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"Smokefree is a clever exploration of concepts of materiality, embodiment and sensory experience, and boundary crossing, as well as a challenge to apply our methods thoroughly and neutrally even on behaviors of which we disapprove. - Anthropology Review Database - Jack David Eller

Anthropologist Dennis challenges the pervasive anti-smoking agenda of most of anthropology and social science research. Even research that appears to look at smoking from the (recalcitrant) smoker’s point of view in reality is often doing so in service of more finely tailored anti-smoking messages. Dennis uncovers the complexity of smoking in, for example, how smokers experience the trail of smoke as it emanates from their lit cigarettes. Some people tell Dennis that they smoke because of smoking’s now demonized state. Dennis discovers that anti-smoking messages, such as pregnant women smokers giving birth to low weight babies, can be seen as an advantage to women who would like to give birth to small babies. People told Dennis how they mentally countered the graphic public health messages found throughout Australia. Many of Dennis’s findings come from casual conversations with smokers in Australia as they were smoking. Some of the time Dennis was herself smoking, which probably announced to the smoker that Dennis was without judgments. The book’s illustrations and ethnographic content from smokers is effective. Its many discussions of anthropological and philosophical theories make this book best suited to graduate students and scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. - CHOICE"

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