David J. Hess - Böcker

An absorbing account of an anthropologist's fieldwork and explorations into alternative religions in Brazil, "Samba in the Night" invites the reader into the mysterious world of spirit mediums, poltergeists, psychic surgery, exorcism and spiritual healing. The author focuses on spiritism, a vital religious movement with millions of followers. He provides descriptions of rituals and at the same time weaves in a detective story about the complex relations between Spiritist rituals and the rest of their world. Through a patchwork of anecdotes about spirit mediums, doctors, engineers, lawmakers, Jesuits, and past-life therapists, the book offers an introduction to Brazilian religion and society as well as to the art of anthropological fieldwork.

How do Brazilians think about their own culture in comparison with those of North America and Western Europe? The Brazilian Puzzle provides a unique picture of everyday life in Brazil viewed from a comparative perspective. Brazilian scholars and Brazilianists explore a range of topics in everyday life in Brazil, including sports, music, voluntary associations, religion, political practices, race and gender, and poor neighborhoods. The authors show how Brazilian culture involves a complex negotiation in which the traditional values of hierarchy and personalism permeate even the most modern institutions. The Brazilian Puzzle is emblematic of the new era in Brazilian studies in which Brazilian scholars are leading the way. Many of the authors draw on the work of the Brazilian anthropologist Robert DaMatta, who has questioned the perspective of observers from developed Western countries. DaMatta argues that they often project their own categories onto Brazilian society, and instead he suggests that Latin Americans and other peoples develop their own theories rooted in their own unique experiences.In this way The Brazilian Puzzle contributes to the end of an era of Brazilianists and the decolonizing of area studies.

Brazilian Spiritism (espiritismo, kardecismo) is an important middle-class religious movement whose followers believe in communication with the dead via spirit mediums and in healing illnesses by means of spiritual therapies. Unlike Anglo-Saxon Spiritualists, Brazilian Spiritists count among their number a well-developed and institutionalized intellectual elite that has reinterpreted northern hemisphere parapsychology and developed its own alternative medicine and sociology of religion. As a result, the mediation between popular religion (especially Afro-Brazilian religious practices) and the orthodoxies of the universities, the state, and the medical profession.Situating Spiritist intellectual thought in what he calls a broader ideological arena, Hess examines Spiritism in the context of religion, science, political ideology, medicine, and even the social sciences. Hess challenges the legacy of French sociologist Roger Bastide, who saw in Spiritism an elitist, middle-class ideology. In the process, Spirits and Scientists provides a new approach to middle-class religious movements in Latin America.

Diana E. Forsythe was a leading anthropologist of science, technology, and work, and especially of the field of artificial intelligence. This volume collects her best-known essays, along with other major works that remained unpublished upon her death in 1997.The essays proceed as a series of developing variations on the key questions that still confront science and technology studies today. What assumptions do expert systems designers make about users, and about knowledge more broadly, when they build software? How should humans interact with computers, and how do they, really? Why do computing firms hire anthropologists to study human-computer interaction, and what do anthropologists find once they are hired? And how and why are traditional power asymmetries between men and women produced and maintained in engineering firms and laboratories?The book is not only a significant anthropological study of artificial intelligence and informatics, but is also an exemplar of how reflexive ethnography should be done. Among several pioneering strands of thought, it investigates the roles of gender and power in computer engineering, looking at the cultural mechanisms that support the persistent male domination of engineering, and analyzing the laboratory as a fictive kin group that reproduces gender asymmetries.

Growing numbers of cancer patients are exploring diet, food supplements, herbs, and nontoxic immunotherapies like bacterial vaccines as a means of therapy. Yet most cancer research organizations refuse to even evaluate these alternatives. Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? argues convincingly that unless this neglected world of alternative therapies is properly scrutinized, the medical Vietnam of the twentieth century may well affect one in two people by the twenty-first century.David J. Hess investigates one of the great medical mysteries of the twentieth century—the relationship between bacteria and chronic disease. Recently scientists have overturned long-held beliefs by demonstrating that bacterial infections cause many ulcers; they are now reconsidering the role of bacterial infections in other chronic diseases, such as arthritis. Is it possible, Hess asks, that bacteria can contribute to the many other known causes of cancer?To answer this intriguing question, Hess takes us into the world of alternative cancer researchers. Maintaining that their work has been actively suppressed rather than simply dismissed, he examines their claims-—that bacterial vaccines have led to some dramatic cases of long-term cancer remission—and the scientific potential of their theories. Economic interests and cultural values, he demonstrates, have influenced the rush toward radiation and chemotherapy and the current cul-de-sac of toxic treatments. More than a medical mystery story, Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? is a dramatic case study of the failure of the war on cancer.

Growing numbers of cancer patients are exploring diet, food supplements, herbs, and nontoxic immunotherapies like bacterial vaccines as a means of therapy. Yet most cancer research organizations refuse to even evaluate these alternatives. Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? argues convincingly that unless this neglected world of alternative therapies is properly scrutinized, the medical Vietnam of the twentieth century may well affect one in two people by the twenty-first century.David J. Hess investigates one of the great medical mysteries of the twentieth century—the relationship between bacteria and chronic disease. Recently scientists have overturned long-held beliefs by demonstrating that bacterial infections cause many ulcers; they are now reconsidering the role of bacterial infections in other chronic diseases, such as arthritis. Is it possible, Hess asks, that bacteria can contribute to the many other known causes of cancer?To answer this intriguing question, Hess takes us into the world of alternative cancer researchers. Maintaining that their work has been actively suppressed rather than simply dismissed, he examines their claims-—that bacterial vaccines have led to some dramatic cases of long-term cancer remission—and the scientific potential of their theories. Economic interests and cultural values, he demonstrates, have influenced the rush toward radiation and chemotherapy and the current cul-de-sac of toxic treatments. More than a medical mystery story, Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? is a dramatic case study of the failure of the war on cancer.

The first comprehensive survey of the nascent field of "science studies"Thrust into the public eye by the contentious "Science Wars"—played out most recently by physicist Alan Sokal's hoax—the nascent field of science studies takes on the political, historical, and cultural dimensions of technology and the sciences.Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.

The first comprehensive survey of the nascent field of "science studies"Thrust into the public eye by the contentious "Science Wars"—played out most recently by physicist Alan Sokal's hoax—the nascent field of science studies takes on the political, historical, and cultural dimensions of technology and the sciences.Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.

Each year hundreds of thousands of women are diagnosed with cancer, and more and more frequently, women are turning to alternative treatments to take control of their illnesses and their lives. Information, however, has been scarce for women navigating through conventional and unconventional medicine. Research funding continues to support traditional cancer therapies. Women Confront Cancer declares the need for new, less toxic therapies and diagnostic procedures.For the first time, Women Confront Cancer unites the voices of women leaders who have breast, cervical, ovarian, and other cancers. Documenting the decision process, the choices, and the dilemmas these women faced as they chose alternative and complementary cancer treatments, a powerful unity emerges, pointing the way to the future of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by less toxic methods. Ann Frahm, the author of A Cancer Battle Plan, Susan Moss, the author of Keep Your Breasts, and Cathy Hitchcock, coauthor of Breast Cancer, are only three of the leaders who relate their personal experiences with cancer. All of the women featured in Women Confront Cancer share how and why they created treatment programs that combine the best of conventional and unconventional approaches, and how it has improved their health and their lives.A call for patients' rights, for policy reform in cancer research, for better information about both conventional and alternative medicine, Women Confront Cancer will be both a source of inspiration for women who have cancer and an aid for them in creating their own approach to healing.* Did you know that October is [ NATIONAL BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH ] and pink is the color that symbolizes breast cancer awareness?

Each year hundreds of thousands of women are diagnosed with cancer, and more and more frequently, women are turning to alternative treatments to take control of their illnesses and their lives. Information, however, has been scarce for women navigating through conventional and unconventional medicine. Research funding continues to support traditional cancer therapies. Women Confront Cancer declares the need for new, less toxic therapies and diagnostic procedures.For the first time, Women Confront Cancer unites the voices of women leaders who have breast, cervical, ovarian, and other cancers. Documenting the decision process, the choices, and the dilemmas these women faced as they chose alternative and complementary cancer treatments, a powerful unity emerges, pointing the way to the future of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by less toxic methods. Ann Frahm, the author of A Cancer Battle Plan, Susan Moss, the author of Keep Your Breasts, and Cathy Hitchcock, coauthor of Breast Cancer, are only three of the leaders who relate their personal experiences with cancer. All of the women featured in Women Confront Cancer share how and why they created treatment programs that combine the best of conventional and unconventional approaches, and how it has improved their health and their lives.A call for patients' rights, for policy reform in cancer research, for better information about both conventional and alternative medicine, Women Confront Cancer will be both a source of inspiration for women who have cancer and an aid for them in creating their own approach to healing.* Did you know that October is [ NATIONAL BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH ] and pink is the color that symbolizes breast cancer awareness?