Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

by Nancy Scheper-Hughes

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography, History, Sociology, Brazil, Academic

614 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 1992

Reviews

[Lexington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing read.

It was a requirement for one of my college classes and was painfully difficult to get through because of the extreme poverty that the author helplessly witnessed. It's one of the few books that I have read which inspired me to do additional research.

For all of the happy-ending-story-loving people out there -- be warned! This is a very depressing read, but I would argue that feeling something from a book is better than nothing.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Controversial and criticized for her work, I couldn't put this book down. Scheper-Hughes was a requirement for one of my Anthropology classes, and it forced me to think outside the box. Having spent 30+ years of her life with these people, she doesn't exactly give an un-biased Anthropological report, as we're taught as students. Personally I feel like it’s kind of refreshing to read an account of the lives of these people with flair of bias and personal experience. Whether or not you believe her depiction of the 'loveless mother', this book still captures life in a Brazilian shantytown quite well.

[Núria Araüna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Besides the description of the violence in Brazil she gives very interesting insights of the strategical functions of this violence to establish control and sustain inequalities. Her theory has applications in other contexts of marginalisation such as the police management of drug issues and reinforment of penal systems in the european liberal democracies.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brave book, if not for its subject matter, then at the very least for its broad interpretive strokes. While you may not agree with every interpretation, you have to give NSH credit for her boldness. Good to argue with yes, but even better to think with.

[meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books I think everyone should be required to read.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthropology to what end? What do we owe to the people we study?

[Ryan Mahon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, haunting and moving. Medical anthropology that reads like a riveting novel. This is a must read. The Tolstoy of her genre and field.

[Shul · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Anthropology class used this as one of my reading topics this semester. I found the content of the book very interesting and the discussions that came out of the book equally so.

In this book, Nancy Scheper-Hughes delves into the lives of the people of Bom Jesus (name changed for privacy) and how they and their children are starving to death every day. It goes very deep into the reasons behind the daily actions of the people living in Bom Jesus and the ways they handle the trauma of death that surrounds them constantly.

[Helen Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a difficult read, but only because of the sad subject matter. I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in understanding the complexities that can sometimes exist in infant mortality and motherhood. I enjoyed it and found it to be really eye opening.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough and heart-wrenching examination of how endemic poverty and the church and state's indifference to it can challenge the notions of everything we understand about family, love, and survival. This book will stay with me for a long time.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the saddest book I've ever read.

[Ariane Goulet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t ask it was for school but had to count it in my reading goal since it’s like 700 pages lol.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot, it gave a very close insiders-perspective into this Brazilian village. Scheper-Hughes has spent years and years (almost 30 I think) with these villagers and represents their culture very well, although I definitely thought that she crossed a line at some point and got way to close to these people....closer than any anthropologist should get I think. I'd almost call it interference. Nonetheless it was very interesting.

[Kesa]

a dense, esoteric, anthropological work. and it is crazily long. however, the discussion centered on the idea of mother love or the maternal instinct as culturally constructed, and not universal, is shockingly riveting. the sweeping portrait of the brazilian country side, the people, and the history of sugar cultivation is also interesting, but be prepared to feel guilt ridden about your life style for weeks.

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author worked as a community nurse in a pueblo in the NE of Brazil and returned there to do her thesis. It's a heartbreaking book to read (unless you're a vegan, and used to the heartlessness of humans), because the people she writes about are so very poor that it doesn't mean much to them when one of their babies dies. One less mouth to feed.

What is infuriating is the attitude of capitalists towards the poor here, whose poverty they caused, as their attitude is everywhere.

[Feyza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book... probably her best (or at least her most famous thus far in her academic career). Nancy Scheper-Hughes get a lot of important work done and she write so well too! But Arthur Kleinman still takes the cake as the coolest of medical anthropology scholar. Maybe Paul Farmer too... (because they are also docs as well as activists... how do some of these people do it all?)

[Courtney Shore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written, honest portray of life in Brazil and constant violence due to famine, poverty and death. This was an emotionally difficult book for me to read but I recommend it for anyone looking for a deep look at Brazilian life and struggles. Specifically those focused around maternal love of and relating to child and infant death (due to illness) and infanticide.

[Karem · Rating 4 out of 5]

25 años de trabajo de campo y más de 500 hojas de resultados que tienen la magia de poder resumirse en una palabra: saudades (obviamente enmarcada en todo un capítulo). Sirve un montón para la discusión sobre el “naturalismo” de la maternidad en las mujeres, súper fácil de seguir también (y el uso del lenguaje-cambiar al portugués cuando es necesario- es 💯).

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t even know how or what to say about this book. It just speaks to how difficult it was to read this book. I wish everyone would read the insights on motherhood.

All I can say is, I love that ethnographers are subtly (or not) undermining the work of analytic philosophers... and the philosophers won’t ever find out because I doubt they’re reading ethnographies.

[Michael Andersen-Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death Without Weeping helped me understand why the responses to death and violence by my Brazilian family and friends who live in the favela are sometimes quite different that what I would normally anticipate. It's a must read for anyone who wants to understand favela life.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and infuriating ethnofraphic about the impact of class striation and commercialized agriculture in second world economies. It's a huge read, and I had to finish on a shirt schedule as I was reading it for a class, but I wish I had had more time to really digest the information.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The picture that Scheper-Hughes paints with her writing about life in the Alto is an intense one. While at times what she writes and describes might seem unimaginable, the things in this book will stick with you. Especially the introduction.

[لميا · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautifully written book, but I felt it had questionable ethics in terms of the ethnography conducted and the research question asked. It felt like voyeurism at one point and I was not comfortable reading it.

[Rock Angel]

Author, an Professor of Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley, lived 30 years locally before writing this book.

To do: search for an edition of New Internationalist ~1994 on this subj / then i wont have to read 600pp!!

[Cate McNulty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was illuminating and heartbreaking. It is, however, a very thick book lol. I think it balanced theory and anecdotes and statistics well, but as you can see it took me quite some time to get through it.

[Ryan Lincoln]

Recommended by anthropologist Michael Jackson as an example of anthropology that connects scholarship to advocacy.

[Calen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in Medical anthropology. Interesting. Heartbreaking. Phenomenal.

[Tara Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

a classic, the narrative is gripping...

[Kerry]

Although very depressing, this book paints a very real picture of the struggle of everyday life and how people deal emotionally with the very high rates of child death in Brazil.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked teaching this book to undergrads.