Books published by Vanderbilt University Press

Demonstrates that market reforms and standardized treatment programs have both influenced and undermined the management of tuberculosis care in the now independent country of Georgia. The alarming rate of tuberculosis infection in this nation at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia cannot be disputed, and yet solutions to attacking the disease are very much debated.

Illustrates the contribution of ethnographic research methodology in facilitating dialogue between different ways of knowing. As a contemporary perspective on Malinowski's classic accounts of Trobriand sexuality, the book reaffirms the Trobriands' central place in the study of anthropology.

The narrators describe their motivations and their preparations for acts of resistance, the actions themselves, and their trials and subsequent jail time. We hear from those who do their time by caring for their families and managing communities while their partners are imprisoned.

Health and disease as tools of power and resistance in Indigenous communities

"Ethnographically explores the construction of motherhood in indigenous Mexico. Adds to anthropological literature on reproduction, economic development, and motherhood. Explores how indigenous mothers are viewed and managed by welfare programs as well as how humor becomes a way for the women to cope with their own marginality"--Provided by publisher.

How do attorneys who represent clients facing the death penalty cope with the stress and trauma of their work? Through conversations with twenty of the most experienced and dedicated post-conviction capital defenders in the United States, Fighting for Their Lives explores this emotional territory for the first time. What it is like for these capital defenders in their last visits or phone calls with clients who are about to be taken to the execution chamber? Or the next mornings, in their lives with their families, in their dreams and flashbacks and moments alone in the car? What is it like to do this work year after year? (These attorneys had, on average, spent nineteen years doing capital defense.) Through vivid interviews amplified by the author's responses and commentary, these attorneys reveal aspects of their internal experience that they have never talked about until now. How do capital defenders manage the weight of the responsibility they carry? To what extent do they experience symptoms of trauma in the aftermath of losing a client to execution or as a result of the cumulative effects of engaging in capital defense work? What motivates them, and what do they draw upon, in order to keep engaging in such emotionally demanding work? Have they considered practicing other types of law? What can we learn from capital defenders not only about the deep and long-term effects of the death penalty but also about broader human questions of hope, effectiveness, success, failure, strength, fragility, and perseverance?

Sandra Gaffney entered her first nursing home for long-term care at the unusually young age of fifty. Gaffney became an acute observer and strategist about how to live in a nursing home. Her first-person account, dictated to family members and assistants, covers making the decision to enter a nursing home, choosing the right one, and understanding its culture.

In these hard times of global financial peril and growing social inequality, injuries to dignity are pervasive. "e;Indignity has many faces,"e; one man told Nora Jacobson as she conducted interviews for this book. Its expressions range from rudeness, indifference, and condescension to objectification, discrimination, and exploitation. Yet dignity can also be promoted. Another man described it as "e;common respect,"e; suggesting dignity's ordinariness, and the ways we can create and share it through practices like courtesy, leveling, and contribution.Dignity and Health examines the processes and structures of dignity violation and promotion, traces their consequences for individual and collective health, and uses the model developed to imagine how we might reform our systems of health and social care.With its focus on the dignity experiences of those often excluded from the mainstream--people who are poor, or homeless, or dealing with mental health problems--as well as on vulnerabilities like age or sickness or unemployment that threaten to make us all feel "e;less than,"e; Dignity and Health recognizes dignity as a moral matter embedded in the choices we make every day.