Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

In this brilliant ethnographic work, Nancy Scheper-Hughes situates us in a favela of Brazil's northeastern region. It is a world of abject poverty, exploitative economic relations, and unspoken racial divisions. While most ostensibly an inquiry into the region's exceptionally high infant mortality rate, the book is - in a broader sense - a critical analysis of the nature of motherhood. The unlikely heroines of the story are the women who 'overproduce' children, leave them unnamed until age two, and withhold care and affection from those who seem unlikely to survive. One cannot help but find their actions reprehensible. One also cannot help but empathize with their incredibly difficult lives and find inspiration in their resilience. This book is heartbreaking and will make you see the world in a new light.

Giving birth to a healthy human being and watching it grow into personhood is something most Americans take for granted. Many cultures the world over see the concepts of `personhood' and `human-ness' very differently than we view them here in the U.S. Americans would likely see granting responsibility to a neonate his/her own will to live or die as a form of abuse. This culture-bound perspective lies in stark contrast to societies that grant (often out of economic necessity) the newborn the agency to determine for his/herself the right to live or die. The book Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and the article "When Does Life Begin?" by Lynn Morgan explore the ideas of `human-ness' and `personhood' from two different perspectives. The examination of both works leaves me to ponder the stark contrast between my own culture and that of the Alto de Cruziero, as described by Hughes, while begging the question of whether babies of the Alto are pre-social persons. Lynn Morgan's article attempts to highlight the oftentimes subtle and arbitrary distinction between `human' and `person.' She argues that humans are biological beings while persons are humans that have been socialized into their culture. By Morgan's definition, a person has a socially recognized moral status and by virtue of certain rites of passage, assumes rights and responsibilities in society. Additionally she describes a pre-social person as a living being that must endure said rituals and steps to become a person. Unlike Morgan's cross-cultural survey, Hughes describes one society, the poverty-stricken region of the Alto do Cuiziero. The women of the Alto face an astonishingly high infant mortality rate. Perhaps that economic-based reality figures prominently in the notion that, unlike here in the U.S., the neonates are seen as pre-social persons with the right (and responsibility) to determine whether they will live or die. In the minds of Alto parents, the neonates are born into the world having already made the decision whether or not to live. Any weak or otherwise unhealthy baby is said to have, "Come into the world with an aversion to life" (Hughes: 368). The weak or ill babies are "too under demanding, too willing, and too likely to die" (Hughes: 386). Says one Alto mother; " I think that if they were always weak, they wouldn't be able to defend themselves in life. So it is really better to let the weak ones die." (Hughes: 369). Hughes suggests that babies are born knowing that their life will be difficult, even if they survive the first year or so when they are finally seen as humans. Says another mother of the Alto, " If she died, it was because she herself, on seeing what was ahead, what was in store for her, she decided to die." (Hughes: 370). Perhaps the babies are presumed to know that it will be easier on their families if they die early on. Since the parents face staggering poverty and blight, it is clear that certain economic factors cont

Scheper-Hughes not only crafts a thorough, complex ethnography, but she takes a risk by putting a piece of herself into it as well. Here is the introduction I wrote for a term paper about this book: Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes covers rough territory in Death Without Weeping, an ethnography about sugar cane workers in Northeastern Brazil. In chapters eight and nine she discusses the concepts of maternity and infanticide in a manner that dissolves their seemingly diametric natures and exposes an enigma of conflict and confluence inherent in their layered reality. But how can we contrast our established notions of maternity and infanticide with Scheper-Hughes' statements about them in a context that is emically true to the population her research is based on? Some things about maternity might seem clear: positive maternity encompasses nurturance and doting love, while negative maternity suggests neglect and even murder; yet Scheper-Hughes brings into question commonly held notions about the biological necessities and cultural expectations of maternity that reveal contradictions, blind alleys, and misleading parochial assumptions. This ethnography about the sugarcane workers of the Alto do Cruzeiro slum in the town of Bom Jesus, Brazil causes us to re-evaluate our understanding of maternity in the face of established cultural and biological contexts, and invites a more detailed, elemental, philosophical gaze. The observations made in Death Without Weeping force us to retreat in search of a neutral ground free from the biases we may hold about `American' or `Brazilian' maternity, and abandon our fear of naivety by asking, what in fact is maternity, and what do we know about it? A gripping book, a masterful ethnography.

I have seen death without weeping. The destiny of the Northeast is death. Cattle they kill, But to the people they do something worse. --Geraldo Vandre, Disparada"Death Without Weeping: Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil" is a brilliant anthropological and sociological depiction of life in the Nordeste region of Brazil. In Death Without Weeping, Scheper-Hughes carefully analyzes the Mother-Child relationship in a region of Brazil with the highest infant mortality rate in Latin America. Centered in the village of Alto do Cruziero, Scheper-Hughes continues to work with the community she had first joined as a Peace Corps volunteer decades before. Rekindling her relationship with the villagers and the land, she takes a new perspective to study the emotional and physical strain on a region where every life is touched with the pain of infant mortality. She examines the frightening reality of a place where mothers have absolutely no safety net and cannot protect their children from the disease, hunger, and destitute living conditions. Scheper-Hughes further discusses the role of international corporations and their influence (usually negative) in the Nordeste region. Death Without Weeping is absolutely brilliant. Scheper-Hughes is at her finest, and her work is impeccable. This is one of the finest works of sociology and anthropology I have read.

"Death Without Weeping" is perhaps the most profound & moving academic work I know from this decade, & contributes brilliantly to debates on many important current issues. It sets an extremely high standard of in-depth research, theoretical insight, political commitment and compassion.