Summer Reading: More Video of Village Life

This is a video shot in Wedza communal lands, Zimbabwe, which are south of the Nyanga district that Moore writes about. Wedza is at a lower elevation than Nyanga. The video is narrated by two charming children, Colm and Nora Hand, who have relatives in Wedza. There is great footage of agricultural practices (the milling of maize, the tilling of fields), and I think the video beautifully captures the conviviality of home and hearth. It therefore complements some of the scenes that Moore writes about.

Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.