Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic

Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic

In Life Beside Itself, Lisa Stevenson takes us on a haunting ethnographic journey through two historical moments when life for the Canadian Inuit has hung in the balance: the tuberculosis epidemic (1940s to the early 1960s) and the subsequent suicide epidemic (1980s to the present). Along the way, Stevenson troubles our commonsense understanding of what life is and what it means to care for the life of another. Through close attention to the images in which we think and dream and through which we understand the world, Stevenson describes a world in which life is beside itself: the name-soul of a teenager who dies in a crash lives again in his friendâ€™s newborn baby, a young girl shares a last smoke with a dead friend in a dream, and the possessed hands of a clock spin uncontrollably over its face. In these contexts, humanitarian policies make little sense because they attempt to save lives by merely keeping a body alive. For the Inuit, and perhaps for all of us, life is â€œsomewhere else,â€ and the task is to articulate forms of care for others that are adequate to that truth.
Country USA
Brand University of California Press
Manufacturer University of California Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 8 b/w
ReleaseDate 2014-08-22
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780520282940

Country	USA
Brand	University of California Press
Manufacturer	University of California Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	8 b/w
ReleaseDate	2014-08-22
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
EANs	9780520282940

Customers who purchased this also purchased....