Searching for the Wings of the Wind: Comfort and Care Among West African Immigrants in New York City

Please register with Nele Wolter (wolter@mmg.mpg.de) no later than October 30, 2023.

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In this talk, Paul Stoller considers the ongoing appeal of non-western approaches to health and wellbeing, and how experience in New York City medical settings has altered a West African immigrant’s medical decision-making. He also considers (1) the unappealing aspects of Western medical approaches to health and wellbeing and (2) contrast them to West African systems, which continue to inspire confidence among West African immigrants in New York City. In the end, Paul suggests that human health and wellbeing emerge from established bonds of social trust, bonds that enable us to restore the balance between village and the bush, between social life and nature. When his West African friends in New York City search for the “wings of the wind” they are not only showing how to establish and reinforce social trust, but also a way to repair a badly damaged world.

Paul Stoller is Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University and Permanent Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has been conducting ethnographic research for more than 30 years and is the author of 16 books including ethnographies, memoirs, a biography, and three novels. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology in Media Award. In 2013, the King of Sweden presented him The Anders Retzius Gold Medal in Anthropology. His latest book, Wisdom from the Edge of the Village: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times was published in 2023 by Cornell University Press.