By Emma Jelstrup Balkin In this guest essay, Emma, a graduate student at Macquarie University, discusses her research on how neoliberal economic models impact middle-class parents in Australia. “It’s really tough… and no one really understands what I’m going through.” I’m interviewing Laura, a single mother of three children. Her six-year-old daughter Marnie has become… Continue reading No One Wants to Be “That” Mother: Middle-Class Ideas of the Good Life
Winds and Wakayarum
From bellowing gusts to thin wafts of air, people across cultures implicate the wind for causing illness and misfortune. Avoid drafts American grandmothers advise. In Ethiopia, the wind induces joint and bone pain. Vigilant Nankani mothers in Ghana cover infants (particularly their faces) and sequester newborns inside. They need protection from dubious winds. Some cultures… Continue reading Winds and Wakayarum
Parenting, Love, Loss
First thing Monday morning Joe intercepted me. He exclaimed I had to visit an infant he saw over the weekend. “What’s happening?” I asked. “A child,” he replied. “It’s not good, I can’t explain it. You just have to see it.” I didn’t press him. We hurried to a small village next to Sirigu. Word… Continue reading Parenting, Love, Loss
The Gender of Place
“Give me back my notebooks,” I yelled. Akayuti snatched them from my hand as I exited her room into the courtyard of the family compound. The women of the house materialized and encircled us as if watching a street-fight. The men gathered but kept their distance, backing against the meter-high wall marking the inner section… Continue reading The Gender of Place
Conversations with Ayanobasiya (Part Two: Polygamy)
“Why would a man have more than one wife?” I asked Ayanobasiya. “What? Do you want a war!” she replied. “I am not a man. You need to ask a man why.” “Your father even married six women,” I said. “What good is in it? I want your perspective.” Beyond the assumed sexual reasons, a… Continue reading Conversations with Ayanobasiya (Part Two: Polygamy)
Conversations with Ayanobasiya (Part One)
Ayanobasiya was always ready to talk about heavy subjects. “Can you describe what the next world is like when we die?” I asked unexpectedly. “What is the afterlife like?” She laughed. “Who do you think I am? I am not a koko (a witch returned from the dead). I have not died before!” Ayanobasiya looked… Continue reading Conversations with Ayanobasiya (Part One)
The Origins of Inequality
“Can you speak about the creation of the world?” I asked Asingiya, a Nankani elder from Sirigu, Ghana. I expected a story about spirits, the first people, or how a child emerged from the earth. Yet Asingiya offered a more astute account. “Aaron, is it true that as the day is breaking here, in America… Continue reading The Origins of Inequality
The Spirit of the Encounter
“You can’t get a word out. You just stare for as long as you can because suddenly it will be over, you will get your name back and life will begin again.” -Craig Childs (The Animal Dialogues) Animals are watching. They know where you are, and their life endures unseen. In their spaces, we are… Continue reading The Spirit of the Encounter
Against the Slavers: An Account of Resistance
In an earlier essay, I described how some Nankani families exchanged their children for food during times of need. This essay offers a perspective on how the Nankani experienced and resisted slave raids. “The Ashanti were coming here for us,” said Asingya, an elder that gave me Nankani history lessons. He was describing slavery and… Continue reading Against the Slavers: An Account of Resistance
Of House or Bush: The Cultural Psychodynamics of Infanticide in Northern Ghana
My latest article was accepted for publication in Current Anthropology. It has been a long ten years in the making. Infanticide, Oedipus, projection, family conflict, scapegoats, and narcissistic injury--all the makings of a good drama. I'll be posting a link to it after some final edits. For now, the abstract (summing up the 12,000 word behemoth) and… Continue reading Of House or Bush: The Cultural Psychodynamics of Infanticide in Northern Ghana
Hunger and a Child’s Worth
“It was difficult to get food in those days, Asingiya said. He was referring to the early 1900s and before. “You see, if you give birth to so many children and you cannot provide for them, you don’t have the food to feed them, you can give one of your children to a person who… Continue reading Hunger and a Child’s Worth
Talking About the Weather
A brief reflection on the value of researching the mundane. [1,000 words] The adage that advises, if there is nothing else to talk about, to talk about the weather applied in Northern Ghana, where discussions about the weather and the seasons (wet & humid and hot & dry) resulted in interesting conversations and good ethnographic… Continue reading Talking About the Weather
Reflexivities 