Beschreibung
The process of ethnographically detailing how individuals encounter institutions is a
complicated task. Few are those accounts that manage to clearly elucidate how new
institutional knowledge passes through individuals within the course of normative,
everyday living. Elizabeth Challinor’s ethnography of rural Santiago, Cape Verde does
an outstanding job of revealing how the introduction of new institutional procedures are
felt and experienced in non-suspecting places, in non-suspecting ways and with non-
suspecting outcomes. Challinor’s descriptions of the encounter between new policies
and daily practice provide an important lesson on the power in ethnographically
informed theorization.
Kesha Fikes, University of Chicago
Elizabeth Pilar Challinor is researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social
Anthropology, Lisbon. Besides conducting fieldwork in Cape Verde (1996 -7, 2005,
2007) she represented the Portuguese NGO Oikos in Angola (1990 -1992). Her current
research focus is on migrant Cape Verdean intercultural experiences of maternity in
Portugal.
