Christine Jeske
Helping people walk humbly in areas of injustice.
As a professor of cultural anthropology, I believe that practicing social and cultural analysis along with community engagement can be an act of reciprocal transformation, respect, and love. Learn with me in my newsletter Just Learning, as a speaker at your event, or in my numerous books and articles.
My current vocation is a mix of teaching, hospitality, parenting, and learning to live well in community. After a decade working in microfinance, refugee resettlement, community development, and teaching while living in Nicaragua, Northwest China, and South Africa, I returned to the Midwest where I grew up. I have an MBA in International Economic Development from Eastern University and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and have been teaching at Wheaton College for seven years. My home is an old Wisconsin farmhouse named the Sanctuary, complete with a dozen chickens, a couple of sheep, innumerable weeds, two grown children, and one wonderful husband. I am the author of three books, including The Laziness Myth, which explores what goes wrong with work and what people do about it. Currently I am researching how Christians envision and seek racial justice.
Read My Books
This Ordinary Adventure
We start out living the dream. We promise ourselves that every day will be an amazing day. Then we land back home―to the land of shopping malls and manicured lawns. And we wonder what has become of those amazing days. In This Ordinary Adventure Adam and Christine Jeske mine their experience, from riding motorcycles in Africa to dicing celery in Wisconsin, in search of a God who is always present and charging every moment with potential.
The Laziness Myth
When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, Christine Jeske invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The Laziness Myth challenges the widespread premise that hard work determines success by tracing the “laziness myth,” a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups.
Into the Mud
If we follow media accounts, the continent of Africa may seem to be little more than AIDS patients, malnourished babies, child soldiers, or a failing attempt to imitate the West. Though Christians today are increasingly concerned about injustice and human suffering, their effectiveness is limited by only knowing “bad news” and trite, feel-good solutions. Into the Mud takes readers beyond the headlines, into real stories of real people. Each of the interwoven stories and related discussion questions addresses a broader issue, including education, microfinance, health services, urbanization, refugee assistance, and more. Where ever their paths lead, readers will be challenged to enter more deeply into the thick of life’s mud.