Rating: 
Summary: Good story...
Review: I read Dancing Skeletons for an Anthropology class at Indiana University. It was assigned to give the students some exposure to ethnographies, and to field techniques in Anthropology.Although I enjoyed the story, Dancing Skeletons is a pretty poor ethnography. Katherine Dettwyler spends so much of her time writing about how she felt, and what she thought, that I started to loose track of who was being studied. Dancing Skeletons is a fun story to read. It's well written, and entertaining, but it doesn't really strike me as a serious ethnography
Rating: 
Summary: Information about Mali
Review: I read this book to learn more about the people of Mali--not from any scientific viewpoint. I wanted to learn more and I feel Ms Dettwyler's account was helpful. Giving her opinions and feelings made me want to keep reading. It was food for thought when she said that by vaccinating and saving very young infants we are really only postponing their deaths when they later face malnutrition. The need to educate for balanced diet is a very formitable task, I fear. Thanks for the insight!
Rating:
Summary: Information about Mali
Review: I read this book to learn more about the people of Mali--not from any scientific viewpoint. I wanted to learn more and I feel Ms Dettwyler's account was helpful. Giving her opinions and feelings made me want to keep reading. It was food for thought when she said that by vaccinating and saving very young infants we are really only postponing their deaths when they later face malnutrition. The need to educate for balanced diet is a very formitable task, I fear. Thanks for the insight!
Rating: 
Summary: Great ethnography
Review: Some of the reviewers of Katherine A. Dettwyler's Dancing Skeletons are critical of her book because they sense that she devoted much of her study to analyzing her own thoughts, feelings, likes, and dislikes, rather than devoting her full attention to the culture itself. ...
The reviewers of Dettwyler's book must have been disappointed with her study because they were expecting an objective ethnography, free from the exposure of the anthropologist's weaknesses. However, in Dettwyler's book, they encountered her weaknesses (such as when she unexpectedly cried after seeing a child with Down Syndrome) and accounts of her biases (especially toward Malian food). For a social scientist, such accounts deviate from the study at hand, making it more of a personal diary than an ethnography itself.
However, these reviewers seem to have forgotten that Katherine Dettwyler is approaching her field of study from the hermeneutic point of view. Unlike social scientists, who study their subjects objectively as a way to counter bias, hermeneuts use bias as an important tool to better comprehend a culture. Through the self-evaluation of one's thoughts and feelings, and negotiation between informant and interviewer, the hermeneut is able to begin drawing a complete picture of the culture at hand.
Hence, through Dettwyler's questioning and self-evaluation, the reader is able to see Mali through the eyes of a human being and not from a distanced scientist gathering raw data for his or her doctorate study. Through Dettwyler's journey of trial and error, the reader begins to comprehend Mali each step at a time, the very same way Dettwyler does. Instead of being lectured at scientifically, the reader is taken on a trip through Malian society, both rural and urban, experiencing with Dettwyler the joys and tragedies of life in a rural village. Her thoughts and feelings provoke thoughts and feelings on the readers, making them, along with Dettwyler, active learners of Malian culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Too subjective, aiming to shock, and little more
Review: The author approaches an interesting subject, but the book contains fatal flaws. It is far too subjective, filled with the author's own disputable views. It also aims at shocking and surprising the reader, rather than informing about the subject. All in all, it is a book I really did not enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Too subjective, aiming to shock, and little more
Review: The author approaches an interesting subject, but the book contains fatal flaws. It is far too subjective, filled with the author's own disputable views. It also aims at shocking and surprising the reader, rather than informing about the subject. All in all, it is a book I really did not enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Dancing Skeletons
Review: This book is interesting but the author uses such a subjective approach to the ethnography that it loses much of its value anthropologically. I found myself constantly objecting to her inclusion of her feelings, likes, dislikes, etc. A good read for entertainment, but the science of it is only fair.
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