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"This finely drawn portrait of a complex, polycultural community demonstrates that spirit possession reflects in microcosm many of the contradictions of daily life in a plantation economy. Female spirit mediums - a group heretofore assumed to be marginal - are in fact powerful and honored healers who assist their clients, the peasants and migrant laborers of Madagascar's Sambirano Valley. Lesley Sharp's wide-ranging analysis shows how spirit possession, identity, and power are intrinsically linked." "Possession by royal ancestral or tromba spirits is central to the concept of identity in Ambanja, the urban center of the Sambirano Valley. In this town there is an intense competition between insiders and outsiders. The insiders are primarily the indigenous Bemazava-Sakalava, the tera-tany or "children of the soil"; the outsiders are vahiny or "guests," labor migrants come to seek their fortunes. Yet these categories are fluid. Active participation in tromba possession confirms tera-tany status; thus migrant women who become mediums may transform their identities, becoming insiders. This action affects their daily survival, since tera-tany status confers access to arable land and local power structures." "Tromba possession also yields deeper meanings that emerge from the local knowledge of female mediums. These varied meanings are reflected in the performative aspects of healing ceremonies and are articulated through the gestures of the human body. As Sharp shows, healers' words and deeds reveal major sources of affliction, ranging from romance to urbanization and capitalist labor relations. Furthermore, spirit mediums are actively engaged in the reconstruction of indigenous history. Finally, the most powerful mediums draw on symbolic knowledge to influence the thrust of economic development in the Sambirano Valley." "Sharp concludes this study with an analysis of how indigenous spirit mediums and Protestant exorcists treat extreme cases of possession and madness, revealing contradictions inherent in cross-cultural psychiatric praxis. More generally, the book challenges current views about possession and marginal status, particularly in reference to gender and age, insightful discussions of the lives of migrant adults and children as they seek relief. Some personal and social ills make Sharp's investigation relevant to gender studies, medical anthropology religion and ritual, and the politics of culture as well as African and Madagascar studies."--Jacket.

Sakalava (Malagasy people) --- Spirit possession --- Ancestor worship --- Regions & Countries - Africa --- History & Archaeology --- Sakalavas --- Ethnology --- Ancestor cult --- Dead, Worship of the --- Worship, Ancestor --- Cults --- Dead --- Ancestral shrines --- Possession, Spirit --- Experience (Religion) --- Rites and ceremonies. --- Religion. --- Social conditions. --- Rites and ceremonies --- Religion --- Social conditions --- Religious aspects --- Ambanja (Madagascar) --- Religious life and customs. --- Sakalava (Peuple de Madagascar) --- Possession par les esprits --- Morts --- Rites et cérémonies --- Conditions sociales --- Culte --- Religious life and customs --- Vie religieuse et coutumes

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Strange Harvest illuminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors. In this rich and deeply engaging ethnographic study, anthropologist Lesley Sharp explores how these parties think about death, loss, and mourning, especially in light of medical taboos surrounding donor anonymity. As Sharp argues, new forms of embodied intimacy arise in response, and the riveting insights gleaned from her interviews, observations, and descriptions of donor memorials and other transplant events expose how patients and donor families make sense of the transfer of body parts from the dead to the living. For instance, all must grapple with complex yet contradictory clinical assertions of death as easily detectable and absolute; nevertheless, transplants are regularly celebrated as forms of rebirth, and donors as living on in others' bodies. New forms of sociality arise, too: recipients and donors' relatives may defy sanctions against communication, and through personal encounters strangers are transformed into kin. Sharp also considers current experimental research efforts to develop alternative sources for human parts, with prototypes ranging from genetically altered animals to sophisticated mechanical devices. These future trajectories generate intriguing responses among both scientists and transplant recipients as they consider how such alternatives might reshape established-yet unusual-forms of embodied intimacy.

Death --- Ethnology --- Funeral rites and ceremonies --- Kinship --- Medical anthropology --- Memorials --- Mourning customs --- Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. --- Medical transplantation --- Organ transplantation --- Organ transplants --- Organs (Anatomy) --- Surgical transplantation --- Tissue transplantation --- Tissues --- Transplant surgery --- Transplantation surgery --- Transplants, Organ --- Surgery --- Preservation of organs, tissues, etc. --- Procurement of organs, tissues, etc. --- Manners and customs --- Rites and ceremonies --- Medical care --- Medicine --- Anthropology --- Dying --- End of life --- Life --- Terminal care --- Terminally ill --- Thanatology --- Social aspects --- Transplantation --- Anthropological aspects --- Philosophy --- anthropologists. --- anthropology. --- death and mourning. --- denatured bodies. --- donor families. --- ethnographers. --- ethnographic study. --- genetically altered bodies. --- interviews. --- mechanical body replacements. --- medical science. --- medical taboos. --- medical technology. --- modern medicine. --- nonfiction. --- organ donors. --- organ harvesting. --- organ transplantation. --- organ transplants. --- rebirth. --- social analysis. --- social intimacy. --- social science. --- transformation. --- transplant recipients.

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What kinds of moral challenges arise from encounters between species in laboratory science? Animal Ethos draws on ethnographic engagement with academic labs in which experimental research involving nonhuman species provokes difficult questions involving life and death, scientific progress, and other competing quandaries. Whereas much has been written on core bioethical values that inform regulated behavior in labs, Lesley A. Sharp reveals the importance of attending to lab personnel's "idian and unscripted responses to animals. Animal Ethos exposes the rich-yet poorly understood-moral dimensions of daily lab life, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox responses are evidence of concerted efforts by researchers, animal technicians, veterinarians, and animal activists to transform animal laboratories into moral scientific worlds.

Laboratory animals --- Human-animal relationships --- Animal welfare --- Moral and ethical aspects. --- Moral and ethical aspects. --- Moral and ethical aspects.

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The diary of Anne Frank is a modern literary classic and an extraordinary social document that gives a unique account of life in hiding under the Nazi terror in World War II from the perspective of a teenage Jewish girl. Full of tension but at times funny and ultimately tragic, Anne Frank's diary manages to create a truthful and timeless picture of domestic life, while never letting us forget the extraordinary threat that awaits Anne and her family if they are discovered