2,562 results on '"Anthropology, Medical"'
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2. Not-Quite-Dead: Ontological Careographies and the Ambiguous Fetal Body in the Context of Disability-Selective Pregnancy Termination in Austria.
- Author
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Siegl V
- Subjects
- Humans, Austria, Female, Pregnancy, Fetal Death, Disabled Persons, Fetus, Adult, Anthropology, Medical, Abortion, Induced ethics
- Abstract
Starting from the unsettling ambiguity of the aborted but not-quite-dead fetus, I scrutinize how clinical staff interpret, decide on, and grapple with fetal life signs following disability-selective pregnancy terminations in Austria. Understanding their practices as attempts to provide certainty in a context of ontological and moral uncertainty, I conceptualize them as acts of care that contribute to an intricate "ontological careography" and facilitate classifying the not-quite-dead as an already-dead fetus. I show that the interpretation of life signs is not a simple matter of biological "facts" - what is ultimately at stake is the active making of life and death.
- Published
- 2024
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3. Time and ADHD in Danish Families: Mutual Affect Through Rhythm.
- Author
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Rasmussen GV, Meinert L, and Flaherty MG
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- Humans, Denmark, Male, Female, Adult, Child, Affect physiology, Adolescent, Middle Aged, Time, Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Family ethnology
- Abstract
Based on fieldwork in Danish families living with ADHD, we expand on Nielsen's insight that ADHD is experienced as a state of desynchronization by showing how family members' rhythms mutually affect each other. We argue that ADHD is not only a biological and psychiatric condition, but also a temporal and socially responsive phenomenon. The intensity of ADHD is influenced by mutual affect in families and by general life circumstances. Families constitute bodily networks through which sensations, moods, rhythms, and practices spread and are passed down through generations. Yet, families use various time work strategies to manage rhythm affect.
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- 2024
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4. On the Affectivity of Touch: Enacting Bodies in Dutch Osteopathy.
- Author
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Groenevelt I and Slatman J
- Subjects
- Humans, Netherlands ethnology, Touch physiology, Female, Male, Anthropology, Medical, Osteopathic Medicine
- Abstract
Osteopathy is a complementary treatment method that targets motor restrictions and enhances motility through touch. While recent studies have explored the functions, dimensions, and effects of touch in osteopathy, there is a lack of research on how touch renders bodies intelligible - or what bodies, for that matter. In this article, we use the verb to affect/to be affected to explore how bodies become known by and to Dutch osteopaths, and how the senses play a role in this. Our analysis shows how touch allows osteopaths to affect and be affected by their patients' bodies - as well as by their own.
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- 2024
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5. Healing with Ayahuasca the Plant Teacher: Psychedelic Metaphoricity and Polyontologies.
- Author
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Gearin AK
- Subjects
- Humans, Peru ethnology, Hallucinogens, Shamanism, Metaphor, Female, Anthropology, Medical, Banisteriopsis chemistry
- Abstract
Shamans, neo-shamans, atheists, and others describe gaining special knowledge from drinking ayahuasca, supporting the cross-cultural idea of ayahuasca as a plant teacher. While secular enthusiasts interpret this metaphorically, animists and others take it literally. This article examines ontological collisions at a healing retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, considering Shipibo shamans and their international clients. It explores how embodied experiences, such as purging and visions, inform both literal and metaphorical views of healing and illness. By addressing incommensurable ontologies, the article highlights how a polyontological framework approaches ontological collision without necessarily privileging specific ways of knowing.
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- 2024
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6. The Persistence of Traditional Healing for Mental Illness Among the Korekore People in Rushinga District, Zimbabwe.
- Author
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Jakarasi M
- Subjects
- Humans, Zimbabwe ethnology, Female, Male, Adult, Middle Aged, Patient Acceptance of Health Care ethnology, Medicine, Traditional, Anthropology, Medical, Mental Disorders ethnology, Mental Disorders therapy, Medicine, African Traditional
- Abstract
Despite concerted attempts by colonial governments to stamp out traditional healing practices, the Korekore-speaking Shona people have continued to seek healing for mental illness from traditional healers in present-day Zimbabwe. In this article, I discuss the health-seeking trajectories of Korekore people when confronted with mental illness, particularly when and why they seek out traditional healing, and the role that traditional healers play in the quest for therapy.
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- 2024
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7. Dangerous Knowledge and Proxy-Reasons: A Kurdish Woman's Therapeutic Attempts.
- Author
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Weiss N
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Turkey ethnology, Adult, Physician-Patient Relations, Warfare, Torture psychology, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice ethnology, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Jihan, a former Kurdish guerilla fighter, struggles to gain medical treatment for the health problems she suffers as a result of war and trauma. The provision of care in Turkey has been motivated by ethno-political security concerns. Therefore, medical encounters are characterized by silences, not-knowing and of averting danger. Based on theories of ignorance, I explore how experiences of war and torture constitute dangerous knowledge that are difficult to share in a context, without a guaranteed therapeutic safe space. Patient and doctor navigate mistrust, silences and proxy-reasons in an attempt to deal with the traumata and violent experiences left unsaid.
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- 2024
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8. The imaginarium of self-care: Speculative futures of hope for student mental health.
- Author
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Gordon L
- Subjects
- Humans, Canada, Young Adult, Mental Disorders therapy, Mental Disorders ethnology, Male, Female, Imagination, Universities, Hope, Adult, Adolescent, Anthropology, Medical, Students psychology, Self Care, Mental Health ethnology
- Abstract
Recent ethnographies have investigated self-care as a socially driven configuration of care. This analysis engages theorizing on the imagination to expose new social dimensions of self-care in cases of mental health as embodied and communal. Based on fieldwork across Canadian universities and in conversation with students, campus wellness providers, and a group of psychiatric epidemiologists seeking to understand the mental health treatment choices of students, this article examines how these different subjects activate what I call an imaginarium of self-care. Among young adults in Canada, mounting social ills that go therapeutically unaccounted for have relocated forms of self-care into the imagination through play and world-building in ways that challenge the distinction between material and speculative healing. Attending to the imaginative dimensions of self-care makes coherent the ways that young people are grasping for hope in a world that-when embodied-resists recovery., (© 2024 American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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9. Regimes of pain: The geopolitics of cancer palliation in Pakistan.
- Author
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Hayat Z
- Subjects
- Humans, Pakistan, Neoplasms, Male, Anthropology, Medical, Palliative Care, Cancer Pain drug therapy, Morphine therapeutic use, Analgesics, Opioid therapeutic use
- Abstract
This article examines how militarized regimes of narcotics and price control sustain unpalliated cancer pain in Pakistan. It shows how these regimes of control-reimagined as "regimes of pain"-render morphine, a cheap, effective opiate analgesic, scarce in hospitals. Meanwhile, heroin, morphine's illegal derivative, proliferates in illicit circuits. The article highlights a devastating consequence of the global wars against drugs and "terror": the consignment of cancer patients to agonizing end-of-life pain. Widening the analytic lens upon palliation beyond bodies and their clinical encounters, the article offers a geopolitics of palliation. It shows how narcovigilance targeting illicit drugs has the perverse effect of throttling morphine's licit supply. It shows further how unviably low price ceilings, purported to ensure a poor population's access to morphine, render it scarce on the official market. These mutually reinforcing regimes of control thus thwart their own purported objectives, consigning cancer patients to preventable, yet unpalliated, pain., (© 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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10. Towards a social determination of health framework for understanding climate disruption and health-disease processes.
- Author
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Hasemann Lara JE, Díaz de León A, Daser D, Doering-White J, and Frank-Vitale A
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- Humans, Mexico ethnology, United States, Climate Change, Honduras ethnology, Transients and Migrants, Male, Female, Violence ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Social Determinants of Health ethnology
- Abstract
We compare the social determinants of health (SDOH) and the social determination of health (SDET) from the school of Latin American Social Medicine/Collective Health. Whereas SDET acknowledges how capitalist rule continues to shape global structures and public health concerns, SDOH proffers neoliberal solutions that obscure much of the violence and dispossession that influence contemporary migration and health-disease experiences. Working in simultaneous ethnographic teams, the researchers here interviewed Honduran migrants in their respective sites of Honduras, Mexico, and the United States. These interlocutors connected their experiences of disaster and health-disease to lack of economic resources and political corruption. Accordingly, we provide an elucidation of the liberal and dehumanizing foundations of SDOH by relying on theorizations from Africana philosophy and argue that the social determination of health model better captures the intersecting historical inequalities that structure relationships between climate, health-disease, and violence., (© 2024 American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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11. A crisis of confidence? Intervening in vaccine hesitancy in North Dakota.
- Author
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Rubinstein EB and Heinemann LL
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- Humans, North Dakota, SARS-CoV-2, Health Personnel psychology, COVID-19 prevention & control, Anthropology, Medical, COVID-19 Vaccines, Vaccination Hesitancy psychology
- Abstract
In November 2020, North Dakota reported a higher number of cases and deaths per capita from COVID-19 than any other state in the United States. Several months later, it reported one of the country's highest rates of vaccine hesitancy, leading to the development and implementation of the state-funded and physician-led "Vaccine Champion" ("VaxChamp") program. Glossing the primary problem as one of "provider confidence," the VaxChamp program emphasized a standardized, scalable intervention that targeted healthcare providers directly, and patients only indirectly. Although the program hit its quantitative benchmarks, a qualitative inquiry into the program's history and context reveals multiple crises of confidence, many beyond the bioscientific domain of the program's focus. Drawing from work in medical and linguistic anthropology, we describe and analyze the "multiple levers of vaccine confidence" at play in the intervention and its surrounding context, as well as how these crises of confidence emerged., (© 2024 American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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12. A moral economy of care: How clinical discourses perpetuate Indigenous-specific discrimination and racism in western Canadian emergency departments.
- Author
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Muller da Silva M
- Subjects
- Humans, Canada ethnology, Morals, Racism ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Emergency Service, Hospital
- Abstract
Recent research has unveiled the pervasiveness with which Indigenous patients are subjected to racialized stereotypes within the Canadian health system. Because discrimination in health care is associated with poor health outcomes and undertreated illness, there is a need to better understand how racism is perpetuated systemically in order to rectify the policies, practices, and attitudes that enable it. This article outlines a moral economy of care in emergency departments in western Canada by exploring the discourses that medical professionals employ when discussing cases of medical racism. While these discourses respond to the everyday realities of working in hospitals, they are also rooted in the colonial genealogy of health care in Canada and perpetuated by neoliberal shifts in health care services. By exploring the moral economy of care, this article sheds light on the way pervasive discourses contribute to reproducing and circulating Indigenous-specific racism and its role in decision-making., (© 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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13. Sitting in Wait: Everyday Caregiving Practices for People with Dementia in Rural South Africa.
- Author
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Brear MR, Nkovana T, and Manderson L
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- Humans, South Africa ethnology, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Aged, Dementia ethnology, Dementia therapy, Caregivers psychology, Rural Population, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Practice theories offer potential to reveal, understand, and attribute value to the everyday thoughts and actions of dementia caregivers. Drawing on ethnographic data from research in rural South Africa, on everyday dementia care practices, we highlight the profound importance of mundane practices - especially "sitting in wait" - for optimizing wellbeing of people with dementia who are cared for at home. We draw attention to the structural drivers of homebased (informal) care, which is underpinned by state inaction. This situates the act of sitting in wait as both an act of care and an embodied form of structural powerlessness.
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- 2024
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14. Precarity and Hope at the Intersections of HIV and Cervical Cancer in a Johannesburg Clinic.
- Author
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Stadler J and Scorgie F
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, South Africa, Adult, Middle Aged, Uterine Cervical Neoplasms, Anthropology, Medical, HIV Infections, Hope
- Abstract
In a tragically ironic twist, antiretroviral therapy (ART) that promised an end to AIDS ushered in a syndemic of viral cancers, transforming hope to despair. In this article we draw from the illness narratives of HIV positive women attending a cervical cancer screening clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, and chart their pathways from HIV to cancer, and their quest for treatment. Our interlocutors described protracted struggles to access surgical procedures to prevent the onset of cervical cancer. Dealt a double blow of HIV and cervical cancer, women's narratives reveal the intersections of exposure to pathogens and the precarity of hope.
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- 2024
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15. Vulnerable Lives, Irrelevant Deaths? Dying Alone and Receiving Flawed Care in an Institution for the Aged in Lima, Peru.
- Author
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Zegarra Chiappori M
- Subjects
- Humans, Peru ethnology, Female, Aged, Male, Ill-Housed Persons, Vulnerable Populations, Aged, 80 and over, Middle Aged, Long-Term Care, Homes for the Aged, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
This ethnographic exploration of death in the Peruvian context draws on fieldwork among abandoned-both by their families and the state-older adults in a shelter for the homeless in Lima, Peru. I examine the conditions and local forces that shape the ways people at this institution socially and physically die. My argument is that people in this long-term care facility who have lived entire lives on the margins, usually, end up having irrelevant deaths to their families, other residents of the institution, and the Peruvian state. At this shelter, dying in an irrelevant way means dying without companionship from family members and receiving poor and flawed care from the institution that shelters them.
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- 2024
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16. Ethical and Epistemological Implications of Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork as a Researcher-cum-Clinician in Brussels, Belgium.
- Author
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Lafaut D and Dikomitis L
- Subjects
- Belgium ethnology, Humans, Transients and Migrants, Research Personnel ethics, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
We draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Brussels (Belgium) on the health care experiences of undocumented migrants. We explore the implications of the double position of the ethnographer, who is both a researcher and a practicing doctor. We describe how the intimate knowledge the ethnographer-cum-clinician holds about the health care system influenced and shaped the data collection, analysis and subsequent policy recommendations. We examine the ethical dilemmas in conducting research from an engaged position about care practices toward vulnerable populations in one's own professional field. We conclude with recommendations on how to challenge and interrupt complexities faced by multi-positioned ethnographers.
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- 2024
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17. "The Best I Could": Future Orientations for Danish Women with Gestational Diabetes.
- Author
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Brueckner Johansen A and Navne LE
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Pregnancy, Denmark, Adult, Genetic Testing, Precision Medicine, Diabetes, Gestational ethnology, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
The introduction of personalized medicine marks a shift in pregnancy-related screening, from fetal to maternal health risks putting the pregnant woman's future orientations center stage. Drawing on fieldwork from pregnancy outpatient clinics and 11 interviews with pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes and offered genetic testing, we use their experiences of time to explore how futurity is reshaped by notions of early detection and at-riskness. We offer the concept of "future prism" to capture how multiple situations of orienting toward the future shape and circumscribe one's experience of the future - an orientation that makes genetic testing almost impossible to refuse.
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- 2024
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18. Controlling the Diabetic Body? Managing Chronic Illness with Wearable Technology.
- Author
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Engström L
- Subjects
- Humans, Chronic Disease therapy, Female, Male, Adult, Wearable Electronic Devices, Anthropology, Medical, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 therapy
- Abstract
I explore the experience of managing type 1 diabetes with wearable technology. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic illness which requires continuous maintenance to keep the blood glucose levels within range. Using autoethnography, I investigate both the practices of translating information from technology and from senses, and also from health authorities, into practices. I conclude that the management of type 1 diabetes is informed by an urge to control the body, but this situation can be understood otherwise from a logic of care.
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- 2024
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19. Collective Sensemaking and Healthcare Workers' Ripple Effect Influencing Vaccine Hesitancy in West Michigan.
- Author
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Hedges K and Willson M
- Subjects
- Humans, Michigan, Female, Adult, Male, Attitude of Health Personnel, Trust, SARS-CoV-2, Middle Aged, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Health Personnel psychology, COVID-19 prevention & control, COVID-19 ethnology, COVID-19 Vaccines administration & dosage, Vaccination Hesitancy psychology, Vaccination Hesitancy ethnology
- Abstract
The social efficacy of vaccines has been a central concern around COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates. As partners on the Vaccinate West Michigan Coalition, we conducted a rapid ethnographic assessment project among adults living in West Michigan. Three case studies are presented to convey the nuanced context around decisions with a focus on the influence of fear, trust, and the ripple effect of healthcare workers' (HCW) beliefs around vaccines. While HCWs' attitudes and beliefs influence their patients, the unique contribution of this study is its focus on how HCWs' perceptions influence friends and family members.
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- 2024
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20. "As Long as There's a Glimmer of Hope, I'm Willing to Try": The Moral Experiences of Parental Pursuit for Autism Therapy in Urban China.
- Author
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An M
- Subjects
- Humans, China ethnology, Male, Female, Child, Adult, Anthropology, Medical, Parents psychology, Autistic Disorder therapy, Autistic Disorder ethnology, Autistic Disorder psychology, Morals
- Abstract
In today's China, countless parents embark on a journey of moral peril in search of treatment for their children with autism, navigating a bustling yet chaotic market of therapies. Based on 13 months of fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta, this study examines how the boom of China's autism therapy industry has plunged parents, who are relentlessly striving for their children's futures, into deeper vulnerability. I view the "ethics of trying" as parental enactment of their moral agency in seeking therapy and reveal how it serves as a moral engine for the industry's growth in the early 21st century, as well as how it leads to moral tragedies for parents as new norms of therapeutic choice emerge with government and professional guidance compelling them to make optimal therapeutic choices within a critical developmental window. Although parental efforts to avoid "agent-regret" can paradoxically lead to significant remorse, the moral tragedy they encounter can also prompt reflection and reevaluation of their approach to their child's condition.
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- 2024
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21. Sound Baths, Trauma Talk, and the Wellness Paradox in the USA.
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Sobo EJ
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- Humans, California, Female, Male, Adult, Baths, United States, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Yoga-informed sound bath providers orchestrate vibrations from singing bowls, chimes, gongs, and other simple instruments to promote client well-being - sometimes in ways that create a trauma trap. Drawing on immersive research with sound bath providers and receivers in California, USA, I explore how these ritual performances feed on and fuel narratives regarding trauma, stress, and dysregulation, diverting attention from structural and cultural factors creating said disharmony. Beyond thereby ensuring a market, they can perpetuate a trauma-informed self-identification and subjectivity that harmonizes with the American work ethic, diminishes nonproductive sensual enjoyment, promotes self-care over community care, undermines resilience, and amplifies suffering.
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- 2024
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22. Pharmaceuticalization and Care Coordination in New York City Outpatient Mental Health.
- Author
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Aggarwal NK
- Subjects
- Humans, New York City, Female, Male, Adult, Mental Disorders therapy, Mental Disorders ethnology, Outpatients, Middle Aged, Ambulatory Care organization & administration, Psychiatry organization & administration, Anthropology, Medical, Mental Health Services organization & administration
- Abstract
US government quality measures prioritize pharmaceuticalization and care coordination to promote patient treatment adherence. How these measures affect outpatient mental health service delivery and patient-provider communication where psychiatrists and nonphysicians collaborate is understudied. Analyzing 500 hours of participant-observation, 117 appointments, and 98 interviews with 45 new patients and providers, I show that psychiatrists and social workers coordinated care by encouraging medications and seeing two mental health providers as the default treatment, irrespective of patient preferences. Ethnographic perspectives crucially account for models of service delivery and provider behaviors in researching treatment adherence.
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- 2024
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23. Pregnancy As Window of Opportunity? A Danish RCT on Physical Activity During Pregnancy.
- Author
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Bønnelycke J, Larsen M, and Jespersen AP
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Pregnancy, Denmark, Adult, Exercise, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Pregnancy is seen as a window of opportunity for health interventions, with the potential to produce long-term health changes for mother and child. The RCT FitMum investigates the effects of different regimes of physical activity during pregnancy. We suggest that rather than hitting a window of opportunity, the trial works in choreography with different timescapes through the processes of management of time. These timescapes are characterized by linear progression and futurity, alongside composite, complex time. We reconceptualize the intervention as a navigation of flows and passages in collective efforts, providing a situated and sustainable approach to interventions.
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- 2024
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24. Making it Work: Everyday Life and Healthcare with Multiple Chronic Illnesses in Denmark.
- Author
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Skovgaard AL, Tjørnhøj-Thomsen T, Johansson Jørgensen M, and Høybye MT
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- Humans, Denmark ethnology, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Aged, Chronic Disease ethnology, Chronic Disease therapy, Adult, Multiple Chronic Conditions therapy, Multiple Chronic Conditions ethnology, Aged, 80 and over, Delivery of Health Care ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Multimorbidity
- Abstract
A growing concern in clinical literature with the "treatment burden" of living with multimorbidity raises questions about how we can study and produce knowledge on the impact of health care. In this article, we draw on ethnographic material from fieldwork among people with multimorbidity in Denmark and recent theorization on "values" in health care, to show how an ongoing "trying out" and ways of "just getting on with it" are enacted in illness trajectories marked by multimorbidity. Our findings point to the importance of attending to the subject positions that particular healthcare relations and encounters make possible.
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- 2024
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25. Health Care Delays and Social Suffering Among Indigenous People with Diabetic Foot Complications in Mexico.
- Author
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Montesi L, Ramírez-Rojas MG, and Elizarrarás-Rivas J
- Subjects
- Humans, Mexico ethnology, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Indigenous Peoples, Adult, Health Services Accessibility, Rural Population, Aged, Indians, North American ethnology, Diabetic Foot ethnology, Diabetic Foot therapy, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Diabetic foot (DF) is a leading cause of nontraumatic lower-extremity amputations, premature death, and a sign of social inequality in diabetes treatment. In Mexico, the incidence of DF is on the rise yet little is known about its impact among indigenous people, a disadvantaged group. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Oaxaca and analysis of institutional health-data, in this article we show the health care delays that rural indigenous people face when dealing with DF. Indigenous people's uncertainty regarding their right to health and the structural barriers to medical care favor DF complications, a phenomenon that should be read as social suffering. Since health data concerning indigenous health care service users is patchy and imprecise, indigenous people's social suffering is invisibilized. This omission or partiality in the official records limits public health decision-making and undermines the human rights of the population.
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- 2024
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26. Adoption of Diabetes Technology in Denmark: Continuous Glucose Monitor as Time-Machine.
- Author
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Anesen AA
- Subjects
- Humans, Denmark, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Aged, Adult, Blood Glucose, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 therapy, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 blood, Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring instrumentation, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Health technologies to monitor glucose values are an important part of daily diabetes self-care. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in Denmark with 14 people with type 2 diabetes, I explore people's experience of living with Continuous Glucose Monitoring. This new technology automatically measures glucose levels throughout the day but is not yet common in type 2 diabetes treatment in Denmark. In this article, I capture the social shaping of Continuous Glucose Monitoring, employing the concept of time. I show how adoption of the technology is embedded in a form of biographical time. This refers to people's use of the technology linked to their stories about themselves. Drawing on a notion of habitus, people's embodied past experiences and future prospects come to shape its use, I propose. My main claim is that while people with diabetes implement the technology into their lives in unique ways, adapting it to their circumstances and social conditions, practice of Continuous Glucose Monitoring reproduce social structures. This is evinced, I argue, in people's tinkering with the technology and the frames of reference used to inform it. I introduce the term "tinkering in time", highlighting the introduction of new health technology within the frame of lived human time.
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- 2024
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27. [Social medicine and the social sciences in Latin America: conceptual tensions for the transformation of public health in the 20th centuryMedicina social e ciências sociais na América Latina: tensões conceituais para a transformação da saúde pública no século XX].
- Author
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Castro A
- Abstract
The development of public health in Latin America during the 20th century combined, early on, the social medicine framework on the social, political, and environmental origins of disease with the contributions of medical anthropological fieldwork. Despite the hegemony of the medical model, the surge of the preventive medicine framework further legitimized the involvement of social scientists in the study of the multicausality of disease. However, the limitations brought by the preventive medicine model's lack of historical and political contextualization gave way to the Latin American social medicine movement, which was grounded in historical materialism, and the development of both critical epidemiology and critical medical anthropology., Competing Interests: Conflicto de intereses. Ninguno declarado.
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- 2024
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28. "They think we wear loincloths": Spatial stigma, coloniality, and physician migration in Puerto Rico.
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Padilla M, Varas-Diaz N, Rodríguez-Madera S, Vertovec J, Rivera-Custodio J, Rivera-Bustelo K, Mercado-Rios C, Matiz-Reyes A, Santiago-Santiago A, González-Font Y, Ramos-Pibernus A, and Grove K
- Subjects
- Puerto Rico ethnology, Humans, Female, Male, Adult, United States, Middle Aged, Anthropology, Medical, Physicians psychology, Colonialism, Social Stigma, Emigration and Immigration
- Abstract
Puerto Rico (PR) is facing an unprecedented healthcare crisis due to accelerating migration of physicians to the mainland United States (US), leaving residents with diminishing healthcare and excessively long provider wait times. While scholars and journalists have identified economic factors driving physician migration, our study analyzes the effects of spatial stigma within the broader context of coloniality as unexamined dimensions of physician loss. Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews with physicians throughout PR and the US, we identified how stigmatizing meanings are attached to PR, its people, and its biomedical system, often incorporating colonial notions of the island's presumed backwardness, lagging medical technology, and lack of cutting-edge career opportunities. We conclude that in addition to economically motivated policies, efforts to curb physician migration should also address globally circulating ideas about PR, acknowledge their roots in coloniality, and valorize local responses to the crisis that are in danger of being lost to history., (© 2024 American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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29. The woman is the active agent: General practitioners and the agentive displacement of abortion in Ireland.
- Author
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McCaffrey B
- Subjects
- Humans, Ireland, Female, Pregnancy, Anthropology, Medical, General Practitioners, Abortion, Induced
- Abstract
After the legalization of abortion in 2018, Ireland needed clinicians to become abortion providers and make this political win a medical reality. Yet Irish doctors had next-to-no training in abortion care, and barriers ranging from stigma to economic pressures in the healthcare system impacted doctors' desire to volunteer. How did hundreds of Irish doctors make the shift from family doctor to abortion provider? Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2017 and 2020, this article explores the process by which Irish general practitioners became abortion providers, attending to the material impact of medical technologies on that journey. Drawing from medical anthropologists who have examined similar themes of agency, pharmaceuticals, and medico-legal frameworks within the topic of assisted dying, I build on Anita Hannig's idea of "agentive displacement" to frame the productive impact of abortion pills on this transition., (© 2024 American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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30. Ebola lessons: Did prior epidemic experience protect against the spread of COVID-19 in Sierra Leone?
- Author
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McLean KE
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- Humans, Sierra Leone epidemiology, SARS-CoV-2, Female, Male, Adult, Trust, Middle Aged, Epidemics, Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola epidemiology, Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola prevention & control, COVID-19 prevention & control, COVID-19 epidemiology, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a re-examination of public health preparedness with an emphasis on lessons learned following the West African Ebola epidemic. However, much of this work focuses on technological solutions rather than social learning. Drawing upon anthropological work, this paper examines how Sierra Leoneans prepared for COVID-19 through a lens of "embodied epidemic memory." Findings reveal that while people felt more empowered to respond to COVID-19 due to their past experiences, traumatic memories from the Ebola outbreak also sparked logics of fear and avoidance, driven by mistrust toward the state and its healthcare system. As a result, people avoided healthcare facilities, and rumors concerning government corruption threatened mitigation efforts. While local populations should be better leveraged for their existing epidemic expertise, greater attention is needed to the "higher hanging fruit" of preparedness: restoring trust in the government's ability to respond to epidemics., (© 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.)
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- 2024
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31. Birthing hostages: Haitian women's stories of maternal medicine, debt, and hospital detention.
- Author
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Jordan A
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Haiti ethnology, Pregnancy, Maternal Health Services, Adult, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
What does it mean that hospitals in Haiti have become widespread sites of "kidnapping" for mothers and babies? In at least 46 countries, including Haiti, indebted patients are extralegally held prisoner in hospitals until family members, kin, outside groups, or charities pay their outstanding bills. The majority of those detained globally are women following complicated births. This article introduces and situates the global problem of "hospital detention" as it is practiced in Haiti, tying it to transnational architectures that target Black reproduction in global health. In this piece, Senisha and Mari share their experiences of detention, revealing the practice as continuous with other forms of coercion, neglect, and violence they face in seeking safe births, and highlighting the communal care, refusals, and acts of self-liberation that oppose these oppressions., (© 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.)
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
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32. Reproductive gerrymandering, bureaucratic violence, and the erosion of abortion access in the United States.
- Author
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Basmajian AL
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Pregnancy, United States, Violence, Ohio, Abortion, Legal legislation & jurisprudence, Anthropology, Medical, Abortion, Induced legislation & jurisprudence, Health Services Accessibility, Politics
- Abstract
In the contemporary American political landscape, gerrymandering and the passage of anti-abortion legislation are intimately connected in what I call reproductive gerrymandering. I develop this concept as an analytic tool to understand the disjuncture between the passage of laws restricting reproductive healthcare access and the will of the majority of voters. In this ethnographic project, Ohio serves as an important case study where efforts to elect a supermajority of extremist anti-abortion Republican officials has allowed for the passage of unpopular legislation restricting abortion. I argue that the mundane bureaucratic processes involved in electoral redistricting and state budget procedures are forms of bureaucratic violence that result in structural harm experienced by pregnant people, especially those who are most marginalized. Reproductive gerrymandering provides a means for theorizing the connections across domains involving partisan redistricting, reproductive governance in the form of anti-abortion legislation, and the structural violence experienced by pregnant people seeking abortion., (© 2024 by the American Anthropological Association.)
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
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33. A pandemic of metrics.
- Author
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Adams V, Chandler C, Kelly AH, and Livingston J
- Subjects
- Humans, Pandemics, Public Health, COVID-19 epidemiology, Anthropology, Medical, SARS-CoV-2
- Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted critical attention to the performative power of metrics. We suggest that the existential capacities of metrics as a means of pandemic living warrant further consideration. We describe how the COVID-19 pandemic that came into existence as a public health and political event could only have occurred because of the anticipatory metrical practices that were used to transform SARS-COV-2 into a matter of global health concern. By exploring the affective potencies of COVID-19 metrics we show their abilities to engage the public in ways that cannot be contained; in detailing the narrative arcs created through metrics we show their opportunities, misdirections, and erasures. A pandemic way of life persists: a pandemic of metrics., (© 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.)
- Published
- 2024
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- View/download PDF
34. Pregnancy and 'the Other': Nausea and Accommodation in Manila.
- Author
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Tranter-Santoso D
- Subjects
- Humans, Female, Pregnancy, Adult, Nausea, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Pregnancy is a processual dialectic that involves continual acts of tactical, responsive, and creative accommodation by pregnant women. This article is a phenomenological investigation of pregnancy experience of working-class women in Manila. In it, I provide an outline of "accommodation:" acts which vary according to the political ecology of procreation in which they are enmeshed, and which are particularly evident in unexpected or unplanned pregnancies. Accommodation constitutes the core act in which the mother-to-be is engaged as the protagonist of procreation, transforming the character of unexpected pregnancy from uncertain and troubled to stable and even joyous as acts of accommodation restore bodily integrity.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
35. Medicalization of Old Age: Experiencing Healthism and Overdiagnosis in a Nordic Welfare State.
- Author
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Jønsson ABR
- Subjects
- Humans, Denmark ethnology, Aged, Female, Male, Aged, 80 and over, Anthropology, Medical, Medicalization, Aging ethnology, Medical Overuse
- Abstract
In Denmark, people are expected to take responsibility for their health, not least as their bodies age and they experience signs of physical or mental decline. Drawing on fieldwork among older Danes, I illustrate that an excessive focus on health gives rise to social and structural controversies and disparities, linking ideas of healthy behavior at the individual level with the societal framing of disease and aging. I argue that this emphasis contributes to the unwarranted diagnosis of bodily variations that naturally occur in the aging process, a phenomenon referred to as overdiagnosis, adding to a broader medicalization of old age.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
36. Waiting for Care and Community Organizing for Serious Health-Related Suffering in Kerala, India.
- Author
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Vijay D and Koksvik GH
- Subjects
- Humans, India ethnology, Female, Male, Palliative Care, Community Health Services, Middle Aged, Adult, Chronic Disease therapy, Chronic Disease ethnology, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
We explore the temporalities that shape and alleviate serious health-related suffering among those with chronic and terminal conditions in Kerala, India. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork between 2009 and 2019, we examine the entanglements between waiting for care within dominant institutions and the community organizing that palliates this waiting. Specifically, people navigate multiple medical institutions, experience loneliness and abandonment, loss of autonomy, and delays and denials of recognition as they wait for care. Community palliative care organizations offering free, routine, home-based care provide samadhanam (peace of mind) and swatantrayam (self-determination) in lifeworlds mired with chronic waiting. We document how community care sustains an alternative politics of shared time, untethered from marketized notions of efficiency and productivity toward profits. In so doing, we cast in high relief community healthcare imaginaries that alleviate serious health-related suffering and reconfigure Global North-centric perspectives.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
37. As Long As it Lasts-Older Substance Users, Brittle Ties and Danish Health Care.
- Author
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Bach JS, Bjerge B, Eilerskov N, and Merrild CH
- Subjects
- Humans, Denmark ethnology, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Aged, Drug Users psychology, Delivery of Health Care ethnology, Anthropology, Medical, Substance-Related Disorders ethnology, Substance-Related Disorders therapy
- Abstract
In this article, we examine a group of older marginalized substance-using citizens and their relations to Danish health care. We offer empirical examples collected through ethnographic fieldwork, about how they handle their health situation and encounters with the Danish healthcare system. Analytically, we particularly draw on the concept of disposable ties, and suggest the term "brittle ties" to nuance the term and examine how perceived individual autonomy is weighted against health care trajectories and how these citizens often prefer to fend for themselves or lean on provisional networks rather than enter into health care trajectories and follow-up treatment.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
38. Who We Test For: Aligning Relational and Public Health Responsibilities in COVID-19 Testing in Scotland.
- Author
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Bevan I, Bauld L, and Street A
- Subjects
- Humans, Scotland, SARS-CoV-2, Female, Male, Adult, Motivation, COVID-19, Anthropology, Medical, Public Health, COVID-19 Testing
- Abstract
COVID-19 testing programs in the UK often called on people to test to "protect others." In this article we explore motivations to test and the relationships to "others" involved in an asymptomatic testing program at a Scottish university. We show that participants engaged with testing as a relational technology, through which they navigated multiple overlapping responsibilities to kin, colleagues, flatmates, strangers, and to more diffuse publics. We argue that the success of testing as a technique of governance depends not only on the production of disciplined selves, but also on the program's capacity to align interpersonal and public scales of responsibility.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
39. Which Ethnography? Whose Ethnography? Medical anthropology's Epistemic Sensibilities Among Health Ethnographies.
- Author
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Trundle C and Phillips T
- Subjects
- Humans, Anthropology, Cultural, Knowledge, Anthropology, Medical
- Abstract
Medical anthropologists working in interdisciplinary teams often articulate expertise with respect to ethnography. Yet increasingly, health scientists utilize ethnographic methods. Through a comparative review of health ethnographies, and autoethnographic observations from interdisciplinary research, we find that anthropological ethnographies and health science ethnographies are founded on different epistemic sensibilities. Differences center on temporalities of research, writing processes, sites of social intervention, uses of theory, and analytic processes. Understanding what distinguishes anthropological ethnography from health science ethnography enables medical anthropologists - who sometimes straddle these two ethnographic modes - to better articulate their epistemic positionality and facilitate interdisciplinary research collaborations.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
40. Crafting Ethnographic Relationships During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany Using Voice-Based Technologies.
- Author
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Merz S, König F, Paul J, Bergholz A, and Holmberg C
- Subjects
- Humans, Pandemics, Anthropology, Medical, Anthropology, Cultural, COVID-19, Cell Phone
- Abstract
Drawing on a two-year ethnography of care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, we discuss the affordances of voice-based technologies (smartphones, basic mobile phones, and landline telephones) in collecting ethnographic data and crafting relationships with participants. We illustrate how such technologies allowed us to move with participants, eased data collection through the social expectations around their use, and reoriented our attention to the multiple qualities of sound. Adapting research on the performativity of technology, we argue that voice-based technologies integrated us into participants' everyday lives while also maintaining physical distance in times of infectious sociality.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
41. "Beautiful Registrations": Metrics and Prenatal Care in Rural Bahia, Brazil.
- Author
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Caballe-Climent L
- Subjects
- Pregnancy, Humans, Female, Brazil, Anthropology, Medical, Health Personnel, Prenatal Care, Rural Population
- Abstract
In Brazil, lack of quality in the delivery of prenatal care is a persistent concern. In this study, I analyze the dynamics taking place in the prenatal clinical encounter, and illuminate how the requirement to produce metrics through registration and monitoring endorses a form of bureaucratic care. This form of care develops in a context characterized by scarcity and a lack of medical resources, where healthcare professionals attempt to contain uncertainty. Ruled by notions of risk, centered in measuring practices, and saturated by an overvaluation of technology, bureaucratic care reinforces the disenfranchizement and stigmatization of Black rural women.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
42. Uncertainty Work: Dealing with a Psychiatric Crisis in Two European Community Mental Health Teams.
- Author
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Muusse CGR, Mulder CL, Kroon H, and Pols J
- Subjects
- Humans, Deinstitutionalization, Mental Health, European Union, Uncertainty, Anthropology, Medical, Community Mental Health Services, Mental Disorders therapy, Mental Disorders psychology
- Abstract
The quest for how to deal with a crisis in a community setting, with the aim of deinstitutionalizing mental health care, and reducing hospitalization and coercion, is important. In this article, we argue that to understand how this can be done, we need to shift the attention from acute moments to daily uncertainty work conducted in community mental health teams. By drawing on an empirical ethics approach, we contrast the modes of caring of two teams in Utrecht and Trieste. Our analysis shows how temporality structures, such as watchful waiting, are important in dealing with the uncertainty of a crisis.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
43. Becoming a (Neuro)migrant: Haitian Migration, Translation and Subjectivation in Santiago, Chile.
- Author
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Abarca-Brown G
- Subjects
- Humans, Chile, Haiti, Anthropology, Medical, Mental Health, Transients and Migrants
- Abstract
Based on a multi-sited ethnography conducted over 14 months in northern Santiago, I examine how the introduction of a series of health policies and the global mental health agenda has interacted with and impacted Haitian migrants in the context of a postdictatorship neoliberal Chile (1990-2019). Specifically, I explore the interactions between health and social institutions, mental health practitioners, psy technologies, and Haitian migrants, highlighting migrants' subjectivation processes and everyday life. I argue that Haitian migrants engage with heterogeneous subjectivation processes in their interactions with health and social institutions, challenging normative values of integration into Chilean society. These processes are marked not only by the presence of, or exposure to, psy interventions and mental health discourses but also by the degree of compatibility between a psychiatric and neurological language and Haitians' ideals and moral frameworks.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
44. Challenging NHS Corporate Mentality: Hospital-Management and Bureaucracy in London's Pandemic.
- Author
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Irons R
- Subjects
- Humans, London, Anthropology, Medical, Hospitals, Pandemics, State Medicine
- Abstract
Whilst NHS Health Service management is usually characterized by hierarchized bureaucracy and profit-driven competitiveness, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted these ways of working and allowed London-based non-clinical management to experience their roles otherwise. This paper is based on 35 interviews with senior non-clinical management at a London-based NHS Trust during 'Alpha phase' of Britain's pandemic response (May-August 2020), an oft-overlooked group in the literature. I will draw upon Graeber's theory of "total bureaucratization" to argue that though the increasing neo-liberalization of the health-services has hitherto contributed toward a corporate mentality, the pandemic gave managers a chance to experience more collaboration and freedom than usual, which ultimately led to more effective realization of decision-making and change. The pandemic has shown NHS managers that there are alternatives to neoliberal logics of competition and hierarchy, and that those alternatives actually result in happier and effectively, more capable staff.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
45. Relational Harm: On the Divisive Effects of Global Health Volunteering at a Hospital in Rural Zambia.
- Author
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Wintrup J
- Subjects
- Humans, United States, Zambia, Anthropology, Medical, Volunteers, Global Health, Hospitals
- Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research at a hospital in rural Zambia, I show how the presence of white Christian medical volunteers from the United States damaged relations between local health workers and patients. Working from a position of economic and racial privilege, medical volunteers received praise from many patients and residents. However, these positive attitudes incited resentment among many Zambian health workers who felt that their own efforts and expertise were being undervalued or ignored. Focusing on these disrupted relationships, I argue that it is crucial to understand how global health volunteering can produce enduring forms of "relational harm".
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
46. Explanatory models of families of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus
- Author
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Isa Ribeiro de Oliveira Dantas, Rhyquelle Rhibna Neris, Márcia Maria Fontão Zago, Manoel Antônio dos Santos, and Lucila Castanheira Nascimento
- Subjects
Family ,Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 ,Pediatric Nursing ,Anthropology, Medical ,Qualitative Research ,Nursing ,RT1-120 - Abstract
ABSTRACT Objectives: to analyze how children with type 1 diabetes mellitus and their families explain the pathology, based on their understanding of the factors related to the discovery of diabetes, the etiology, treatment, and prognosis of the disease. Methods: qualitative methodological approach, based on medical anthropology and the narrative method. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 families of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus attending follow-up consultations at a specialized center. The statements were subjected to inductive thematic analysis. Results: the explanatory models identified describe the families search for the clarification of the signs and symptoms that the child had. Faced with the disease, families reorganized themselves to meet new health care needs of children, such as adequate nutrition, physical exercise, and blood glucose monitoring. Final Considerations: knowing the explanatory models allows the understanding of how families give meaning to the child’s illness, favoring daily nursing care and an effective control of the disease.
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
47. Epistemologies of Living With and Treating Rare Metabolic Disorders
- Author
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Filip Rogalski
- Subjects
Parents ,Rare Diseases ,Health (social science) ,Metabolic Diseases ,Anthropology, Medical ,Anthropology ,Humans ,Family ,Child - Abstract
Treatment of a child diagnosed with an inherited metabolic disease is a demanding task both for the clinicians and for the parents. The metabolic pediatricians and dietitians have to deal with scarce and dispersed clinical knowledge, while the parents must actively participate in its treatment, the bulk of which consists of a stringent diet and managing the risk of metabolic decompensation or intoxication. In this article, I characterize the medical epistemologies of a particular kind of "metabolic living," discussing differences and similarities between the clinical/expert knowledge of metabolic specialists, and the lay knowledge of parents of affected children.
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
48. Demographic Anxieties in the Age of ‘Fertility Decline’
- Author
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Silvia De Zordo, Diana Marre, and Marcin Smietana
- Subjects
Fertility ,Health (social science) ,Research Design ,Anthropology, Medical ,Anthropology ,Humans ,Demography - Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
49. Maneuvering in Silence: Abortion Narratives and Reproductive Life Histories from the Faroe Islands
- Author
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Turið Hermannsdóttir
- Subjects
Abortion, Spontaneous ,Narration ,Health (social science) ,Pregnancy ,Anthropology, Medical ,Anthropology ,Humans ,Female ,Abortion, Induced ,Anthropology, Cultural - Abstract
I explore what silence surrounding abortion means to women in their everyday lives and the composition of their selfhood. My analysis is based on one-year of ethnographic fieldwork consisting of 20 interviews with women from the Faroe Islands and participant observation. Building upon theoretical frameworks of belonging and subjectivity studies, I discuss women's silent maneuverings from an understanding of freedom of choice and power as complex entities and expand on the dimensions of belonging and nonbelonging. I find that women's silent maneuverings are a navigational strategy made in a quest for belonging, and propose the concept of
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
50. The (After)life of a Trial: Biocommunicability of an At-Risk Pregnancy
- Author
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Ashish Premkumar and Whitney B. You
- Subjects
Health (social science) ,Pregnancy ,Cesarean Section ,Anthropology, Medical ,Anthropology ,Pregnancy Outcome ,Humans ,Female ,Labor, Induced ,Watchful Waiting - Abstract
The publication of A Randomized Trial of Induction Versus Expectant Management (ARRIVE), conducted in the United States in 2018, heralded a paradigm shift within the obstetrical management of term pregnancy among people who have not previously given birth. ARRIVE finds its home among other canonical - and controversial - randomized controlled trials (RCTs) within obstetrics. We argue that RCTs have their own (after)life, both creating new subjects for biomedical intervention and recalibrating who reproductive health practitioners consider to be at risk of adverse health outcomes. These data have important consequences for medical social scientific engagement with RCTs to further interrogate the questions of risk and intervention within reproductive health.
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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