Dancing skeletons: life and death in West Africa by Katherine Dettwyler - Essay Example

"Love" methods and personal struggles Katherine Dettwyler is a lecturer, a breastfeeding advocate, an author, and an anthropology professor in Newark at the University of Delaware. The birth of Katherine took place in 1955 at McClellan in California. She published the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa in the year 1994. We view some of the experiences from a perspective of a person with empathic interest, an outside observer and a parent’s fear of losing a child. The use of humor and tragedy in the book makes a person motivated to finish reading the book. It creates the ambitiousness to move to the next page to discover the experience that happened next. This is an extremely critical aspect of writing that she effectively employs to ensure that the glue the reader to the book to find out what happens. It develops interest and ambitiousness to continue reading and fulfill various expectations that one develops when reading. Katherine has applied various terms in the book Dancing Skeletons. The terms include ethnocentrism and etic. Ethnocentrism refers to the idea that one’s own culture is better than other cultures. Katherine views western culture as more powerful and better when compared to the West African culture. She compares the two cultures and emerges with a conclusion that children need a balanced diet in the Western Africa. She concludes that it is due to lack of balanced diets that lead to malnutrition in these young children (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 21). Malians citizens also show ethnocentricity where they show lack of attention to the instructions of Katherine. They think that she is misleading them with the introduction of the new western culture, but she is helping them. She convinces a woman from Mali who has a child suffering from kwashiorkor to feed the child with the appropriate food to recover, but the woman insists on medicine. Ethnocentrism is the reason why the child does not recover since the mother is not ready to adopt the culture of Katherine of a balanced diet. She feels that her culture is dominant compared to the African culture (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 63). The issue use of Ethnocentrism has played a significant role in making this book interesting. It ensures that Katherine communicates information to the intended partly effectively and in a clear manner. This engrossing term clearly shows the comparison between the western culture and the West African culture. She applies etic which is the scientific point of view in the book where she discovers the natural age of weaning to be 2½ to 7 years. Scientific research shows that dental eruption, weight gain, and length of gestation determines the natural age of weaning. Scientific is a critical area of concern in this book since most of her activities revolve around this area of specification. She has gone a step further and widened her scope of scientific research by studying the cultural context of breastfeeding and breasts in the United States. Currently, she is carrying a prestigious research about women who nurse their young ones for a period longer than three years. This involvement in research is an indication that she is ready to venture into the scientific world. Etic has substantially contributed towards development the book by Katherine (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 43). In the book Dancing Skeletons, Katherine explains the challenges regarding health problems that she faces, their cause and effects. She uses various methods sufficiently, which include the, use of humor and dialog to elaborate and express her work. She also clearly illustrates her struggles regarding her work. She uses various life experiences that have a precise effective impact on the readers (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 34). Katherine has used dialog throughout the book. This personalizes her experiences, which provide the, reader with bubbles of absolute real-time activity that places them as an observer in Mali. The use narratives in between dialogs avails crucial information to the reader to comprehend the various dialog sections (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 39). The dialogs enhance effective delivery of the necessary information to the reader since they bring Katherine’s personal experiences to life. The experiences involve emotions of amusement, frustration, tragedy, and joy. The first dialog involves her extreme evaluation of a malnourished child. This dialog sets the stage for the major theme of the book that comprehending the cultural paradigms in Africa is certainly vital when addressing its problems. The inability of the mother to offer proper care and the malnourished child give evidence to the fact that there lies a disparity in care of adults versus children and diets. Katherine brings Miranda her daughter to Africa. I feel this is being negligent since she is aware of the problems that they are going to face. The Miranda’s brush with death by contracting confirmed the statement that Katherine made with regard to both joy and tragedy that they experienced in West Africa simultaneously (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 51). The title of the book refers to children that Katherine watched as they danced for their village. The malnourished children dance for the success of the village in maintaining and applying hygienic and dependable health practices. This was oblivious to the problems with proper nutrition that they were facing. Through this, she brings out her point that it is not enough to address medical and hygienic concerns without first dedicating time to come up with a solution regarding malnutrition in children. Eradicating tragedy would help to reduce the mortality rate from diseases like Malaria and Measles. Katherine has also used humor in development of her ideas in the book. Katherine noted that her ability to speak Bambara and the fact that Malians enjoyed laughter, gave her an opportunity to come up with jokes meant to make delivery of the information easy and effective. She uses jokes at her own expense just to make people laugh or lighten the moment. The use of her accounts of trips and the public transportation pickups makes one laugh a lot (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 71). The way she describes the surprise and delight of the Malians who discovered her ability and proficiency in speaking in their language, after they had spoken about her is particularly entertaining and humorous. Another remarkable source of amusement is the exchange of insults during the first meeting with a Malian colleague. The reader gets a hint to discover what is common between the people she is in contact with and herself. They achieve this by analyzing her observance on cultural tradition, which comprise of, accusations of flatulent habits and laziness. Katherine has made the book Dancing Skeletons pleasurable to read. She has achieved this by applying various styles that make it remarkably effective in terms of delivery of the intended information. The use of humor has made the book amusing as one laughs at various instants. She has ensured that work in non-fictional and about real life and death. It brings out the experience of an observer in Mali (Dettwyler, 1994, p. 83). The entire book is extremely entertaining as it clearly presents information and facts. References Dettwyler, A. K. (1994). Dancing skeletons: life and death in West Africa: Waveland Read More