Overview

Describes food habits, language, health practices, religious beliefs, and storytelling, inviting the reader to experience life in Awastara First full-length study of a coastal Miskitu community, contrasting life before and after the war years of the 1980s Dennis first journeyed to Awastara, a village on the northeastern coast of Nicaragua, during 1978 - 1979 as a postdoctoral student. He had come to study a culture-bound syndrome in which young women are possessed by devils. In the process, he became fascinated by other aspects of Miskitu culture - turtle fishing, Miskitu Christianity, community development efforts - the whole pattern of Miskitu community life. He also formed deep friendships to carry into the future. Twenty years later he was able to return and continue his ethnographic work. Utilizing ideas from recent interpretive anthropology and a vivid writing style, Dennis describes food habits, language, health practices, religious beliefs, and storytelling, inviting the reader to experience life in Awastara along with him.

Full Product Details

9780292702813

Table of Contents

Reviews

[The book] will undoubtedly prove to be an exceptionally valuable resource for those scholars researching the still poorly udnerstood peoples of Central America's Caribbean shore, and it should attract attention among anthropologists working in similar frontier contexts who might be looking for insightful comparative materials. Finally, it is also a sensitive and rather personal account of an anthropologist feeling his way back into a community that he left behind twenty years previously and which has changed considerably. Students wishing to get a sense of how anthropologists really experience and do fieldwork will, therefore, also find it particularly valuable.

[The book] will undoubtedly prove to be an exceptionally valuable resource for those scholars researching the still poorly udnerstood peoples of Central America's Caribbean shore, and it should attract attention among anthropologists working in similar frontier contexts who might be looking for insightful comparative materials. Finally, it is also a sensitive and rather personal account of an anthropologist feeling his way back into a community that he left behind twenty years previously and which has changed considerably. Students wishing to get a sense of how anthropologists really experience and do fieldwork will, therefore, also find it particularly valuable. * The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

Author Information

Philip A. Dennis is Professor of Anthropology at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

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