Description
Book SynopsisThis study was first published in 1983. It traces the social disintegration of Ballybran, a small village on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, exploring the symptoms of the communities decline: from emigration to schizophrenia. This edition contains a new preface and epilogue.
Trade Review"This first-hand study of social conditions in the rural west, the most Irish part of Ireland, shows us a melancholy people, almost beyond desperation, isolated by vast social and economic changes. And if Scheper-Hughes started as an observer she ended up as a keener, lamenting a land which had lost its soul. . . . An important book." * Boston Globe *
"[Scheper-Hughes] draws you after her, nodding in recognition, as she dissects and holds up to the light. She is a skillful pathologist of human nature and a strikingly good writer." * Irish Times *
"Achingly beautiful in places [and] in firm command of an impressive array of evidence." * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *
"[Scheper-Hughes's] prose is so clear that not only the non-specialist but the average reader can comprehend her arguments and understand the issues she raises." * Journal of Mind and Behavior *
