J Staples
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 16039 |
|---|---|
| NOME | J Staples |
| PRENOMES | J |
| SOBRENOME | Staples |
| ASSINATURA | STAPLES J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Brunel University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2648-8636 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 94 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1970 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Business as Normal
This year’s editorial comes at a moment of transition: our editors for the last 5 years, James Staples and Rebecca Marsland, are stepping back to be replaced by Tom Widger, a Professor of Anthropol...
Medical Anthropology Past, Present, and Future
When we accepted our roles as editors of this journal back in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had only recently taken the world by storm.One of our challenges was to think about how a journal such as Medical Anthropology could best respond to world events, predictable or otherwise, as they unfolded through the painstaking ethnography that is our discipline's hallmark.Policymakers, after all, need the insights that will help them formulate possible so…
Time for a Focus on Climate Change and Health
From leprosy to ground zero
Achieving a target of zero-zero disease, zero disability, and zero discrimination-has become the dominant focus of campaigns to control or eliminate diseases, from HIV/AIDS to malaria to leprosy. Given the historical failure of most eradication programs over the last century, such teleological imaginings of disease-free futures might seem overly utopian. But even if it were possible to eradicate such diseases in their entirety, would this be univ…
Encountering Ethics
Grappling with Diversification
Unpacking Communal Tensions in Leicester
Pre-publication version of Staples, J. 2022. “Unpacking communal tensions in Leicester: South Asia Studies Research Group roundtable, Brunel University, 1 November 2022.” Anthropology Today 38(6):27
The Structural Violence of Indigenous Suicide Prevention Policies in Canada
Indigenous peoples in Canada suffer from very high suicide rates of which there are various state-created programmes and efforts to combat. However, the variety of these programmes may be limited in their conceptions of Indigenous suicide. I predicted that by analysing existing suicide prevention policies and frameworks, I would find that they systematically place Indigenous peoples in vulnerable positions through the enforcement of Western ideal…
Diversifying Medical Anthropology
Rebecca Marsland and James StaplesWe are honored to have this opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the outgoing editor Professor Lenore Manderson, who has contributed more than a decade of wor
Blurring Bovine Boundaries
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with butchers, cattle traders and beef eaters in South India, the aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it challenges two dominant assumptions made in respect of cattle slaughter and beef consumption in South Asia: one, that the beef trade directly concerns only Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Christians, and two, that respect for cattle is the near sole preserve of upper-caste Hindus. Secondly, given the streng…
Doing disability through charity and philanthropy in contemporary South India
Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, this article explores the relationship between charity and disability. Despite a stereotype of philanthropic aid as reproductive of existing power structures or symptomatic of state failures to eliminate poverty, closer investigation exposes a more multi-layered picture. Disjunctures in donor and recipient perspectives on charity are shown to create spaces in which recipient…
Consumer and Consumed
The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013).But earlier anim…
Beef and Beyond
Meat eating in India cannot be analysed simply as a marker of ritual impurity: the culinary experiences of South Indian Christians also indicate the importance of meat in forging positive identities. In this paper, I draw out some of the fine-grained distinctions made by my informants in relation to meat eating, which suggest that its consumption is shaped not only by caste and religion, but also in relation to gender, age, status and other perso…
Introduction
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the issues of migration while continuing a focus on women's livelihood patterns. It deals with migration, taking as its focus migrants to Western Europe who works in a variety of jobs in the sex industry. The book extends the experience of tribal migrant labourers in the cities of western India within the broader context…
Civilizing Tastes
Anthropological explorations of food in South Asia are often framed by theories of \ncaste and ritual purity or pollution, with the highest castes characterised as protecting \ntheir purity by accepting food from no-one of lower caste status, and those at the bottom \naccepting food from anyone. The problem with this focus on caste is not that it is \nmisguided per se; many Hindus do indeed regulate their consumption in relation to such \nconcern…
Putting Indian Christianities into Context
Gandhian andHindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often pos…
Communities of the Afflicted
With the promotion of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as a solution to health-related issues across the global South, leprosy colonies have long been out of vogue for nongovernmental organizations and State institutions alike. Such colonies, however, have endured. As is being increasingly recognized by those working in the leprosy field, such places have played a particular role not only in the provision of leprosy-related care but also in f…
Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem
Introduction
1) Asie du sud: traditions et changements. Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, No. 582. Severes, 8-13 Juillet 1978. Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1979. 676 pages
The suicide niche
This article analyses the circumstances under which attempted suicide became an increasingly common possibility of thought and action among the young, healthy generation of people who had grown up in the South Indian leprosy community where I conducted long-term fieldwork, despite suicide remaining relatively uncommon amongst their leprosy-affected, and often physically disabled, parents and grandparents. Alert to the pitfalls of analytical appro…
Culture and Carelessness
Professional and lay explanations of disability, collected via interviews and participant-observation during fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, identify "carelessness" and "superstition" as major impediments to good health among the general population, and education as the key solution. In that such findings suggest a valorization of personal responsibility for self-care, the Foucauldian concept of biopower appeared a salient framework for anal…
At the intersection of disability and masculinity
Despite a conventional view that bodily impairments are necessarily interpreted as emasculating and negative, this article - drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with men affected by leprosy and by cerebral palsy (CP) in India - offers a more nuanced account of how disabled men negotiate their gendered identities. Different kinds of impairments have very specific, context-defined, meanings that, in turn, have different implications for how gender an…
Go on, just try some
Becoming a man
This article, which draws on fieldwork with a community of leprosy-affected people in south India, explores the contrasting ways in which ideas about social completeness might be invoked in different contexts. Following an overview of how notions of 'personhood' and 'adulthood' in India have thus far been theorised, I go on to examine how my informants managed to construct their identities as 'children' in relation to foreign donors, without simu…
Peculiar People Amazing Lives
Disguise, Revelation and Copyright
This article explores the ways in which physically deformed people with leprosy in South India conceptualize, experience, and use their bodies in distinctive ways. I consider how such an enquiry might be informed by existing approaches to South Asian personhood, such as those emerging from phenomenology and ethnosociology. Conversely, I ask whether ethnographic analysis of those with different bodies might open up new avenues of exploration and c…
The suicide niche
This article analyses the circumstances under which attempted suicide became an increasingly common possibility of thought and action among the young, healthy generation of people who had grown up in the South Indian leprosy community where I conducted long-term fieldwork, despite suicide remaining relatively uncommon amongst their leprosy-affected, and often physically disabled, parents and grandparents. Alert to the pitfalls of analytical appro…
Consumer and Consumed
The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013).But earlier anim…
At the intersection of disability and masculinity
Despite a conventional view that bodily impairments are necessarily interpreted as emasculating and negative, this article - drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with men affected by leprosy and by cerebral palsy (CP) in India - offers a more nuanced account of how disabled men negotiate their gendered identities. Different kinds of impairments have very specific, context-defined, meanings that, in turn, have different implications for how gender an…
Go on, just try some
Becoming a man
This article, which draws on fieldwork with a community of leprosy-affected people in south India, explores the contrasting ways in which ideas about social completeness might be invoked in different contexts. Following an overview of how notions of 'personhood' and 'adulthood' in India have thus far been theorised, I go on to examine how my informants managed to construct their identities as 'children' in relation to foreign donors, without simu…
Delineating Disease
The national and international agencies working to eliminate leprosy are also dominant in setting the boundaries of official discourse on the issue. Within these boundaries the disease is commonly represented as a medical problem with negative social consequences, and it is believed that both problem and consequences will be resolved if leprosy is eliminated and its victims treated and (if necessary) reintegrated within their social groups. For t…
Beef and Beyond
Meat eating in India cannot be analysed simply as a marker of ritual impurity: the culinary experiences of South Indian Christians also indicate the importance of meat in forging positive identities. In this paper, I draw out some of the fine-grained distinctions made by my informants in relation to meat eating, which suggest that its consumption is shaped not only by caste and religion, but also in relation to gender, age, status and other perso…
Introduction
1) Asie du sud: traditions et changements. Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, No. 582. Severes, 8-13 Juillet 1978. Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1979. 676 pages
Encountering Ethics
Communities of the Afflicted
With the promotion of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as a solution to health-related issues across the global South, leprosy colonies have long been out of vogue for nongovernmental organizations and State institutions alike. Such colonies, however, have endured. As is being increasingly recognized by those working in the leprosy field, such places have played a particular role not only in the provision of leprosy-related care but also in f…
Culture and Carelessness
Professional and lay explanations of disability, collected via interviews and participant-observation during fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, identify "carelessness" and "superstition" as major impediments to good health among the general population, and education as the key solution. In that such findings suggest a valorization of personal responsibility for self-care, the Foucauldian concept of biopower appeared a salient framework for anal…
Putting Indian Christianities into Context
Gandhian andHindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often pos…
From leprosy to ground zero
Achieving a target of zero-zero disease, zero disability, and zero discrimination-has become the dominant focus of campaigns to control or eliminate diseases, from HIV/AIDS to malaria to leprosy. Given the historical failure of most eradication programs over the last century, such teleological imaginings of disease-free futures might seem overly utopian. But even if it were possible to eradicate such diseases in their entirety, would this be univ…
Grappling with Diversification
Diversifying Medical Anthropology
Rebecca Marsland and James StaplesWe are honored to have this opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the outgoing editor Professor Lenore Manderson, who has contributed more than a decade of wor
Blurring Bovine Boundaries
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with butchers, cattle traders and beef eaters in South India, the aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it challenges two dominant assumptions made in respect of cattle slaughter and beef consumption in South Asia: one, that the beef trade directly concerns only Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Christians, and two, that respect for cattle is the near sole preserve of upper-caste Hindus. Secondly, given the streng…
Bibliography on leprosy and the body
Leprosy in Colonial South India
Fieldwork in practice
While fieldwork in a place already known to the researcher brings with it a list of specific advantages and disadvantages, it also encounters many of the same methodological and ethical considerations common to all ethnographic research. Written pre-fieldwork, this paper anticipates some of these issues – from interview techniques and participant observation to the researcher’s own relationship to the research – and invites the reader to respond
Disguise, Revelation and Copyright
This article explores the ways in which physically deformed people with leprosy in South India conceptualize, experience, and use their bodies in distinctive ways. I consider how such an enquiry might be informed by existing approaches to South Asian personhood, such as those emerging from phenomenology and ethnosociology. Conversely, I ask whether ethnographic analysis of those with different bodies might open up new avenues of exploration and c…
Declining Anthropology
A response to Mars, AT20(1
Delineating Disease
The national and international agencies working to eliminate leprosy are also dominant in setting the boundaries of official discourse on the issue. Within these boundaries the disease is commonly represented as a medical problem with negative social consequences, and it is believed that both problem and consequences will be resolved if leprosy is eliminated and its victims treated and (if necessary) reintegrated within their social groups. For t…
Becoming a man
This article, which draws on fieldwork with a community of leprosy-affected people in south India, explores the contrasting ways in which ideas about social completeness might be invoked in different contexts. Following an overview of how notions of 'personhood' and 'adulthood' in India have thus far been theorised, I go on to examine how my informants managed to construct their identities as 'children' in relation to foreign donors, without simu…
Go on, just try some
At the intersection of disability and masculinity
Despite a conventional view that bodily impairments are necessarily interpreted as emasculating and negative, this article - drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with men affected by leprosy and by cerebral palsy (CP) in India - offers a more nuanced account of how disabled men negotiate their gendered identities. Different kinds of impairments have very specific, context-defined, meanings that, in turn, have different implications for how gender an…
Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem
Introduction
1) Asie du sud: traditions et changements. Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, No. 582. Severes, 8-13 Juillet 1978. Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1979. 676 pages
The suicide niche
This article analyses the circumstances under which attempted suicide became an increasingly common possibility of thought and action among the young, healthy generation of people who had grown up in the South Indian leprosy community where I conducted long-term fieldwork, despite suicide remaining relatively uncommon amongst their leprosy-affected, and often physically disabled, parents and grandparents. Alert to the pitfalls of analytical appro…
Culture and Carelessness
Professional and lay explanations of disability, collected via interviews and participant-observation during fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, identify "carelessness" and "superstition" as major impediments to good health among the general population, and education as the key solution. In that such findings suggest a valorization of personal responsibility for self-care, the Foucauldian concept of biopower appeared a salient framework for anal…
Civilizing Tastes
Anthropological explorations of food in South Asia are often framed by theories of \ncaste and ritual purity or pollution, with the highest castes characterised as protecting \ntheir purity by accepting food from no-one of lower caste status, and those at the bottom \naccepting food from anyone. The problem with this focus on caste is not that it is \nmisguided per se; many Hindus do indeed regulate their consumption in relation to such \nconcern…
Putting Indian Christianities into Context
Gandhian andHindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often pos…
Communities of the Afflicted
With the promotion of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as a solution to health-related issues across the global South, leprosy colonies have long been out of vogue for nongovernmental organizations and State institutions alike. Such colonies, however, have endured. As is being increasingly recognized by those working in the leprosy field, such places have played a particular role not only in the provision of leprosy-related care but also in f…
Introduction
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the issues of migration while continuing a focus on women's livelihood patterns. It deals with migration, taking as its focus migrants to Western Europe who works in a variety of jobs in the sex industry. The book extends the experience of tribal migrant labourers in the cities of western India within the broader context…
Consumer and Consumed
The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013).But earlier anim…
Beef and Beyond
Meat eating in India cannot be analysed simply as a marker of ritual impurity: the culinary experiences of South Indian Christians also indicate the importance of meat in forging positive identities. In this paper, I draw out some of the fine-grained distinctions made by my informants in relation to meat eating, which suggest that its consumption is shaped not only by caste and religion, but also in relation to gender, age, status and other perso…
Doing disability through charity and philanthropy in contemporary South India
Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, this article explores the relationship between charity and disability. Despite a stereotype of philanthropic aid as reproductive of existing power structures or symptomatic of state failures to eliminate poverty, closer investigation exposes a more multi-layered picture. Disjunctures in donor and recipient perspectives on charity are shown to create spaces in which recipient…
Blurring Bovine Boundaries
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with butchers, cattle traders and beef eaters in South India, the aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it challenges two dominant assumptions made in respect of cattle slaughter and beef consumption in South Asia: one, that the beef trade directly concerns only Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Christians, and two, that respect for cattle is the near sole preserve of upper-caste Hindus. Secondly, given the streng…
The Structural Violence of Indigenous Suicide Prevention Policies in Canada
Indigenous peoples in Canada suffer from very high suicide rates of which there are various state-created programmes and efforts to combat. However, the variety of these programmes may be limited in their conceptions of Indigenous suicide. I predicted that by analysing existing suicide prevention policies and frameworks, I would find that they systematically place Indigenous peoples in vulnerable positions through the enforcement of Western ideal…
Diversifying Medical Anthropology
Rebecca Marsland and James StaplesWe are honored to have this opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the outgoing editor Professor Lenore Manderson, who has contributed more than a decade of wor
Grappling with Diversification
Unpacking Communal Tensions in Leicester
Pre-publication version of Staples, J. 2022. “Unpacking communal tensions in Leicester: South Asia Studies Research Group roundtable, Brunel University, 1 November 2022.” Anthropology Today 38(6):27
Sociology (25 obras) · Political science (16 obras) · Anthropology (15 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (12 obras) · Ethnography (11 obras) · Medicine (11 obras) · Geography (10 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Gender Studies (8 obras) · Law (8 obras)