Shlomo Deshen is Professor of Social Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University. A past president of the Israel Anthropological Association, he is the author of The Mellah Society: Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco.

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Field, the Questions and the Researcher Part I: The Body 2. The Use of the Senses 3. The Use of Guide Dogs and Long Canes Part II: The Domestic Circle 4. Coming of Age 5. Raising Sighted Children Part III: Reaching for Material Needs 6. Seeking Employment 7. The Work Experience 8. The Experience of Support I: The Blindness System 9. The Experience of Support II: Living with the System Part IV: Reaching for Fulfillment: Friendship, Dignity, Integration 10. The Dilemma of Association among Blind People 11. The Alternative of Ethnicity 12. The Alternative of Citizenship 13. The Dilemma of Integration among the Sighted 14. Conclusion: From Etlmography of Blindness to Anthropology of Disability Notes References Index

"This book provides an extraordinary look into the lives of sightless people. It is both a deeply moving account of the difficulties and contradictions with which sightless people struggle while at the same time showing how the lives of such people are produced by a certain constellation of cultural and social factors. Deshen has done a superb job of depicting in rich ethnographic detail the experience of being sightless while at the same time making an important theoretical contribution to the anthropology of disability. He shows in numerous and detailed ways how culture and the role of symbolization shape the experience of sightless people. His discussions range from the sightless person's decision to use a cane to the ways in which sightless people are incorporated into wider social networks and institutions." — Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, Stanford University