Episode #27: Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Conversations in Anthropology

A late festive treat? An early new year surprise? Our new episode features a conversation with the renowned anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Across their illustrious career, Nancy has researched social suffering and structural violence in a variety of contexts, including Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and, internationally, through the global trade in kidneys and other organs. Most recently, she has written about the scandal of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. She is the author of 'Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland’ (1979), 'Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil’ (1989) and 'The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics, Global (In)Justice and the Traffic in Organs’ (2008), as well as numerous articles, edited collections, and other book chapters. She is also the co-founder of Organs Watch, a watchdog organisation that monitors organ trafficking. In this episode, we twist and turn through a number of topics, discussing Nancy’s childhood, solidarity and militant anthropology today, disagreement as intellectual practice, relating to the Pope and much much more. This episode is hosted and produced by Timothy Neale and David Boarder Giles and features guest host Tanya King. This podcast is made with support from the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University and in partnership with the American Anthropological Association. For more on Nancy Scheper-Hughes see: https://anthropology.berkeley.edu/nancy-scheper-hughes