The afterlife is where we come from : the culture of infancy in West Africa

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Title:

Author:

Gottlieb, Alma.

ISBN:

9780226305028

9780226305011

Personal Author:

Gottlieb, Alma.

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Physical Description:

xxv, 404 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Ch. 1. Working with Infants: The Anthropologist as Fieldworker, the Anthropologist as Mother -- Ch. 2. Do Babies Have Culture? : Explorations in the Anthropology of Infancy -- Ch. 3. The Beng World -- Ch. 4. Spiritual Beng Babies: Reflections on Cowry Shells, Coins, and Colic -- Ch. 5. Soiled Beng Babies: Morning Bath, Evening Bath, and Cosmic Dirt -- Ch. 6. Sociable Beng Babies: Mothers, Other Caretakers, and "Strangers" in a Moral Universe -- Ch. 7. Sleepy Beng Babies: Short Naps, Bumpy Naps, Nursing Nights -- Ch. 8. Hungry Beng Babies: Breast Water/Ordinary Water/Sacred Water and the Desire to Breast-feed -- Ch. 9. Developing Beng Babies: Speaking, Teething, Crawling, and Walking on (a Beng) Schedule -- Ch. 10. Sick Beng Babies: Spirits, Witches, and Poverty -- Ch. 11. From Wrugbe to Poverty: Situating Beng Babies in the World at Large.

Subject Term:

Beng (African people) -- Social conditions.

Beng (African people) -- Psychology.

Beng (African people) -- Kinship.

Infants -- Care -- Côte d'Ivoire.

Infants -- Côte d'Ivoire -- Development.

Child rearing -- Côte d'Ivoire.

Copies:

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Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015773647	H306.87408996 G686A 2004	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. How do these beliefs affect the way the Beng rear their children?

In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how religious ideology affects every aspect of Beng childrearing practices--from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk--and how widespread poverty limits these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the way we all rear our children.

All parents and anyone interested in the place of culture in the lives of infants, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From.

"This wonderfully reflective text should provide the impetus for formulating research possibilities about infancy and toddlerhood for this century." -- Caren J. Frost, Medical Anthropology Quarterly "Alma Gottlieb's careful and thought-provoking account of infancy sheds spectacular light upon a much neglected topic. . . . [It] makes a strong case for the central place of babies in anthropological accounts of religion. Gottlieb's remarkably rich account, delivered after a long and reflective period of gestation, deserves a wide audience across a range of disciplines."--Anthony Simpson, Critique of Anthropology