Nancy Scheper-Hughes (born 1944) is an anthropologist, educator, and author. She is the Chancellor's Professor Emerita of
Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
and the director and co-founder (with
Margaret Lock) of the PhD program in
Critical Medical Anthropology at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
.
She is known for her writing on the anthropology of the body, hunger, illness, medicine, motherhood,
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior.
...
,
psychosis
In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...
,
social suffering, violence and
genocide
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
,
death squad
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...
s, and
human trafficking
Human trafficking is the act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving individuals through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. This exploitation may include forced labor, sexual slavery, or oth ...
.
Scheper-Hughes is the author of several books, including ''Death Without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil'' (UC Pres
''Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Ireland'' (UC Press, in three editions); ''Commodifying Bodies'' (UK Sage) with
Loic Wacquant; ''Violence in War and Peace'' (Wiley-Blackwell) with
Philippe Bourgois; and, most recently, ''Violence in the Urban Margins'' (Oxford University Press), with P. Bourgois and J. Auyero.
Scheper-Hughes conducted anthropological fieldwork in
Northeast Brazil
The Northeast Region of Brazil ( ) is one of the five official and political regions of Brazil, regions of the country according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Of Brazil's twenty-six states, it comprises nine: Maranhão, ...
,
Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
,
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
,
Moldova
Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a Landlocked country, landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of and population of 2.42 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. ...
,
the Philippines and the US. As founding director of
Organs Watch, she is a consultant on human organ trafficking for the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
,
Interpol
The International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL (abbreviated as ICPO–INTERPOL), commonly known as Interpol ( , ; stylized in allcaps), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime cont ...
,
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
, and
the Vatican. She has testified (pro bono) in several prosecutions of human traffickers. She was a witness to the organ trade that brought Israeli kidney patients from Israel, Europe and New York City to Durban, South Africa and "kidney sellers" from impoverished communities in Recife. Her investigations of an international ring of brokers and their living organ sellers led to a number of arrests by the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
.
Early life, family and education
Scheper-Hughes was born in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
. She was educated at
Queens College
Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing.
Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...
, and then
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
, where she earned her B.A. in Social Sciences in 1970 and her doctorate in anthropology in 1976.
She was a Postdoctoral Fellow for National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at Harvard University's Laboratory of Human Development, 1979–1980.
Career
Scheper-Hughes' first book, ''Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland'' (1979), was a study of madness among bachelor farmers, and won the
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...
Award from the
Society for Applied Anthropology in 1980. The book established Scheper-Hughes’ ability to provoke controversy through her writing. Especially in
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, many readers took umbrage at her portrayal of the disintegration of rural Irish family life due to the collapse of the agrarian economy. In the 20th anniversary edition of the book, Scheper-Hughes provided an update on the transitions the community was undergoing at the time of her original research. She also discussed the challenges and ethics of ethnography, issues that are pushed to the fore as anthropologists increasingly work in communities that can read and critique their work.
In her subsequent book ''Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday life in Brazil'' (1993), she discusses the violence between mothers refusing to care for their sickly children. Once again, her work had many critics, both inside and outside
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
, given its depiction of women forced by horrific circumstances to ration their love and favor towards infants and toddlers who seemed to have the best chance of survival, and (even more controversial) her description of mothers "collaborating" and "hastening" the deaths of infants thought to be lacking a will (''desejo''), a knack (''jeito''), or a taste (''gosto'') for life. ''Death without Weeping'' has become something of a classic within the field of medical anthropology.
In addition to her full-length
monograph
A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...
s, Scheper-Hughes has published on
AIDS
The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
/
HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...
in
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
and
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
,
human rights
Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
,
death squads
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in ...
,
apartheid
Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...
and shanty town violence in South Africa, and sexual abuse in the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, coining or popularizing such terms as the "mindful body" (1987, with Margaret Lock), "political economy of the emotions" (1993a), "life boat ethics" (1993b), "neo-cannibalism" (2001), "sexual citizenship" (1994b), the "genocidal continuum", "militant anthropology" and anthropology "with its feet on the ground" (1995). One of the central themes unifying Scheper-Hughes’ scholarship is how violence comes to mark the bodies of the vulnerable, poor, and disenfranchised with a terrifying intimacy. Her work in Latin America,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, and Eastern Europe traces the insidious invisibility of everyday violence, which often makes the vulnerable and exploited into their own wardens and executioners.
Besides her own original research she has helped disseminate the work of scholars such as radical Italian psychiatrist
Franco Basaglia
Franco Basaglia (; 11 March 1924 29 August 1980) was an Italian psychiatrist, neurologist, professor, and disability advocate who proposed the dismantling of psychiatric hospitals, pioneer of the modern concept of mental health, Italian psychia ...
, Brazilian educator
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose work revolutionized global thought on education. He is best known for ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'', in which he reimagines teaching ...
, and the Brazilian physician and radical
ecologist
Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...
Josué de Castro, to a wider
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
n audience.
Special interests
Critical medical anthropology, violence, genocide, inequality, marginality, childhood, family, psychiatry, deinstitutionalization, medical ethics, fieldwork ethics, globalization medicine, social/ political illness, disease, AIDS, Ireland, Brazil, Cuba
International activism
Scheper-Hughes served as a
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an Independent agency of the U.S. government, independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to communities in partner countries around the world. It was established in Marc ...
Volunteer in
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
in the 1960s. She has worked as an activist and with social movements in Brazil (in defense of rural workers, against death squads, and for the rights of street children) in the United States (as a civil rights worker and as a
Catholic Worker for the homeless mentally ill, against nuclear weapons research at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now i ...
) and internationally in defense of the rights of those who sell their kidneys.
Organ trade
In 1999, Scheper-Hughes joined with three other professors to launch
Organs Watch, an organization dedicated to research on the global traffic in human organs, tracking the movements of people and organs around the globe, as well as the global inequities that facilitate this trade.
In October 2008, she appeared on the
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
program ''
HARDtalk
''HARDtalk'' is a BBC television and radio programme which was broadcast on the British and international feeds of the BBC News channel, and on the BBC World Service, from 31 March 1997 to 26 March 2025.
Broadcast times and days vary, depend ...
'' expressing her strong opposition to the open free buying and selling of organs, even if there were Government oversight through regulation. Her reason for this position is that she feels it will eventually corrupt the entire field because of the inevitability of brokers engaging in satisfying the demands of wealthy buyers for higher quality donors. She is opposed to the
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
ian government's regulated organ donor program, involving cash rewards, and predicts it will fail. Her preference is for free voluntary donations from family or friends. She has characterized the efforts of patients waiting for an organ transplant to save their lives through purchasing a replacement organ from a volunteer as just "a new form of commodity fetishism."
She deplores the fact that to the dying patients waiting for a transplant, "in the late or postmodern consumer-oriented context, the ancient prescription for virtue in suffering and grace in dying can only appear patently absurd."
She recommends instead that the now lethally long waiting lists for organ transplants be trimmed by questioning "the rights of infants and those over 70 to be on the waiting list."
However, in 2010, Nancy Scheper-Hughes already supported legal compensation for organ donations. She also says that compensations are already paid in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” sense. Behind this lies the desperation due to shortage of organ donations.
In the 2000s, Scheper-Hughes investigated an international ring of organ sellers
based in New York,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
and
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. She interviewed several hundred third-world organ donors, and reported that they all felt that they had been taken advantage of, and were often left sick, unable to work, and unable to get medical care. Some of them were tricked into donating organs, and threatened at gunpoint when they tried to resist. Some transplants took place at major
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
hospitals, and Scheper-Hughes said that the hospital personnel knew illegal transplants were taking place. She informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which led to arrests several years later.
Awards and recognition
Scheper-Hughes' first book, ''Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland'' (1979), a study of madness among bachelor farmers, won the
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...
Award from the
Society for Applied Anthropology in 1980.
In April 2007, Scheper-Hughes was awarded the first Berkeley William Sloane Coffin Jr. Award.
The award recognizes moral leadership among members of the community at University of California, Berkeley. The award is named for
William Sloane Coffin, a chaplain at Yale University and an activist in the
Civil Rights Movement and
peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pe ...
.
Selected publications
Books
* 2003a ''Commodifying Bodies''. Co-edited with
Loïc Wacquant. London: Sage Publications. Series in Theory, Culture, and Society.
* 2001b ''Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics'' Berkeley: University of California Press. 20th Anniversary edition. Expanded and updated with new preface and epilogue
* 1999 '' Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood''. Co-edited with Carolyn Sargent. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* 1993b ''Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil''. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Second edition, paperback).
* 1979 ''Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Articles
* 2007b "Violence and the Politics of Remorse: Lessons from South Africa." In ''Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations'', pp. 179–233.
João Biehl,
Byron Good, and
Arthur Kleinman, editors. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* 2006a "The Tyranny of the Gift: Sacrificial Violence in Living Donor Transplants," ''American Journal of Transplant'' (Ethics Corner), 7: 1–5
* 2006b "Alistair Cooke’s Bones: a Morality Tale. ''Anthropology Today'' (December): 22(6):3–8
* 2006c "Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil". In Jean and
John Comaroff
John L. Comaroff (born 1 January 1945) is a retired professor of African and African American Studies and of anthropology. He is recognized for his study of African and African-American society. Comaroff and his wife, anthropologist Jean Com ...
, Eds, ''Law and Disorder in the Postcolony'', pp. 150–187. Chicago: Chicago University Press
* 2005a "Katrina: The disaster and its doubles," ''Anthropology Today'' 21(6): 2.
* 2005b "Disease or Deception: Munchausen by Proxy as a Weapon of the Weak." In ''Lying and Illness: Power and Performance'', edited by Els van Dongen and Sylvie Fainzang, pp. 113–138. Het Spinhuis, Amsterdam.
* 2004a Violence in War and Peace: an Anthology. Edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and
Philippe Bourgois. London: Basil Blackwell.
* 2004b "The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in ‘Fresh’ Organs," in ''Global Assemblages'', Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier, eds. London: Basil Blackwell.
* 2004c "Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography of the Organs-Trafficking Underworld". ''Ethnography'' 5(1): 29–73
* 2003b "Priestly Celibacy and Child Sexual Abuse," with John Devine. Forum: The Catholic Church, Pedophiles and Child Sexual Abuse. ''Sexualities'' 6 (1): 15–39.
* 2003c "A Genealogy of Genocide". ''Modern Psychoanalysis'' 28(2): 167–197.
* 2001a "Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes." ''Anthropology Today'' 17 (1) (February): 12–18.
* 2000 "The Global Traffic in Human Organs." ''Current Anthropology'' 41(2): 191–211.
* 1998 "Bodies of Apartheid: Witchcraft, Rumor and Racism Confound South Africa's Organ Transplant Program." ''Worldview'' (Fall): 47–53.
* 1995 "The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology." ''Current Anthropology'' 36 (3) (June): 409–20.
* 1994a "Embodied Knowledge: Thinking with the Body in
Critical Medical Anthropology," in ''Assessing Cultural Anthropology'', Rob Borofsky, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 229–42.
* 1994b "AIDS and the Social Body." ''Social Science & Medicine'' 39 (7): 991–1003.
* 1993a "Life Boat Ethics." Republished in ''Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective'', pp. 31–37. Caroline Brettell and Carolyn Sargent, eds. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
* 1991a "The Message in the Bottle: Illness and the Micropolitics of Resistance," with
Margaret Lock. ''Journal of Psychohistory'' 18 (4): 409–432.
* 1991b "Virgin Territory: The Male Discovery of the Clitoris." ''Medical Anthropology Quarterly'' 5 (1) (March): 25–28.
* 1990 "Three Propositions for a Critically Applied Medical Anthropology." ''Social Science & Medicine'' 30 (2): 189–197.
* 1989 "Death Without Weeping." ''Natural History'' 10: 8–16.
* 1987a *Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. ''The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology'' with Margaret Lock. ''Medical Anthropology Quarterly'' (1): 6–41. pp.
* 1987b ''Psychiatry Inside Out: Selected Writings of Franco Basaglia''. Edited with introductions and essays by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell. New York: Columbia University Press.
* 1987c "A Children's Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term: Managing Culture-Shocked Children in Brazil." ''Human Organization'' 46 (l): 78–83. Reprinted in ''Children in the Field: Anthropological Experiences'', ed. Joan Cassell, 1987. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 443–54.
* 1986 "Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia," with Anne M. Lovell. ''Social Science & Medicine'' 23 (2): 159–178.
* 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry." ''Human Organization'' 43 (1): 85–93.
Notes
External links
Anthropology Faculty: Nancy Scheper-Hughes University of California, Berkeley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
American anthropologists
Medical anthropologists
Latin Americanists
1944 births
Living people
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
Organ trade
American women anthropologists