Vita

Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment

In Vita, the sick and homeless were left to die. The same was true in Catarina.
Through words on the verge of silencing and memories condemned to failure, everything around Catarina becomes a testimony;
When families, institutions, chemicals, and economic systems become complicit, how can one escape the black hole of social death?
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★This soul-stirring medical anthropology classic has won seven awards, including the Margaret Mead Award, the Victor Turner Ethnography Award, and the Sterling Prize for Best Psychological Anthropology Book. It has been specially praised by Kevin Kilson, a renowned scholar in the fields of global health and medical humanities. ★Recommended by Professor Jing Jun of the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University...
Across Brazil, socially abandoned spaces like Vita are popping up everywhere.
This haunting and unsettling story centers on the experiences of a woman named Catarina, who gradually becomes paralyzed and, considered insane, spends her remaining days in Vita. Anthropologist João Biel embarks on a detective-novel-like journey into Catarina's life: through conversations with her, interviews with her relatives, and tracking down her medical records, he unravels the mysterious, poetic words in her "dictionary," tracing the complex web of family, medical care, state, and economics that underlies her rejection and pathology.
The people of Vita, still recalling their experiences as fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, and grandmothers, are excluded from the real world, becoming unclaimed lives. In this discourse of social death, sanctioned by bureaucracy and kinship, medication becomes a tool for family governance, diagnosis severs moral obligations, and institutionalization becomes the ultimate pretext for depriving people of their rights. "Vita" is more than just another story of abandonment—everything surrounding Catarina becomes a testimony, questioning the social logic that allows people to die and attempting to reclaim the meaning and dignity of being human.
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“How I wish Catalina could read the work we’ve done together and see herself emerge from the pages, finding an alternative ending.”
【Recommended by media and celebrities】
João Bill's Vita is a compelling work, and Catarina's story will linger in the reader's mind. The book's central task is sure to become an anthropological classic. — Kevin Kemper This is exceptional ethnography, and it reads like a thrilling mystery. —Journal of the Royal Anthropological Association
Drawing on six years of conversations with Catarina, the author captures a moving story of social abandonment and the creative perseverance of one woman in the face of the most appalling circumstances. — Citation for the JI Staley Award, Institute for Advanced Study This book strikes a fine balance between theoretical discussion and meticulous fieldwork, offering a complex and original insight into the dynamics of social abandonment in contemporary Brazil. Bill's thought-provoking research not only brings to light the astonishing experiences of marginalized individuals in nursing homes, but also reveals the social, political, and cultural influences in Brazil that further deepen the desolation of this poverty and the long-standing violation of basic human rights. — Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
【Editor's Recommendation】
Vita, with its shared focus on social life and individual experience, stands as a defining work in ethnographic writing. The process of Brazilian social transformation, the evolving treatment of mental illness, and individual life histories intersect, forming a multifaceted framework for our understanding of life, thought, and ethical circumstances. It is therefore a must-read for medical anthropology.
João Bill's research unravels the tangled web of reality, peeling back layers of overlapping social factors, making visible the complex web of family, society, and medical technology. Surrounding Vita, a shelter dedicated to "life," we see how political and economic policies, kinship relationships shaped by cultural traditions and economic interests, institutionalized medical systems, moral environments, and the unfolding of human nature in each individual interact in unexpected ways to create the dynamics of social abandonment.
◎ Catarina, who compiled the "Dictionary", demonstrated the amazing dynamism of a person who is excluded from reality, and became a witness to the vivid desire of life to find its own place in the face of rapid changes.
The unique narrative thread imbues the work with the rhythm of a mystery novel, while the author's keen observation of the individual's life state imbues the work with a profound emotional dimension beyond its theoretical insights. A "person left behind from earlier eras," "washed clean of all features, reduced to a man-made ore," evokes our perceptions and memories of everyday society.
Abandonment doesn't just happen in and around asylums. Vita offers us many poignant reflections and is a work rich in practical significance that is worth reading for everyone.
The article includes over 40 photos taken by photographer Torben Eskorode. As the author says, "If these photos linger in your mind, it's because they are a continuous reality, not far away from us.

2023-01-01

南京大学出版社

Sanhui Books

454

9787305252563