-Hughes and Sargent 295). Her life and experiences have had a profound impact on her ideas of what is expected from anthropology. Her exposure, as a civil rights activist and anthropologist to controversial issues such as violence against children and infanticide, as well as trafficking of human organs and genocide had a great influence to her concept of what an anthropologists’ responsibilities should be toward their subjects.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes relayed her life story to Harry Kreisler in a 1999 interview for the University of Berkeley Conversations with History. Her story begins in the year 1944, when Nancy was born into an immigrant section of Brooklyn, New York where she was surrounded by many Eastern European cultures. Her parents raised her to be a devout Catholic, thus she only attended public school for two years before switching to St. Peter and Paul’s Church School. She attended a Catholic high school as well. In 1959, Nancy took part in a school trip to Russia, which not only opened her mind to a different culture, but introduced her to atheism. She then began her undergraduate program in anthropology at Queens College in the 1960’s, where she met her mentor and friend Hortense Powdermaker. During her first two years as an undergraduate, she became increasingly involved in student peace and civil rights movements. In 1962, Scheper-Hughes put her undergraduate studies on hold, and joined Peace Corps on assignment to Brazil. (Kreisler 1).

Nancy recounts in the prologue of her 1992 book Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, that she felt her life had come full circle when she entered into Brazil. She had lived a good deal of her childhood down the street from a sugar refinery, and coming to Brazil allowed her to witness the other side, the sugar cane cutters. There is a high rate of child mortality in Brazil, about one million children under age five per year. During 1976 alone, in her assignment area of Alto do Cruziero there were 350 infant deaths (Spradley and McCurdy 178). Scheper-Hughes worked in a public hospital in Belem do Nordeste, with no running water, treating these mortally ill, dehydrated infants (Death without Weeping 5). Later, Nancy helped in the construction of a child care center, for the cane cutting mothers who could not take their children to work with them (Death without Weeping 8). This experience brought her attention to the considerably high occurrences of infant deaths in the area, but political tension forced her to leave brazil directly after her assigned time was completed (Kreisler 3).

After completing her Peace Corps service, Scheper-Hughes returned to the states and joined the civil rights movement to help bring government programs against hunger in the south. Her group worked on a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture for “allowing Americans to go Hungry,” although Sheper-Hughes’ role was mainly in identifying the signs of malnutrition. Although losing the case, they had influence on the food stamp program being brought to much of the south (Kreisler 2). I really respect that as an anthropologist, Scheper-Hughes has not only recognized these issues abroad, but in America as well.

These experiences helped shape Sheper-Hughes ideas about humanity, yet at this point, Scheper-Hughes had not yet finished her undergraduate degree. She was invited to become a research assistant at the University of California Berkeley campus, working under her prior mentor from Queens College, Hortense Powdermaker. This was where she finished her undergraduate and Graduate degrees in anthropology. Nancy chose to go to Ireland at this time, because she was still unable to return to Brazil, due to her prior involvement in political issues (Kreisler 3).What followed were a book, and a humbling learning experience regarding an anthropologists subjects of study.

Scheper-Hughes’ first book, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, was written in 1979, after moving her husband and three children to Ireland, for a yearlong participant observation study in a village she called “Ballybran” (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics 6,11). Nancy had originally planned to study sexuality and gender in Ireland. Her mind was changed however, after meeting with psychiatrist David Dunne. He showed her a hospital census, showing that Ireland had high admission rates for schizophrenia. “You Americans are so obsessed with sex,” Dunne coaxed, “Why not take a crack at this puzzle instead?” (Saints, Scholars, and schizophrenics 22-24).

Nancy found in her research, the most vulnerable to mental illness and schizophrenia were the young and middle-aged bachelor farmers. These men were typically the youngest in their families, and unmarried due to the high rates of female emigration to the west. She notes in her book, the combination of influences that lead to mental illness, including:
the current disintegration of village social life and institutions; the remarkable separation and alienation of the sexes; a guilt-and-shame orientated socialization process that guarantees the loyalty of at least one male child to parents, home, and village through the systematic scapegoating of this (usually the youngest) son (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics 60).

As stated earlier, a main part of this cultural disintegration was due in part to the ever lowering ratio of women, and that those who did choose to stay chose modernity, and did not rush into finding a husband. This brought about difficulty in finding a bride, and lead to guilt, shame, and alcoholism (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics 61).

This book was very controversial to many of those she had lived among in Ireland. Upon her return to “Ballybran” some twenty years after writing, she experienced great hostility against what she had written about them. In a preface to the 2001 edition to the text, Scheper-Hughes recollects questioning the ethics of anthropology, and “balancing one’s responsibility to honest ethnography with care and respect for the people who shared a part of their lives and secrets with me” (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics Preface 2000). In the Kreisler interview, she expresses the lesson she received from her first ethnographic writing experience,

what I've learned after all of my years of writing about communities in which we form deep friendships and relationships is that the process of writing itself is, of course, a form of objectification, and people are never completely satisfied with what you have to say about them. So it's a relationship built in terms of a kind of a clash of interpretations, a collision of cultures, and I do think that that's both the value and the danger of anthropology… (Kreisler 3).

Along with feeling like their secrets had been shared, the people of Ballybran were annoyed at Scheper-Hughes’ failed attempt to keep them anonymous. “You think we didn’t, each of us, sit down pouring over every page until we had recognized the bits and pieces of ourselves strewn about here and there” (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics Preface 1982). These were a literate people, who had no trouble deciphering who was who amongst the monikers and nicknames. There were those who were grateful for the anthropologist’s work, and recognized her purpose for exposing the less amiable qualities of themselves. As one teacher in the village stated, “We are less naïve now, we can see more clearly what our problems are, and how deep the roots of them go” (Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics Preface 1982). Despite the controversy in Ireland, this book was awarded the Margaret Mead award from the Society for Applied Anthropology.
In 1982, Scheper-Hughes made the journey back to Brazil, to Alto do Cruzeiro the largest shantytown surrounding Bom Jesus da Mata. At first her main objective was to determine the main causes surrounding the high number of “baby die offs,” which she found to be “poverty, deprivation, sexism, chronic hunger and economic exploitation” (Spradley and McCurdy 182). What really caught her interest however, was not only the numbers of deaths, but the explicit indifference from the mothers and communities involved (Spradley and McCurdy 176). What was occurring in Alto do Cruzeiro was what Scheper-Hughes called “mortal selective neglect,” where the “high expectancy of death, and the ability to face child death with stoicism and equanimity, produced patterns of nurturing that differentiated between those infants thought of as thrivers and survivors, and those thought of as born already ‘wanting to die’”(Spradley and McCurdy 179). The women, many of whom worked on sugar plantations and could not take their children with them, would leave their babies at home, with the door securely closed, “and so many also die alone and unattended” (Spradley and McCurdy 178).
Nancy Scheper-Hughes continued the study of violence and maltreatment of children in the United States and Abroad. She has coedited two books on the subject: Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children in 1987, which includes essays from anthropologists on infanticide, social trauma, child abuse, and social intervention. In 1998, she coedited Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood with Carolyn Sargent, ant this volume focuses on child development issues, politics of child survival, and again children and violence.
Scheper-Hughes’ life and experiences have influenced her to push her concept of a “militant anthropology,” the idea of an “active, politically committed, morally engaging anthropology” (Moore and Sanders 506). Through this idea, she urges anthropologists to show a real representation of human struggles, “capable of sinking through the layers of acceptance, complicity, and bad faith that allow the suffering and deaths to continue without even the pained cry of recognition” (Moore and Sanders 507-508). In other words, it is an anthropologist’s responsibility to shock their audience into becoming active about the issues they are reading about, no to merely shrug it off as “the way things are.”

The responsibility of an anthropologist is to overcome the “basic strangeness” and feelings of difference to other cultures, and to find what is parallel in all human beings. In 1995, in the Primacy of the Ethical, she wrote that “What draws me back to these people and places is not their exoticism and their “otherness” but the pursuit of those small spaces of convergence, recognition, and empathy that we all share”(Moore and Sanders 509). She also discourages fellow anthropologists from trying to mask the issues that may not be the most attractive of some cultures (for example schizophrenia in Ireland, or infanticide in Brazil), and against the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” report. “Anthropologists,” she says, “are accountable for what they see and what they fail to see, how they act and how they fail to act in critical situations,”(Moore and Sanders 511) that “Not to look, not to touch, not to record can be the hostile act, and act of indifference and of turning away” (Moore and Sanders 509).

In the 1990’s, the University of California, Berkeley became involved in a lawsuit regarding the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation act. A Maidu activist, Art Angle requested that the ashes and brain of Ishi, the famed “Last of the Yahi” be returned to his cultural descendants. Her 2001 article Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes: Anthropology and Genocide gives an account on anthropology’s role in Native American Genocide, and Ishi’s relationship with Alfred Kroeber, the anthropologist who found him wandering alone and “rescued” him.

Sheper-Hughes points out in this article that although today’s anthropology “was built up in the face of colonial and post-colonial genocides, ethnocides, population die-outs, and other forms of mass destruction visited on the 'non-Western' peoples whose lives, suffering and deaths provide the raw material for much of our work,” many fail to witness it, again the “see no evil approach (Ishi’s Brain. Ishi’s Ashes 12). She agreed with a statement made by Claude Levi-Strauss, that “Anthropology is the daughter of this era of violence.” This statement, she says “is an indictment of those anthropologists who served as bystanders, silent and useless witnesses to the genocides and die-outs they encountered in the course of pursuing their science” (Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes 13). She continues to maintain her militant anthropologist perspective on this issue into modern times, although the modern manifestations of genocide come in the form of structural violence, such as “poverty, racism, social exclusion and geopolitical displacement, chronic unemployment, ill health, and family disorganization resulting from alcohol and drug addictions” (Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes 14).
Kroeber was the last of his kind as well as Ishi, according to Nancy. She says he is one of the last anthropologists of his time who strayed away from reporting the violence and genocide he had witnessed, and that had it not been for his wife, Theodora Kroeber, Ishi’s story would never have been written (Kenny 26). She deems Kroeber’s salvage ethnography approach, and his relationship with Ishi a “weak response to genocide,” for although he gained extensive information from Ishi about his people, he was so shook up about his death that he refused to speak or write of him (Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes 14). Ishi’s death really took a toll on Kroeber. Ishi did not oppose to being an informant and living specimen on his culture, or working as an assistant janitor, for he saw Kroeber as a friend, and he was suffering from post-traumatic stress, and had begun to accept that he could not return to his previous life. Ishi’s death occurred from tuberculosis, while Kroeber was on sabbatical. Although while he was away, Kroeber sent telegrams urging to treat Ishi’s body with respect and not utilize it for science, his wishes were ignored, and Ishi’s brain was removed prior to cremation. For some reason upon his return, Kroeber sent the brain to the Smithsonian for research (Scheper-Hughes suggests he did this as a form of disordered mourning)(Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes 16).

In spring 1991, after Ishi’s brain had been located, Nancy Scheper-Hughes was asked to chair the committee to draft and deliver a formal statement from the University of California Berkeley on the situation. The statement consisted of a formal apology from the department of anthropology, and promised the swift return of Ishi’s brain to the Maidu (who were assumed to be the nearest cultural descendants of the Yahi). She then states that a conference or apology is not really enough to settle the mistrust from Native Americans toward anthropologists, which at some point anthropologists must be more than a bystander and co-conspirator toward genocide (Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes 18).

Scheper-Hughes’ recent work revolves around human organ trafficking and transplantation. In 1996 she partook in a two year study, traveling throughout Brazil, India, and South Africa for in depth research which consisted of observations and interviews in clinics, dialysis centers, police stations, morgues, anywhere that may have had involvement in organ harvesting and transplant surgery(The Global Traffic in Human Organs 192). She is also the founder of Organs Watch, an organization dedicated to the research of global human trafficking, as well as an advisor to the World Health Organization on these issues (“Nancy Scheper Hughes” Berkeley faculty page). Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ idea of militant anthropology came from extensive experience in relating to the human condition. Through her work with mental illness in Ireland, infanticide in Brazil, and civil rights in America it can be seen that she does not view other cultures as “others” at all. She views them “not just as friends or as patrons… but as comrades (with all the demands and responsibilities that this word implies)” (Moore and Sanders 512).

Sources: 

Kenny, Alexandra. "Ishi's Brain, Ishi's AshesThe Complex Issues of Repatriation: A Response to N. Scheper- Hughes." Anthropology Today. 18.2 (2002): 25-27. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3694963>.

Kreisler, Harry. "Conversation with Nancy Scheper-Hughes." Conversations With History. UC Berkeley, 18 jun 2008. Web. 23 Nov 2011. <http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Scheper-Hughes/sh- con0.html>


Moore, Henrietta, and Todd Sanders, ed. Anthropology in Theory:Issues in Epistemology. Malden,Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

"Nancy Scheper-Hughes." Anthropology Department, UC Berkeley. N.p., 27 nov 2011. Web. 27 Nov 2011. <http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/users/nancy-scheper-hughes>.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death Without Weeping. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Print.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Global Traffic in Human Organs." Current Anthropology. 41.2 (2000): 191-224. Web. 27 Nov. 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/300123>

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "Ishi's Brains, Ishi's Ashes: Anthropology and Genocide." Anthropology Today. 7.1 (2001): 12-18. Web. 23 Nov. 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2678319>.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland. 20th anniversary Edition, Rev. and expanded. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Print.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Carolyn Fishel Sargent. Ed. Small Wars: the Cultural Politics of Childhood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Print.
Spradley, James, and David McCurdy. Conformity and Conflict:Readings in Cultural Anthropology. 13th. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc, 2009. 

Spradley, James P., and David W. McCurdy. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.