This August 2014, Margaret Elizabeth Stevenson’s book on death, illness, and the understanding of life among the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is set to be released by the University of California Press. The volume will explore two public health crises among the Inuit– a tuberculosis outbreak in the 1950s-60s as well as a suicide epidemic that began in the 1980s and extends into today. In these circumstances, Stevenson reports on how the Inuits cope with the death of their loved ones, realizing that what constitutes “life” is more than just the physical survival of the body.
To read the first chapter of the publication and find further details about Stevenson’s work, check out the page at the university press website here: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520282940