{"title":"THROUGH THE BODY OF THE MIDWIFE: Ethos, Labor, and the Cultivation of Trust in Health Care in Yogyakarta, Indonesia","authors":"CATHERINE SMITH","doi":"10.14506/ca38.4.03","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The question of how to build trust in health care is one that faces health-care workers and public health actors around the world. This article illustrates how midwives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, have over time generated a distinctive ethos that characterizes the culture of their practice, and that stands as the object of a substantive generalized trust in midwives. In bringing attention to the multidimensional forms of labor carried out by health-care workers in a resource-poor setting, this article shows how cultures of medicine are generated and embodied by health-care workers in ways that mediate the dynamics of trust in health care. It offers a case study of the successful cultivation of trust in health care, while also reflecting on the problematic implications of the tendency to rely heavily on the labor of health-care workers for the development of trust-based health systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":"38 4","pages":"492-516"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.14506/ca38.4.03","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Anthropology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.14506/ca38.4.03","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The question of how to build trust in health care is one that faces health-care workers and public health actors around the world. This article illustrates how midwives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, have over time generated a distinctive ethos that characterizes the culture of their practice, and that stands as the object of a substantive generalized trust in midwives. In bringing attention to the multidimensional forms of labor carried out by health-care workers in a resource-poor setting, this article shows how cultures of medicine are generated and embodied by health-care workers in ways that mediate the dynamics of trust in health care. It offers a case study of the successful cultivation of trust in health care, while also reflecting on the problematic implications of the tendency to rely heavily on the labor of health-care workers for the development of trust-based health systems.
期刊介绍:
Cultural Anthropology publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. It also welcomes essays concerned with ethnographic methods and research design in historical perspective, and with ways cultural analysis can address broader public audiences and interests.