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Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice
by David FettermanWhat principles should guide an empowerment evaluation? And how can these principles actually be put into practice? One of the primary tasks in an empowerment evaluation (EE) is to increase the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs. This book presents the most current formulation of the 10 principles of EE and provides professionals and students with the tools to put these principles into practice. Through case studies of diverse evaluation projects--including community health foundation initiatives, school district programs, and a $15 million corporate program aimed at bridging the digital divide--the founder and leading proponents of EE clarify key concepts and discuss important lessons learned. Coverage includes how to balance program improvement efforts with accountability requirements; how EE can be used to guide standards-based work; how to use EE in a learning organization; the differences among empowerment, collaborative, and participatory evaluation; and much more.
Empowerment, Health Promotion and Young People: A Critical Approach
by Grace SpencerGlobally, young people’s health is an increasing priority area for health practitioners, policy-makers and researchers, and concepts of empowerment feature strongly in international public health discourses on young people’s health. Yet the concept of empowerment remains under-theorized, and its relationship to young people’s health is not well understood. This innovative volume critically examines the concept of empowerment and its relationship to young people’s health. Empowerment, Health Promotion and Young People is set out in two main parts. Part one examines differing conceptions of power and empowerment and how these concepts have been variously defined and used in relation to young people’s health and health promotion. Part two offers a new theoretical framework for understanding empowerment as it relates to young people’s health. Drawing together key works in the field and findings from an empirical enquiry on young people’s health, this framework looks at health as it is defined by young people themselves, and offers new directions for empowerment, and critical insights into the field of young people’s health and health promotion. Critically engaging with the concept of power and opening up the debate about the relevance and effectiveness of using contemporary understandings of empowerment to promote health, this book is suitable for researchers and students of health, sociology, education and youth studies interested in young people’s health and health promotion.
Empowerment Practice with Families in Distress
by Wise Judith BulaThis book integrates time-honored approaches to empowerment practice with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports--the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping--the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout.
Empowerment Practice with Families in Distress (Empowering the Powerless: A Social Work Series)
by Judith Bula WiseFor more than 150 years, empowering practices have been used by social workers in their work with families, but the techniques of today differ significantly from those of the pioneers or even from those of a few years ago. Today's practitioners recognize that empowering others is impossible; social workers can, however, assist others as they empower themselves. This book integrates time-honored approaches with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports—the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping—the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout to bring concepts to life and, more important, to present families describing their own experiences with achieving empowerment.
Empowerment Series: Understanding Generalist Practice
by Karen K. Kirst-Ashman Grafton H. Hull<P>Organized around the authors' coherent and cohesive Generalist Intervention Model, this introductory guide to generalist social work practice gives your students the knowledge and skills they need to work with individuals and families and the foundation knowledge from a generalist perspective to work with groups, communities, and organizations.<P> This edition continues to emphasize the interrelationship between the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of social work practice; and it reflects the latest Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards with empowerment and strengths perspectives for partnering with clients.
Empowerment Series: The Skills of Helping Individuals, Families, Groups, and Communities, Enhanced
by Lawrence ShulmanShulman's text introduces a model for the helping process based on an "interactional" approach, which uses a variety of theories and skills to build on the client-helper relationship. By presenting the core processes and skills in the chapters on work with individuals, Shulman shows how common elements exist across stages of helping and across different populations. These processes and skills reappear in the discussions of group, family, and community work.
Empowerment Series: A Comprehensive Worktext
by Charles Zastrow Sarah L. HessenauerUsing a plentiful selection of skill-building and self-evaluation exercises, Zastrow and Hessenauer's workbook-style text promotes the philosophy that students learn group leadership skills best by practicing them in class. <P><P>In SOCIAL WORK WITH GROUPS, 10th Edition, the authors discuss topics that are central to understanding group leadership: stages of groups, group dynamics, verbal and nonverbal communication, types of groups, and diversity in groups. <P><P>They also focus on helping students acquire the competencies and practice behaviors of the 2015 EPAS. With support from this book, your classroom becomes a lab where students can experience what it's like to work in and lead many kinds of groups. <P><P>Updated throughout with timely new topics and firsthand accounts from experienced social group work professionals, this edition also emphasizes the importance of social workers' self-care. .
Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society (Queenship and Power)
by Penelope NashThis book compares two successful, elite women, Empress Adelheid (931-999) and Countess Matilda (1046-1115), for their relative ability to retain their wealth and power in the midst of the profound social changes of the eleventh century. The careers of the Ottonian queen and empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda of Tuscany reveal a growth of opportunities for women to access wealth and power. These two women are analyzed under three categories: their relationships with family and friends, how they managed their property (particularly land), and how they ruled. This analysis encourages a better understanding of gender relations in both the past and the present.
The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great defied a deadly virus
by Lucy Ward&‘Sparkling history…with a fairytale atmosphere of sleigh rides, royal palaces and heroic risk-taking&’ The Times &‘It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book… a must-read&’ Jojo Moyes A killer virus…an all-powerful Empress…an encounter cloaked in secrecy…the astonishing true story. Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history it has killed untold millions. Back in the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept Europe, the first rumours emerged of an effective treatment: a mysterious method called inoculation. But a key problem remained: convincing people to accept the preventative remedy, the forerunner of vaccination. Arguments raged over risks and benefits, and public resistance ran high. As smallpox ravaged her empire and threatened her court, Catherine the Great took the momentous decision to summon the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale to St Petersburg to carry out a secret mission that would transform both their lives. Lucy Ward expertly unveils the extraordinary story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership and the fight to promote science over superstition. &‘A rich and wonderfully urgent work of history&’ Tristram Hunt
The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life of José Sarria
by Michael R GormanYou may be familiar with the tremendous life achievements of José Sarria, an integral player in the gay rights movement, but never before have you heard the intimate details of his incredible life as they are portrayed here. In The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life of José Sarria (winner of the Lammy Award in the transgender category), Michael Gorman exposes Sarria’s life in a frank manner and with a unique storytelling ability that simultaneously causes amusement and sadness. Sarria’s amazing life story tells of his perserverance to advance the cause of equality for gay citizens.At a time when gays were arrested, institutionalized, and castrated, Sarria did not try to hide his beliefs and convictions. Sarria was ahead of his time, becoming a significant figure in gay history and culture. You’ll find The Empress Is a Man fascinating as you read about the life of this truly courageous, outrageous, and remarkable man. Some of Sarria’s experiences and achievements you’ll read about include: being the first openly gay male to run for political office being one of America’s most important female impersonators entertaining throughout the world, live and on film postitively affecting the gay community founding an extremely successful charity fundraising organization being featured in a PBS documentary serving in the Army in The Battle of the Bulge in WWIIUntil recently, gay and lesbian stories were published in very limited venues and often at great personal risk, forcing knowledge of this history to be passed down orally. The Empress Is a Man reflects this tradition by telling much of the story in Sarria’s own words. Adding to the enjoyment and originality of this book is a structure similar to the dramatic style of a play or novel. Each section ends with an exciting climax, although the book is chronological in order. The Empress Is a Man is an untraditional book about an untraditional man.
The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century: Building the Atik Valide (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern History)
by Pinar KayaalpNurbanu (1525–1583) is one of the most prominent yet least studied royal women of the Ottoman dynasty. Her political and administrative career began when she was chosen as the favorite concubine of the crown prince Selim. Nurbanu’s authority increased when her son Murad was singled out as crown prince. By 1574, when her son, Murad III became Sultan, Nurbanu officially took on the title of Valide Sultan, or Queen Mother, holding the highest office of the imperial harem until her death in 1583. This book concentrates on the Atik Valide mosque complex, which constitutes the architectural embodiment of Nurbanu’s prestige, power and piety. The arrangement of the chapters is designed to enable readers to reconsider Ottoman imperial patronage practices of the late sixteenth century using the architectural enterprise of a remarkable woman as the common thread. Chapter 1 provides a general history of the wqaf institution to inform on its origins and evolution. Chapter 2 looks closely at the political dealings of Nurbanu, both in the domestic and the international sphere, building upon research concerning Ottoman royal women and power dynamics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chapter 3 presents a textual analysis of the written records pertaining to Nurbanu’s imperial mosque complex. Chapter 4 examines the distinctive physical qualities and functional features of the Atik Valide within its urban context. The book concludes by assessing to what extent Nurbanu was involved in the representation of her power and piety through the undertaking of her eponymous monument. Providing a complete study of the life and times of this Ottoman empress, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Ottoman studies, gender studies, history of art and architecture, Islamic studies, history of religion and Middle Eastern studies.
Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nagarjuna's Philosophy (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism #No.11)
by David F. BurtonEmptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.
The Emptiness of Affluence in Japan (Japan In The Modern World Ser.)
by Gavan McCormackAgainst the powerful image of Japan as a rising economic superpower, or even, in Ezra Vogel's influential formulation a deade ago, "Japan as number 1", this book explores the fragility, hubris and human and environmental costs of Japan's desperate drive for hyperdevelopment. As this economic superpower finds itself drifting, rudderless, through the decade, four seminal events seem to emblemise the enveloping crisis: the Kobe Earthquake, which the author shows to be no mere act of nature, but an event whose consequences are intimately bound up with desperate hypergrowth; The Ayum Rikyo poison gas attack, which struck at Japan's sense of security in its deepest senses (psychological and moral, as well as physical); the collapse of the LDP single-party rule after nearly 40 years, plunging Japan's superstable political system into crises manifested by implausible coalition with little more than a thirst to rule in common; and Japan's inability to come to terms with war respnsibility ever after 50 years, best symbolised by the Comfort Women issue and the government's hapless attempt to come up with an appropriate formula for recognising, apologising and making amends for wartime aggression and crimes. Gavan McCormack addresses these issues - which are political, economic, social cultural and moral in the most profound sense - directly in this book.
The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Japan In The Modern World Ser.)
by Gavan McCormack Norma FieldThis work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.
The Emptiness of the Image: Psychoanalysis and Sexual Differences
by Parveen AdamsThere has long been a politics around the way in which women are represented, with objection not so much to specific images as to a regime of looking which places the represented woman in a particular relationship to the spectator's gaze. Artists have sometimes avoided the representation of women altogether, but they are now producing images which challenge the regime. How do these images succeed in their challenge ? The Emptiness of the Image offers a psychoanalytic answer. Parveen Adams argues that, despite flaws in some of the details of its arguments, psychoanalytic theory retains an overwhelming explanatory strength in relation to questions of sexual difference and representation. She goes on to show how the issue of desire changes the way we can think of images and their effects. Throughout she discusses the work of theorists, artists and filmmakers such as Helene Deutsch, Catherine MacKinnon, Mary Kelly, Francis Bacon, Michael Powell and Della Grace. The Emptiness of the Image shows how the very space of representation can change to provide a new way of thinking the relation between the text and the spectator. It shows how psychoanalytic theory is supple enough to slide into and transform the most unexpected situations.
The Empty Cradle of Democracy: Sex, Abortion, and Nationalism in Modern Greece
by Alexandra HalkiasDuring the 1990s, Greece had a very high rate of abortion at the same time that its low birth rate was considered a national crisis. The Empty Cradle of Democracy explores this paradox. Alexandra Halkias shows that despite Greek Orthodox beliefs that abortion is murder, many Greek women view it as "natural" and consider birth control methods invasive. The formal public-sphere view is that women destroy the body of the nation by aborting future citizens. Scrutiny of these conflicting cultural beliefs enables Halkias's incisive critique of the cornerstones of modern liberal democracy, including the autonomous "individual" subject and a polity external to the private sphere. The Empty Cradle of Democracy examines the complex relationship between nationalism and gender and re-theorizes late modernity and violence by exploring Greek representations of human agency, the fetus, national identity, eroticism, and the divine. Halkias's analysis combines telling fragments of contemporary Athenian culture, Greek history, media coverage of abortion and the declining birth rate, and fieldwork in Athens at an obstetrics/gynecology clinic and a family-planning center. Halkias conducted in-depth interviews with one hundred and twenty women who had had two or more abortions and observed more than four hundred gynecological exams at a state family-planning center. She reveals how intimate decisions and the public preoccupation with the low birth rate connect to nationalist ideas of race, religion, freedom, resistance, and the fraught encounter between modernity and tradition. The Empty Cradle of Democracy is a startling examination of how assumptions underlying liberal democracy are betrayed while the nation permeates the body and understandings of gender and sexuality complicate the nation-building projects of late modernity.
Empty Fields, Empty Promises: A State-by-State Guide to Understanding and Transforming the Right to Farm (Rural Studies Series)
by Loka Ashwood Danielle Diamond Allen Franco Aimee Imlay Lindsay KuehnThe right to farm is essential to everyone's survival. Since the late 1970s, states across the nation have adopted so-called right-to-farm laws to limit nuisance suits loosely related to agriculture. But since their adoption, there has yet to be a comprehensive analysis of what these laws do and who they benefit. This book offers the first national analysis and guide to these laws. It reveals that they generally benefit the largest operators, like processing plants, while traditional farmers benefit the least. Disfavored most of all are those seeking to defend their homes and environment against multinational corporations that use right-to-farm laws to strip neighboring owners of their property rights. Through what the book calls the "midburden," right-to-farm laws dispossess the many in favor of the few, paving the path to rural poverty. Empty Fields, Empty Promises summarizes every state's right-to-farm laws to help readers track and navigate their local and regional legal landscape. The book concludes by offering paths forward for a more distributed and democratic agrifood system that achieves agricultural, rural, and environmental justice.
Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift
by Leo CharneyIn Empty Moments, Leo Charney describes the defining quality of modernity as "drift"--the experience of being unable to locate a stable sense of the present. Through an exploration of artistic, philosophical, and scientific interrogations of the experience of time, Charney presents cinema as the emblem of modern culture's preoccupation with the reproduction of the present. Empty Moments creates a catalytic dialogue among those who, at the time of the invention of film, attempted to define the experience of the fleeting present. Interspersing philosophical discussions with stylistically innovative prose, Charney mingles Proust's conception of time/memory with Cubism's attempt to interpret time through perspective and Surrealism's exploration of subliminal representations of the present. Other topics include Husserl's insistence that the present can only be fantasy or fabrication and the focus on impossibility, imperfection, and loss in Kelvin's laws of thermodynamics. Ultimately, Charney's work hints at parallels among such examples, the advent and popularity of cinema, and early film theory. A book with a structural modernity of its own, Empty Moments will appeal to those interested in cinema and its history, as well as to other historians, philosophers, literary, and cultural scholars of modernity.
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
by Darrell Bricker John Ibbitson**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ**'Riveting and vitally important' - Steven Pinker'A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change' - Anjana Ahuja, New StatesmanEmpty Planet offers a radical, provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape.For half a century, statisticians, pundits and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanisation, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline - and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and vital social services. There may be earth-shaking implications on a geopolitical scale as well. Empty Planet is a hugely important book for our times. Captivating and persuasive, it is a story about urbanisation, access to education and the empowerment of women to choose their own destinies. It is about the secularisation of societies and the vital role that immigration has to play in our futures.Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent - but that we can shape, if we choose to.
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
by John Ibbitson Darrell BrickerAn award-winning journalist and leading international social researcher make the provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different alarm. Rather than continuing to increase exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline—and in many countries, that decline has already begun. In Empty Planet, John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker find that a smaller global population will bring with it many benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States and Canada are well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism leads us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
by John Ibbitson Darrell Bricker**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ**'Riveting and vitally important' - Steven Pinker'A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change' - Anjana Ahuja, New StatesmanEmpty Planet offers a radical, provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape.For half a century, statisticians, pundits and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanisation, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline - and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and vital social services. There may be earth-shaking implications on a geopolitical scale as well. Empty Planet is a hugely important book for our times. Captivating and persuasive, it is a story about urbanisation, access to education and the empowerment of women to choose their own destinies. It is about the secularisation of societies and the vital role that immigration has to play in our futures.Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent - but that we can shape, if we choose to.
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
by John Ibbitson Darrell BrickerFrom the authors of the bestselling The Big Shift, a provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.
Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda
by Carolyn De La PeñaSugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of artificial sweeteners in the United States, Carolyn de la PeÑa blends popular culture with business and women's history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. She describes how saccharin, an accidental laboratory by-product, was transformed from a perceived adulterant into a healthy ingredient. As food producers and pharmaceutical companies worked together to create diet products, savvy women's magazine writers and editors promoted artificially sweetened foods as ideal, modern weight-loss aids, and early diet-plan entrepreneurs built menus and fortunes around pleasurable dieting made possible by artificial sweeteners. NutraSweet, Splenda, and their predecessors have enjoyed enormous success by promising that Americans, especially women, can "have their cake and eat it too," but Empty Pleasures argues that these "sweet cheats" have fostered troubling and unsustainable eating habits and that the promises of artificial sweeteners are ultimately too good to be true.
The Empty Pot
by DemiA long time ago in China there was a boy named Ping who loved flowers. Anything he planted burst into bloom. The Emperor loved flowers too. When it was time to choose an heir, he gave a flower seed to each child in the kingdom. "Whoever can show me their best in a year's time," he proclaimed, "shall succeed me to the throne!" Ping plants his seed and tends it every day. But month after month passes, and nothing grows. When spring comes, Ping must go to the Emperor with nothing but an empty pot.
The Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island
by Nils BubandtThe Empty Seashell explores what it is like to live in a world where cannibal witches are undeniably real, yet too ephemeral and contradictory to be an object of belief. In a book based on more than three years of fieldwork between 1991 and 2011, Nils Bubandt argues that cannibal witches for people in the coastal, and predominantly Christian, community of Buli in the Indonesian province of North Maluku are both corporeally real and fundamentally unknowable. Witches (known as gua in the Buli language or as suanggi in regional Malay) appear to be ordinary humans but sometimes, especially at night, they take other forms and attack people in order to kill them and eat their livers. They are seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The reality of gua, therefore, can never be pinned down. The title of the book comes from the empty nautilus shells that regularly drift ashore around Buli village. Convention has it that if you find a live nautilus, you are a gua. Like the empty shells, witchcraft always seems to recede from experience. Bubandt begins the book by recounting his own confusion and frustration in coming to terms with the contradictory and inaccessible nature of witchcraft realities in Buli. A detailed ethnography of the encompassing inaccessibility of Buli witchcraft leads him to the conclusion that much of the anthropological literature, which views witchcraft as a system of beliefs with genuine explanatory power, is off the mark. Witchcraft for the Buli people doesn't explain anything. In fact, it does the opposite: it confuses, obfuscates, and frustrates. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida's concept of aporia--an interminable experience that remains continuously in doubt--Bubandt suggests the need to take seriously people's experiential and epistemological doubts about witchcraft, and outlines, by extension, a novel way of thinking about witchcraft and its relation to modernity.