Description
Book SynopsisThis gripping book narrates the efforts to identify a strange disease that killed thirty-eight people in a Venezuelan rainforest between 2007 and 2008 and sketches out systematic health inequities regarding the rights to produce and circulate knowledge about health throughout indigenous communities.
Trade Review"Briggs and Mantini-Briggs do more than shed light on a tragedy—they give voice to the grieving parents and offer examples of innovative ways to combat health disparities around the world, such as examining the 'relational division of the labor of producing and circulating health knowledge.'” -- Tracy Gnadinger * Health Affairs *
“There are no easy explanations in this book, but it serves a valuable role by reminding us that lofty ideological claims and even passionate practical commitment are, in themselves, insufficient for eradicating deep structural inequalities, the real solutions to which can sometimes only be found among the people themselves.” -- Eugene Carey * Latin American Review of Books *
"It is in this combination of ambitious scope and gut-wrenching intimacy that
Tell Me Why My Children Died really shines. This book is a model not just for anthropologists interested in epidemics (Ebola and Zika were frequently on my mind while I was reading, and they are occasionally invoked in the text), but, just as importantly, for readers interested in a first-hand account of the messy, frustrating and ambivalent work of communicating calls for justice." -- Alex Nading * Journal of Latin American Studies *
"This ethnography will undoubtedly be embraced by scholars and graduate students in the fields of medical and linguistic anthropology, Latin American Studies and Indigenous Studies. Nevertheless, in my opinion, a book like this is most needed to encourage critical approaches to communication, global health and public health disciplines, as well as engaging lower level students in sophisticated discussions around contemporary American societies." -- Nicole S. Berry * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
"The book will be useful and provocative for researchers, students, and faculties in the social sciences, medicine, and science and technology studies. I strongly recommend it." -- Linda M. Whiteford * Ethnohistory *
Table of ContentsIllustrations ix
Prologue xiii
Preface xvii
Introduction 1
Part I.
1. Reliving the Epidemic: Parents' Perspectives 29
2. When Caregivers Fail: Doctors, Nurses, and Healers Facing an Intractable Disease 76
3. Explaining the Inexplicable in Mukoboina: Epidemiologists, Documents, and the Dialogue That Failed 109
4. Heroes, Bureaucrats, and Millenarian Wisdom: Journalists Cover an Epidemic Conflict 127
Part II.
5. Narratives, Communicative Monopolies, and Acute Health Inequities 159
6. Knowledge Production and Circulation 179
7. Laments, Psychoanalysis, and the Work of Mourning 205
8. Biomediatization: Health/Communicative Inequities and Health News 225
9. Toward Health/Communicative Equities and Justice 245
Conclusion 260
Acknowledgments 275
Notes 279
References 287
Index 303
