Lecture | Online Book Talk
Online Book Talk 'Silence and Sacrifice' by Dr. Merav Shohet
- Date
- Friday 21 May 2021
- Time
- Location
- Online
Dr. Merav Shohet (Boston University) will discuss her new book: Silence and Sacrifice: Family Stories of Care and the Limits of Love in Vietnam (University of California Press, April 2021) during the next online Book Talk on Friday 21 May 2021. This engaging ethnographic monograph makes a powerful contribution to psychological, medical and linguistic anthropology and Vietnam studies. Please see the full abstract below.
Prof. Dr. Anita von Poser (FU Berlin) will act as discussant.
This event is hosted by the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), the Max Planck Institute for the study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and, at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, the Asia Research Cluster and ERC Globalizing Palliative Care Project.
Date, time and registration
Date: Friday, 21 May 2021
Time: 12.00-13.30 CET
Where: Online, the zoom-link will be sent to registered participants one day in advance
Registration: attendance is free of charge, but please register here.
Silence and Sacrifice: Family Stories of Care and the Limits of Love in Vietnam
Merav Shohet’s new book, Silence and Sacrifice: Family Stories of Care and the Limits of Love in Vietnam draws on over a decade of research based in central Vietnam to explore what happens across generations to families who survived colonialism, war, and massive political and economic upheaval. Placing personal sacrifice at the center of her story, Shohet recounts vivid experiences of conflict, love, and loss under Vietnam’s changing regimes. Illustrating the dynamics of micro and macro narrative interactions, she excavates how multiple generations narratively navigate conflicting commitments to those whom they are expected to love while affirming or contesting local versions of justice. Through these stories of troubled and troubling care, Silence and Sacrifice challenges the prevailing idea that sacrifice is merely a blood-filled religious ritual or patriotic act. Today, routine sacrifices—made largely by women—precariously knit kin together by silencing their suffering and reifying cross-cutting gender, age, class, and political hierarchies. Rethinking ordinary ethics, this intimate ethnography reveals how quotidian acts of sacrifice help family members forge a sense of continuity in the face of trauma and decades of turbulence and change.
