Unique in focus and international in scope, this book brings
together 10 essays about the material, metaphorical, and symbolic
importance of blood.
* An interdisciplinary study that unites the work of noted
historians and anthropologists
* Incorporates insights from recent work in symbolism, kinship
studies, medical anthropology, the anthropology of religion, the
sociological study of finance, and textual analysis
* Covers topics such as Medieval European conceptions of blood;
blood and the brain; blood and the cultural study of finance; and
blood types, identity, and association in twentieth-century
America
Jadual kandungan
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Janet Carsten Introduction: blood will out 1
1 Kath Weston Lifeblood, liquidity, and cash transfusions:
beyond metaphor in the cultural study of finance 24
2 Maya Mayblin The way blood flows: the sacrificial value of
intravenous drip use in Northeast Brazil 42
3 Bettina Bildhauer Medieval European conceptions of blood:
truth and human integrity 56
4 Fenella Cannell The blood of Abraham: Mormon redemptive
physicality and American idioms of kinship 76
5 Nicholas Whitfield Who is my stranger? Origins of the gift in
wartime London, 1939-45 94
6 Susan E. Lederer Bloodlines: blood types, identity, and
association in twentieth-century America 117
7 Janet Carsten ‘Searching for the truth’: tracing
the moral properties of blood in Malaysian clinical pathology labs
129
8 Jacob Copeman The art of bleeding: memory, martyrdom, and
portraits in blood 147
9 Emily Martin Blood and the brain 170
Index 183
Mengenai Pengarang
Janet Carsten is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the anthropology of kinship. She is the author of After Kinship (2004) and The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community (1997). She is the editor of Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness (Blackwell, 2007) and Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship (2000).