Nancy Scheper-Hughes facts for kids

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, born in 1944, is an important anthropologist, teacher, and writer. She is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she helped start a special program about medical anthropology.

She is well-known for her studies on many topics. These include how our bodies, hunger, and sickness affect us. She also writes about families, mental health, and how people suffer in society. Her work often looks at difficult topics like violence and serious crimes. She also studies the illegal trade of human organs.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes has written several books. Some of her famous works include Death Without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil and Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Ireland. She has also co-written books like Commodifying Bodies and Violence in War and Peace.

She has done research in many countries. These include Northeast Brazil, Argentina, Israel, South Africa, and the Philippines. She also helped create an organization called Organs Watch. This group studies the global problem of human organ trafficking. She advises groups like the European Union and the United Nations on this issue. She has even helped in court cases against people involved in this illegal trade.

Early Life and Education

Nancy Scheper-Hughes was born in New York, New York. She went to Queens College for her early studies. Later, she attended the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her first degree in Social Sciences in 1970. She then completed her doctorate in Anthropology in 1976. After that, she was a special researcher at Harvard University from 1979 to 1980.

Her Work and Research

Nancy Scheper-Hughes' first book was Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland (1979). This book looked at mental health among farmers in Ireland. It won the Margaret Mead Award in 1980. This book showed that her writing could make people think and sometimes cause debate. Some people in Ireland did not like how she described family life there.

In a later edition of the book, she talked about the changes happening in the community. She also discussed how anthropologists should be careful and ethical when they study communities. This is especially true when people in those communities can read and comment on their work.

Her book Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday life in Brazil (1993) was also very impactful. In this book, she explored the difficult choices mothers in Brazil faced. They sometimes had to make hard decisions about caring for their sick children. This work also sparked many discussions. It is now a very important book in the field of medical anthropology.

Besides her books, Scheper-Hughes has written about many other topics. These include health issues in Brazil and Cuba. She also writes about human rights and violence in places like South Africa. She has explored how violence affects people who are poor or treated unfairly. Her work shows how everyday violence can be hard to see. It often makes vulnerable people feel trapped.

She has also helped share the ideas of other thinkers. These include Franco Basaglia, a psychiatrist, and Paulo Freire, an educator. She helped bring their important ideas to a wider audience.

Special Interests

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is interested in many areas of anthropology. She studies violence, inequality, and how people live on the edges of society. She also focuses on childhood, families, and mental health. Her work looks at medical ethics and how global issues affect health. She has done research in Ireland, Brazil, and Cuba.

Working for Change Around the World

Nancy Scheper-Hughes was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil in the 1960s. She has worked as an activist in many places. In Brazil, she supported rural workers and street children. In the United States, she worked for civil rights and helped homeless people. She also protested against nuclear weapons research. Internationally, she defends the rights of people who sell their kidneys.

Awards and Recognition

Her first book, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, won the Margaret Mead Award in 1980.

In 2007, she received the Berkeley William Sloane Coffin Jr. Award. This award recognizes moral leadership at the University of California, Berkeley. It is named after William Sloane Coffin, who was an activist for civil rights and peace.

Selected Publications

Books

• 2003a Commodifying Bodies. Co-edited with Loïc Wacquant.
• 2001b Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics. 20th Anniversary edition.
• 1999 Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood. Co-edited with Carolyn Sargent.
• 1993b Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil.
• 1979 Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland.

Articles

• 2007b "Violence and the Politics of Remorse: Lessons from South Africa."
• 2006a "The Tyranny of the Gift: Sacrificial Violence in Living Donor Transplants."
• 2006b "Alistair Cooke’s Bones: a Morality Tale."
• 2006c "Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil."
• 2005a "Katrina: The disaster and its doubles."
• 2005b "Disease or Deception: Munchausen by Proxy as a Weapon of the Weak."
• 2004a Violence in War and Peace: an Anthology. Edited with Philippe Bourgois.
• 2004b "The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in ‘Fresh’ Organs."
• 2004c "Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography of the Organs-Trafficking Underworld."
• 2003c "A Genealogy of Genocide".
• 2001a "Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes."
• 2000 "The Global Traffic in Human Organs."
• 1998 "Bodies of Apartheid: Witchcraft, Rumor and Racism Confound South Africa's Organ Transplant Program."
• 1995 "The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology."
• 1994a "Embodied Knowledge: Thinking with the Body in Critical Medical Anthropology."
• 1994b "AIDS and the Social Body."
• 1993a "Life Boat Ethics."
• 1991a "The Message in the Bottle: Illness and the Micropolitics of Resistance," with Margaret Lock.
• 1990 "Three Propositions for a Critically Applied Medical Anthropology."
• 1989 "Death Without Weeping."
• 1987a *Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology with Margaret Lock.
• 1987b Psychiatry Inside Out: Selected Writings of Franco Basaglia. Edited with introductions and essays by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell.
• 1987c "A Children's Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term: Managing Culture-Shocked Children in Brazil."
• 1986 "Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia," with Anne M. Lovell.
• 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry."