Pub Date : 2024-05-18Epub Date: 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512
Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Bagga Bjerge, Natasja Eilerskov, Camilla Hoffmann Merrild
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.
{"title":"As Long As it Lasts-Older Substance Users, Brittle Ties and Danish Health Care.","authors":"Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Bagga Bjerge, Natasja Eilerskov, Camilla Hoffmann Merrild","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140960250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2349515
A. Jønsson
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.
{"title":"Medicalization of Old Age: Experiencing Healthism and Overdiagnosis in a Nordic Welfare State.","authors":"A. Jønsson","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2349515","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140967610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2349513
Catherine Trundle, Tarryn Phillips
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.
{"title":"Which Ethnography? Whose Ethnography? Medical anthropology's Epistemic Sensibilities Among Health Ethnographies.","authors":"Catherine Trundle, Tarryn Phillips","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2349513","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140966515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2351066
Devi Vijay, G. Koksvik
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.
{"title":"Waiting for Care and Community Organizing for Serious Health-Related Suffering in Kerala, India.","authors":"Devi Vijay, G. Koksvik","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2351066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2351066","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140968848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512
Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Bagga Bjerge, Natasja Eilerskov, C. Merrild
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.
{"title":"As Long As it Lasts-Older Substance Users, Brittle Ties and Danish Health Care.","authors":"Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Bagga Bjerge, Natasja Eilerskov, C. Merrild","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2349512","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140970007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2349516
Daniel Tranter-Santoso
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.
{"title":"Pregnancy and 'the Other': Nausea and Accommodation in Manila.","authors":"Daniel Tranter-Santoso","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2349516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2349516","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140970134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-02Epub Date: 2024-03-04DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2322435
James Wintrup
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".
{"title":"Relational Harm: On the Divisive Effects of Global Health Volunteering at a Hospital in Rural Zambia.","authors":"James Wintrup","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2322435","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2322435","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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\".</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140022976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-02Epub Date: 2024-01-11DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2301388
Laura Caballe-Climent
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.
{"title":"\"Beautiful Registrations\": Metrics and Prenatal Care in Rural Bahia, Brazil.","authors":"Laura Caballe-Climent","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2301388","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2301388","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139418369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-02Epub Date: 2024-02-08DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2310857
Christina Gerdien Roelofke Muusse, Cornelis L Mulder, Hans Kroon, Jeannette Pols
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.
{"title":"Uncertainty Work: Dealing with a Psychiatric Crisis in Two European Community Mental Health Teams.","authors":"Christina Gerdien Roelofke Muusse, Cornelis L Mulder, Hans Kroon, Jeannette Pols","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2310857","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2310857","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139703759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-02Epub Date: 2024-03-07DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2324891
Sibille Merz, Franziska König, Joshua Paul, Andreas Bergholz, Christine Holmberg
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.
{"title":"Crafting Ethnographic Relationships During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany Using Voice-Based Technologies.","authors":"Sibille Merz, Franziska König, Joshua Paul, Andreas Bergholz, Christine Holmberg","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2324891","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2024.2324891","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140050686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}