Nancy Scheper-Hughes

In *Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil* (1992), based on fieldwork in an impoverished favela in the Brazilian Northeast, Scheper-Hughes examined how mothers in conditions of extreme poverty developed selective emotional detachment toward infants likely to die. She challenged the assumption that maternal attachment is biologically universal, arguing it is shaped by material conditions of survival.

Organs Watch is a research and advocacy project co-founded by Scheper-Hughes in the late 1990s to document and combat the global trade in human organs. The project has investigated organ trafficking networks in countries including Brazil, South Africa, India, and Israel, contributing to international policy debates on transplant tourism.

*Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics* (1979), based on fieldwork in rural western Ireland, examined the relationship between social isolation, family structure, and mental illness. The book became influential but also controversial; some Irish scholars criticized what they saw as stereotyping, and Scheper-Hughes addressed these critiques in a revised edition.

Scheper-Hughes has been a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, for most of her career. She helped establish Berkeley as a leading center for critical medical anthropology through her work on violence, inequality, and the politics of health.