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This commentary discusses the methodological utility of ethnography within the medical space. Whilst a general consensus affirms that ethnography aligns with qualitative approaches, as identified within the existing medical literature, here, we demonstrate how quantitative [positivist] methods can also be incorporated. This paper begins by contextualising ethnographic approaches within medical contexts by demonstrating its empirical value within the existing literature. Next, we discuss the interconnection between the practice of 'doctoring' and ethnographic research, whereby doctors themselves use forms of inductive and deductive reasoning to treat and manage patients in their everyday context. This philosophical discussion not only links to the everyday practice of medical practitioners, but also critically reflects on the role of the first author, as a diagnostic radiographer. Lastly, this paper identifies the virtues of ethnographic research for medical students and/or medical doctors whereby the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (within an ethnographic methodology) can lead to new empirical and methodological insights, enabling the creation of alternate research strategies and evidence. This methodological strategy may be best considered amongst medical students and/or early career medical researchers, but we also anticipate it to resonate and open further discussion with experienced medical practitioners and researchers transnationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community centrality is a growing requirement of social science. The field's research practices are increasingly expected to conform to prescribed relationships with the people studied. Expectations about community centrality influence scholarly activities. These expectations can pressure social scientists to adhere to models of community involvement that are immediate and that include community-based co-investigators, advisory boards, and liaisons. In this context, disregarding community centrality can be interpreted as failure. This paper considers evolving norms about the centrality of community in social science. It problematises community inclusion and discusses concerns about the impact of community centrality on incremental theory development, academic integrity, freedom of speech, and the value of liberal versus communitarian knowledge. Through the application of a constructivist approach, this paper argues that social science in which community is omitted or on the periphery is not failed science, because not all social science requires a community base to make a genuine and valuable contribution. The utility of community centrality is not necessarily universal across all social science pursuits. The practices of knowing within social science disciplines may be difficult to transfer to a community. These practices of knowing require degrees of specialisation and interest that not all communities may want or have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, health inequalities policy shifted during the Labour term (1997–2010) from initially strong commitments to tackling the ‘upstream’ social determinants of health to a technically-driven emphasis on lifestyle risk factors and healthcare access. This multi-sited study, based in and around Westminster (2006–2007), extends our understanding of how political context influences policy-making by drawing from anthropological studies of policy. Qualitative material from central government is put into conversation with theory concerning policy as zones of practices. The paper explores the bristly process through which public health, healthcare and corporate interests vied to shape the political agenda for health inequalities; the selective use of evidence by civil servants in accordance with their perceptions of what politicians conceive to be electorally palatable; the silencing of critique of the dominant narrative about evidence-based policy; and how technical aids developed a life of their own – as a result of which, health inequalities policy ended up being depoliticised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how children and families of diverse ethnic backgrounds perceive, understand and treat symptoms related to functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). It is questioned how different ways of dealing with medical uncertainty (symptoms, diagnosis) may influence treatment pathways. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 43 children of 38 family groups of immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds. The analysis takes into account (a) the perceived symptoms; (b) the meaning attributed to them; and (c) the actions taken to relieve them. The social and cultural contexts that permeate these symptoms, meanings and actions were also examined. It is found that, in light of diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainty, non-immigrant families are more likely to consult health professionals. Immigrant families more readily rely upon home remedies, family support and, for some, religious beliefs to temper the uncertainty linked to abdominal pain. Furthermore, non-immigrant children lead a greater quest for legitimacy of their pain at home while most immigrant families place stomach aches in the range of normality. Intracultural variations nuance these findings, as well as family dynamics. It is concluded that different courses of action and family dynamics reveal that uncertainty is dealt with in multiple ways. Family support, the network, and trust in a child's expression of distress are key elements in order to tolerate uncertainty. Lastly, the medical encounter is described as a space permeated with relational uncertainty given the different registers of expression inherent within a cosmopolitan milieu. Narrative practices being an essential dynamic of this encounter, it is questioned whether families’ voices are equally heard in these clinical spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This explorative and qualitative study, based on 27 interviews during two months of fieldwork, describes pese, an affliction of the skin that has conspicuously stayed under the radar of medico-anthropological research in Kigoma, a rural city in the northwest Tanzania. The condition reminds of a locally better known condition labeled kisigo, raising the question why two concepts of the same affliction exist side by side. It seems indicative that the two illness concepts stem from different cultures and that each specializes in an explanatory model: the former witchcraft (sorcery) and the latter spirit possession. Moreover, a symbiotic relation seems to exist between the healing traditions of the Bembe and the Ha. Government policies prohibiting witchcraft and targeting traditional healers seem to have created a situation where witchcraft practices and beliefs have come to represent the periphery and survive there, clandestinely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies on African solidarity, survival strategies and the 'therapy man agement group' [J. M. Janzen (1978) The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire , Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press] have suggested that institutionalized relationships in the form of networks or groups afford an individual access to resources, also in case of illness. My study reconsiders these arguments in ethnographic research about everyday illness management. It focuses on a heterogeneous urban neighbourhood in Abidjan and analyses who offers help to whom, and what kind of help people offer to one another. The findings show that social networks play an important but at the same time restricted role in illness management. The main source of assistance in response to affliction is household members. Apart from emotional and moral support, relatives living outside the household and non-kin play only a minor role. The social network offers help only sporadically, and very often the sick person has to ask friends and family several times before she or he receives financial or practical support. The emphasis given to social networks in the existing literature is often overestimated, at least in the case of illness. These findings implicate the importance of strengthening informal and formal security systems, especially in an urban context of economic hardship and political insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]