Archive - September 21, 2014

In July, the University of Pennsylvania Press  published Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War by Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire, 2000-2002), who teaches anthropology and African studies at the University of Florida. Searching for Normal . . . “explores the human experience of the massive apparatus of trauma-healing and psychosocial interventions during the first five years of postwar reconstruction. Sharon Alane Abramowitz draws on extensive fieldwork among the government officials, humanitarian leaders, and an often-overlooked population of Liberian NGO employees to examine the structure and impact of the mental health care interventions, in particular the ways they were promised to work with peacekeeping and reconstruction, and how the reach and effectiveness of these promises can be measured. From this courageous ethnography emerges a geography of trauma and the ways it shapes the lives of those who give and receive care in postwar Liberia.” For more about the . . .