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The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology
Abstract
Conceptions of the body are central not only to substantive work in medical anthropology, but also to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire discipline of anthropology, where Western assumptions about the mind and body, the individual and society, affect both theoretical viewpoints and research paradigms. These same conceptions also influence ways in which health care is planned and delivered in Western societies. In this article we advocate the deconstruction of received concepts about the body and begin this process by examining three perspectives from which the body may be viewed: (1) as a phenomenally experienced individual body-self; (2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking about relationships among nature, society, and culture; and (3) as a body politic, an artifact of social and political control. After discussing ways in which anthropologists, other social scientists, and people from various cultures have conceptualized the body, we propose the study of emotions as an area of inquiry that holds promise for providing a new approach to the subject.
... By bodily experiences, I refer to how migration and bordering is experienced through the body and sensations, emotions, and feelings (Longhurst, 1995). This also entails acknowledging the body as a key heuristic concept to understand the experience of migration in its social, political, and relational dimension (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987). To show the social logic of gendered violence and exclusion in this border corridor, this research draws on critical border studies and feminist geographies, as well as a 'new feminist political economy' (Anthias, 2013). ...
... Incidents of torture, murder, and massacres against transit migrants on transit routes show many similarities to these extreme forms of violence described by Taussig (2004) as "cultures of terror" that display violence to maintain the established (post-)colonial order and to ensure economic hegemony. At the level of the body, violence then produces 'docile bodies' (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987) and ensures cheap and exploitable labor (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). ...
... As the analysis showed, the body is the vehicle through which the migrant journey is experienced, as well as a major tool for agency. Therefore, border enforcement has contributed to the construction of migrant bodies through a 'body politic' (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987) that turns their bodies to objects exploitable by others and by charging money for their bodily integrity. This situations leads to gendered inequalities of mobility and to an increasing need to draw on "reverse" remittances (Mazzucato, 2011) from families in home countries for migrants to access migration services provided by actors in the "migration industries" to make their way to the US. ...
How does border enforcement affect the mobility of migrants and refugees in countries of transit? What impact does it have on migrants' bodily experiences of mobility and their reliance on actors of the migration industry? While the externalization of borders affects undocumented people by increasing their vulnerability to violence during transit, the impact of the migration regime on the social construction of inequalities in every-day interactions and its relationship to the capacity for mobility has not been studied in depth. This article intends to bridge this gap: based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between 2013 and 2019, this article analyzes the relation between immigration enforcement and the mobility strategies of migrants and refugees, particularly women. It focuses on the intertwining of border enforcement and violence and their impact on people's bodily mobility experiences in transit through Mexico along intersecting lines of inequality such as race, class, gender and nationality. First, I analyze how border enforcement contributes to internal bordering, thereby increasing the vulnerability and dependence of migrants on brokers for mobility; second, it looks at the bodily experiences of women in transit and the ways in which internal bordering shapes gendered power hierarchies among actors in the field of mobility. The analysis shows how women negotiate mobility and bodily integrity in social interactions with different actors and how they face constraints resulting from the gendered hierarchies to mobility on routes of transit. Furthermore, it demonstrates how women's bodies have become a privileged site for the construction of a 'body politic' exploitable by others, since border enforcement has contributed to weakening the possibilities of negotiating mobility and bodily integrity in transit.
... Si bien esta última concepción de la enfermedad también supone que en el cuerpo se produce una somatización (como en el psicoanálisis), es decir, una expresión de emociones "bloqueadas" o reprimidas, encuentra en el mismo cuerpo el medio para su resolución, es decir abordando la emoción desde él y no desde la palabra exclusivamente. Por ejemplo, Viviana exponía así sus "problemas de migrañas crónicas": Desde la antropología, se ha señalado que las emociones no constituyen "sustancias" o bloques de experiencias reprimidas a ser descubiertas, nombradas y liberadas (Abu-Lughod y Lutz, 1990), sino pensamientos corporizados (Rosaldo, 1984) y conciencia incorporada (Crossley, 1998) que tienen la capacidad de conectar el cuerpo en los niveles biológico y cognitivo (Lutz y White, 1986) e individual, social y político (Lock y Scheper-Hughes, 1987). Sin embargo, el relato puede ser interpretado en términos de trabajo terapéutico al asociar expresiones físicas y emocionales con determinadas ideas, imágenes recuerdos bajo "la expresión de una lógica propia del cuerpo y no de una reflexión consciente" y en un esfuerzo por "construir una experiencia terapéutica donde el registro de las percepciones corporales se articula con la búsqueda de narrativas acerca de las causas que generan esas vivencias" ...
... Así entendida, la "cura" da cuenta de la constitución histórica de la división cuerpo-alma evidenciada por el desmoronamiento de la frontera del campo religioso(Bourdieu, 1988). A la confluencia de aspectos terapéuticos y espirituales se debe cierta analogía entre la eficacia de ambos tipos de sanación (Csordas, 1994) y la necesidad de hacer corresponder la sanación ritual y la salud como una unidad (Csordas yKleinman, 1996; Gimenez Beliveau, 1999;Lock y Scheper-Hughes, 1987, entre otros).De modo que, en gran parte, el potencial de la eficacia de ésta y otras técnicas del yoga en general, reside no en la sugestión ni en la fe en un poder trascendente, sino en uno inherente a la persona que deriva de la apropiación de un marco de significado nuevo que viene a yuxtaponerse sin invalidar al de la medicina "científica" y especialmente al de la psicología. Por ejemplo, lo que desde el esquema interpretativo bio-psi se entiende por sintomatología del ataque de pánico, bien podría ser interpretado como señal de la desintoxicación que el kriya produce. ...
En su difusión trasnacional fuera de la India, el yoga sufrió una ampliación de su marco interpretativo que supuso entre otros procesos, primero su medicalización científica y luego su inserción en el campo terapéutico inaugurado por el psicoanálisis y regido por un nuevo estilo emocional. El yoga es actualmente utilizado como terapia, ya sea en una lógica pragmática como complemento, o en un proceso de trabajo terapéutico alternativo a la bio-medicina y a las psicoterapias. Dichos usos se apoyan a su vez en ciertos habitus de clase que dan cuenta de un capital emocional que conlleva la definición de sus malestares en términos de estrés y ansiedad. Sin embargo, este artículo trasciende la cuestión de la complementariedad o la alternancia entre modelos de salud-enfermedad-atención. Analiza la manera en que sus técnicas, especialmente las respiratorias, inducen modos somáticos de atención y un proceso de reorientación del self hacia el propio cuerpo y el mundo. Las enfermedades son reinterpretadas por los usuarios como signos de desintoxicación orgánica-emocional y transformación espiritual. Basado en testimonios y observación participante entre grupos de yoga y de la Fundación El Arte de Vivir, demuestra que estos procesos de cura requieren ser analizados en términos no dicotómicos en función de su carácter marcadamente corporizado.
... Various traditional religious practices utilize different methods for healing in diverse cultural contexts (Kleinman, 2022). To understand the nature of healing, it is essential to consider the interconnectedness of the body, mind, self, and society, and how subjective experiences shape personal narratives and give meaning to life (Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987). ...
This paper explores the transformative power of the Buddhist perspective in self-healing, rooted in the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path. It emphasizes recognizing pain and self-stigma as essential milestones, highlighting compassion’s role in alleviating suffering and fostering resilience. The study underscores the significance of spiritual practices for self-regulation, enabling the identification and transformation of suffering. By integrating these principles and techniques, individuals can embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery and liberation from suffering. Offering pragmatic guidance, this study serves as a valuable resource for those seeking purposeful paths to self-healing and holistic well-being.
... The debate around MD as a concept revolves around whether individual, structural, or institutional conditions generate it. Interpretative critical theory suggests the convergence of these levels (Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987). MD is the result of their personal experiences, which are in turn relational with their family, society, university education, place of origin, gender, generation, specialty pursued, the institution where they work, and all of this framed within healthcare systems. ...
... Thus far, my discussion of integration has emphasised more cognitive and hermeneutic aspects and examined healing in terms of representation. According to several anthropologists, however, this perspective is seldom adequate for understanding people's lived experiences of healing (Csordas, 2002;Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, 2012;Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987;Seligman, 2014). During my fieldwork, I equally found how, alongside practices of narrative integration, many of my interlocutors integrated and acquired new, healing ways of experiencing by changing their embodied presence in the world through nondiscursive means. ...
Within recent years, an increasing number of people and researchers in the Global North have become interested in psychedelic substances and their therapeutic application. While much of the current media attention and research effort mainly concentrate on the therapeutic potential and actions of the individual's acute psychedelic experience, this article explores the user‐perceived, therapeutic dynamics of psychedelics in a more long‐term perspective by charting the lived experiences and practices of ‘integration’ among psychedelic users in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork from November 2020 to June 2021, I offer a dual typology of self‐related integration as narrative and experiential‐somatic . Combining the two, I argue that psychedelic integration in contemporary Denmark can be viewed as a processual self‐transformation of the users' experiential orientation where understandings and/or modes of being from the acute psychedelic experience are woven into, prolonged, and/or embodied in their everyday existence .
... Modern tıbbın sağlığı ve bedeni ele alış şeklinin tersine, DSÖ'nün sağlığa yaklaşımı görece bütüncül bir özelliktedir. Modern tıbbın bedeni sosyal, psikolojik, spiritüel ve dini pratik ve deneyimlerinden ayrı görüyor oluşu, bedeni bir makine olarak değerlendirmesi iyi ve sağlıklı olma konusunda kendisini sınıfta bırakmıştır (Scheper- Hughes ve Lock, 1987). Bireyler sadece biyolojik bir varlık olmadıkları gibi toplumsal ve psikolojik yapılarından ayrı varlıklar da değillerdir. ...
Bu araştırma makalesi, enerji verimliliği ağlarının (EVA) Türkiye’deki teknolojik gelişmeler aracılığıyla toplumsal yapıyı kontrol etmek ve değiştirmek için nasıl bir devlet aygıtı haline geldiğini tartışmaktadır. Bu nedenle, enerji verimliliği ağlarını analiz etmek için Aktör-ağ kuramını kullanmak, hem Bilim, Teknoloji ve Toplum (STS) hem de diğer sosyal bilimler için yeni bir kuram-yöntem iş birliğidir. Aktör-ağ kuramı üzerinden Türkiye’de yeni ortaya çıkan enerji verimliliği ağlarından birinin incelenmesi, enerji sisteminin Bilim, Teknoloji ve Toplum açısından nasıl bir araştırma alanı haline gelebileceğini ve STS’in sistem içinde nasıl bir konumda olduğunu göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu makale aktör ağ kuramı kullanılarak enerji verimliliği ağlarının aktör ve aktan arasındaki ilişkileri analiz etmektedir.
... The market exchange that follows between the craftsman who makes the mridanga and the drum's specialist musician implicates deeper senses of intellectual exchange -as ontological sharingamong their sonically tuned selves. Contemporary anthropology has shown that individual senses work through intersensory/synesthetic and cognitive associations (Classen 1997;Gell 1995;Marchand 2010;Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). Anthropological debates have also established that senses operate in culturally mediated contexts (Howes 2005). ...
... The school's focus on the influence of cultural norms and values on personality traits underscored the importance of understanding cultural diversity and its impact on human conduct. This emphasis broadened the field's horizons, encouraging a more nuanced exploration of the interplay between culture and personality (Ember & Ember, 2003;Garro, 2003;Lock & Nichter, 2003). ...
... It is the cultural body and the body politic that gives rise to the social determinants of health. [6][7][8] We propose a curriculum to diagnose and treat diseases of the body politic. Diagnosing diseases of the body politic is the definition for structural analysis. ...
The editor advocates to formalize the addition of “Medical Social Sciences” as a basic science in our Schools of Medicine and “Clinical Decision Science” as the corollary clinical practice discipline: a “Flexner Report 3.0."
... Compared to other groups in Ontario, postsecondary students are more likely to experience symptoms of a mental disorder, a major concern considering 83% of Ontario's youth-defined as individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 years-participate in postsecondary education (Ontario University and College Health Association 2017). Understanding the constructs of mental health embedded in the university context is important because they do not neutrally describe an experience, but are patterned by normalized expectations about what it means to be a "good" student to inscribe mental health with particular meanings (Beatty 2016;Kirmayer 1994;Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987;Szasz 1979). While many interdisciplinary studies explore issues of student mental health as biomedical phenomena, in order to fully understand student experiences of mental health struggles in the university we need to not only look at the "disease" aspect of these struggles (Helman 1981;Kleinman, Eisenberg, and Good 1978;Kleinman 1978) but also how students experience them phenomenologically in their day-to-day lives as students. ...
Using a critical phenomenology approach, I explore how the neoliberal social context of the North American university produces normative expectations which both interact with and pattern student experiences and understandings of mental health struggles in this environment. The data I analyze comes from semi-structured interviews with 24 university students between 18 and 24 years of age who self-identify as experiencing mental health struggles, as well as participant observation at university wellness events. In this context, both students and the university understand wellness as the ability to maintain constant academic productivity. While university wellness programming promotes goal-oriented individualized “self”-care as the gold standard for attaining and maintaining wellness, students often view self-care activities as unproductive, instead prioritizing academic productivity over subjective well-being in striving to maintain an image as the “good” student. I argue that understanding mental health in this way both causes and exacerbates harm, introducing the conceptual contrast between “Student Wellness”—academic success—and “Human Wellness”—subjective well- being—as a means of understanding how university attempts to increase wellness often support neoliberal agendas to the detriment of their students’ well-being.
... This leads me to consider the way political frameworks hide the vocal community like homeless upon declaring that unhoused disrupt the order that is required for a civilized ambience. I recognized that the concern is far beyond an unappealing aesthetic, as the community represents a "spectacle of disorder and decay that becomes contagion" (Mitchell 2010, 91;Will 1987) by varying conceptual frameworks across the political spectrum. This was observed by Bourgois and Schonberg (2009, 19) with Edgewater homeless, finding that symbolic violence influences how homeless community members embody the experience of subordination. ...
Throughout the years of 2019 and 2020, I studied sound and the sensory within the daily life of People’s Park in Berkeley, California. I was inspired to address the Park as an historic landmark with a place-based history, and through oral history and ground-level audio ethnography, I found there has never been a social agreement for aesthetic standards. To explore means of decision-making and conflict resolution, I considered how the Free Speech Movement influenced the principles declared by the contemporary People’s Park Committee. I then paid attention to how a principle like “free speech” was not always granted to a vocal community like the homeless due to widespread political silencing. All throughout my field research, I inquired about values and qualities of speech and silence through an evaluation based around sound studies. In the end, I was led to explore how the atmosphere is imbued with the sensibility of liberation, which leads the Committee to characterize the atmosphere through the “free speech” principle.
Sometime around 4200 cal BCE, near the current town of Požega in eastern Croatia, a group of at least 41 individuals were killed and buried together in a pit. The pit was uncovered in 2007 by accident due to erosion caused by heavy rains. These remains, dating to the Copper Age, have been subjected to bioarchaeological analysis (Janković et al., 2017, 2021; Janković & Novak, 2018) as well as biochemical (McClure et al., 2019) and genetic analyses (Novak et al., 2021), providing a unique opportunity to understand a single episode of violence from multiple angles. In this chapter, we seek to contextualize this massacre within a Poetics model (Whitehead, 2004a, 2007), specifically examining the role of demography in massacre and the role of massacre in the development and negotiation/renegotiation of group identity.
El presente artículo pretende contribuir a la reflexión sobre la movilización antirracista en Colombia desde las prácticas artísticas a través de la experiencia de trabajo etnográfico y colaborativo con artistas afrocolombianos y mestizos. Propone la noción de “campo de enunciación antirracista” que surge de una lectura interpretativa sobre los trabajos con artistas colombianos cuyos proyectos abordan la problemática del racismo. Hace un recorrido por las primeras manifestaciones de la lucha contra el racismo en las artes y centra la discusión del antirracismo en el cuerpo y la afectividad como mediaciones de las cuales se desprenden tres sentidos antirracistas: el antirracismo como posibilidad de alivio ante episodios traumáticos de la vida de comunidades racializadas, el antirracismo como una “posibilidad de re-existencia” y el antirracismo como una práctica de afirmación de religiosidades afro. Finaliza con la descripción de dos perspectivas del antirracismo, la perspectiva afro centrada y la perspectiva relacional, para mostrar las divergencias y la heterogeneidad de las iniciativas de movilización antirracista y también las potencialidades de estas alianzas.
Changing social, political, and cultural processes in Vietnam are reshaping people's emotional and social responses to domestic violence on multiple levels. Socioeconomic reforms instituted in the 1980s, the related state revival of Confucian gender ideologies, and the influences in recent decades of international and local nongovernmental organizations’ approaches to domestic violence are significant shifts that have influenced these emergent responses. Using the framework of feminist critical medical anthropology, I explore how different emotional experiences of violence provide insight into patterns of help‐seeking and interventions addressing marital violence. I suggest that Vietnamese state discourses and laws shape people's feelings in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. State actors, for one, are particularly influenced to express and experience emotional responses in support of the nation. On the other hand, abused women, community members, and professionals experience more ambivalent feelings toward state discourses and practices as they engage moral emotions of care, love, and concern, prioritizing abused women's health and safety. Complicating this is some state actors grappling with their own ambivalent and tangled feelings as they assist abused women. Awareness of the diverse cross‐cultural range of emotional complexity can aid feminist anthropologists and activists in attempts to understand and prevent domestic violence.
The article examines the ways in which embodiment is narrativized in biographical stories of non-heterosexual people based on interview and written autobiographies. When talking about their experiences, non-heterosexuals searched for signs in their bodies and endowed them with dimensions of meaning. To conceptualize this search procedure, I use Ginzburg’s evidence paradigm and Csordas’s somatic modes of attention. The participants interpreted clues found in the body experience of the past as proof of one's non-heterosexuality. The search for such evidence requires a specific mode of attention to one's body and knowledge about (homo)sexuality. The article analyzes the language of description of the body, such as figures of speech and terms used by the participants, and traces gender differences in strategies for narrativizing the body. Essentialization is the most popular strategy of narrativization of non-heterosexual body. The participants talked about their sexuality in terms of “naturalness” and “innateness”. Different levels of texts reflect this tendency. Essentialization is a way to normalize non-heterosexuality, permeate sexual identity, and make narratives coherent.
Group peer support (GPS) has been shown to improve engagement in mental healthcare for veterans, but little is known about ways rural veterans experience outpatient GPS. This study investigates the lived experience of veterans participating in GPS in the service area of two rural Northern California Veterans Health Administration (VHA) community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs). Twenty-nine participants, who attended in-person GPS sessions for at least three months, were consented. Interview responses were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and exported into Atlas.ti to conduct thematic analyses. A phenomenological inquiry revealed three prominent themes and related sub-themes listed in parentheses: (a) GPS encounters leverage shared experience to help participants unlearn detrimental cognitive patterns (conditioned reactivity, structural rigidity) where sustained participation may promote posttraumatic growth (comradery as healing); (b) participation facilitates connection to additional PTSD services (synergy, transformative, continuity of care); and (c) sessions provide therapeutic value that is distinct from clinical approaches (openness, evidenced-based therapy [EBT] experience, guidance versus holistic support). In this sample, GPS diminished social isolation, increased social connectivity, normalized participants' struggles, and helped guide emotion identification, coping, and processing of traumatic experiences. Study findings also illustrated the mechanisms by which participants may seek further multidisciplinary PTSD care within VHA. These findings inform the future design of GPS and can help VHA clinicians and policymakers plan and maximize services along the continuum of PTSD care.
Situando el foco de investigación en el control de la fecundidad como estrategia política para el desarrollo en Níger, en este texto se observa cómo se recrean determinadas retóricas y prácticas del desarrollo que, a la sombra del paradigma de los Derechos Humanos y de la lucha contra la mortalidad, construyen las premisas necesarias para la legitimización de la disciplina biopolítica de población. Para ello se aplica un enfoque cualitativo y culturalmente sensible que explica los fenómenos de población y reproducción y el modo en que la gubernamentalidad, sostenida por las instituciones financieras internacionales y de desarrollo, convierten el cuerpo femenino en objeto de control e interés político.
This article explores the ‘performativity of disgust’ as a feminist strategy that takes place in various instances of menstrual activism. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study in Spain, which focused on alternative politics and cultures of menstruation that question the negative hegemonic Western vision of menstruation. By analysing the debates around gender, feminism, and corporality that arise in this field, the article highlights alternative corporal and menstrual imaginaries. The article contributes to and extends critical menstruation studies by exploring how feminist activists who engage in menstrual politics produce an aesthetic of disgust by reappropriating the abject, and in so doing, question the politics of menstrual disgust and gender inequalities. Paying special attention to collective initiatives that take place in public space, viewed as a place of social transformation, the article sheds light on how challenging the notion that ‘menstruation is disgusting’ can help us question gender and social inequalities, and promote social transformation.
Utilizo la colección de “etnografías carnales” de las artes marciales y los deportes de combates reunidos por Raúl Sánchez y Dale Spencer, bajo el título Fighting Scholars para poner de relieve la fecundidad de la implementación del habitus como objeto empírico (explanandum) y método de investigación (modus cognitionis). El estudio encarnado de la encarnación se basa en cinco proposiciones que aclaran las persistentes ideas erróneas acerca del habitus y refuerzan la teoría disposicional de la acción de Pierre Bourdieu. 1) lejos de ser una “caja negra”, el habitus es totalmente susceptible de investigación empírica; 2) la distinción entre habitus primario (genérico) y habitus secundario (específico) nos permite capturar la maleabilidad de las disposiciones; 3) el habitus se compone de elementos cognitivos, conativos, volitivos y afectivos: categorías, habilidades y deseos; 4) el habitus nos permite transformar el problema de la carnalidad en un recurso para la producción de conocimiento sociológico; 5) para tener en cuenta que todos los agentes sociales, como quienes practican artes marciales, son seres que sufren y que están involucrados participan colectivamente en actividades corporalmente interiorizadas a través de escenificaciones dentro de círculos de compromisos compartidos.
Book review of Seth M. Holmes's Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (2023). Oakland, CA: University California Press.
This article explores the historical transformation of mindfulness, through a process of transculturation and commodification, into a biopolitical tool and analyzes possible future scenarios in which this tool will acquire even greater biopolitical strength through the integration of technological devices and artificial intelligence applications, particularly focusing on the growing divide between mindfulness-based therapies and traditional meditation. While both methodologies share the common objective of providing health and psychophysical benefits, they differ fundamentally in their theoretical frameworks, with mindfulness being egolatric and performance oriented while traditional meditation emphasizes transcending psychophysical identity. The development of mindfulness has been influenced by the sociocultural context of neoliberal and capitalist societies, resulting in a model that fosters self-regulation and emphasizes social control. The article also examines the potential biopolitical risks arising from the integration of AI-powered tools into mindfulness-based therapies. The increasing use of digital devices and applications for monitoring physical and mental health may contribute to a society characterized by constant self-surveillance and self-monitoring, reinforcing biopolitical control of the body. Consequently, this raises critical questions regarding the limits of surveillance and the potential exploitation of vulnerabilities through the incorporation of AI-powered tools.
El artículo profundiza en los itinerarios corporales de mujeres migrantes vinculadas a distintas prácticas dancísticas populares que se desarrollan en Arica (Chile). Desde el cuerpo y con una perspectiva interseccional como enfoques teórico-metodológicos, se comparan dos migraciones en la triple frontera andina: la migración aymara-boliviana y afro-colombiana. El objetivo es analizar los itinerarios corporales de ambos grupos, es decir, las prácticas del cuerpo dinámicas y mutables que son expresadas en sus biografías. A través de una metodología cualitativa, se construyeron historias de vida y mapas corporales con cuatro mujeres. El foco estuvo en comparar cómo las variables de género, étnico-raciales, clase social y nacionalidad 1) se manifiestan en sus recorridos migratorios, 2) son experimentadas a través del cuerpo y 3) generan estrategias corporales frente a contextos de desigualdad social. Se concluye que, al migrar, la danza representa una dimensión política para enfrentar situaciones de violencia, racismo y exclusión, y por tanto el cuerpo se convierte en un espacio de acción y transformación social.
Este libro es corolario de los diálogos teóricos-metodológicos colectivos
de quienes componemos el grupo de investigación “Política(s) y Género.
Un estudio socioantropológico para (re)construir la práctica investigativa
en y desde la Intervención social”, radicado en la Facultad de Ciencias
Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Asimismo, es el resultado de
un ejercicio reflexivo de los propios procesos que desarrollamos como
investigadorxs en y a partir de la intervención/investigación desde una
perspectiva de géneros. Optamos además por utilizar el lenguaje escrito
como una forma de visibilizar las marcas genéricas, por ello utilizamos
la “x” cuando nos referimos a universales en los que pueden incluirse
todas las personas, sin importar si se reconocen como mujeres, varones
o trans. Si bien el uso de “x” es algo informal, o incluso incómodo, su
uso en ámbitos formales como la academia es una herramienta de explicitación
de la heteronormatividad del lenguaje. El uso de la “x” puede
ajustarse a cada persona sin (re)producir, a través del poder del lenguaje,
la creencia en dos géneros/sexos que siguiendo a Wittig (1986) es una
base fundamental no sólo del sexismo, sino también de la homofobia y la
heteronormalización.1
El coloquio entre las diversas partes que propone este libro tiene la
intención de profundizar los lazos comunes entre las distintas investigaciones
que conforman este equipo de trabajo, como también complejizar
ciertas nociones homogeneizadoras de entender “el género” desde
distintas políticas públicas que dan especificidades particulares. Así, se
intenta dar voz a lxs diversxs sujetos en sus vínculos con los programas,
proyectos y/o líneas de acción de lxs distintxs actores locales que resultan
en tensiones, resistencias y conciliaciones en la Argentina actual.
el espacio-tiempo de la Intervención profesional e interdisciplinar como
campo de conocimiento situado (Haraway, 1995 [1991]), para reconfigurar
una perspectiva teórica-metodológica que interpele a nuestras
propias prácticas. En otras palabras, nos propusimos visualizar las decisiones
que suelen atender a problemas y/o urgencias de personas reales
y actores sociales en momentos y espacios específicos, en y desde las
políticas públicas, en relación con tres ejes de investigación específicos:
el campo de la salud, la(s) juventud(es) y la(s) mujer(es). De esta forma,
reproducimos en estas páginas decisiones de intervención/investigación
como prácticas de un saber situado y construido desde las tensiones, negociaciones
y resistencias de las categorías académicas previas y el saber
local en el cual intervenimos con nuestras propias investigaciones. La
perspectiva de géneros,2 al proveernos una lente desde la cual resignificar
ciertos temas/problemas en el estudio de las políticas públicas, nos
permitió interpelar las representaciones de la realidad social y nuestra
intervención en ella. Como resultado, los artículos que forman parte de
este trabajo muestran la complejidad de observar las políticas públicas
con perspectiva de géneros y la multiplicidad de interrogantes a los que
arribamos como investigadorxs en este campo.
Agradecemos a la Universidad de Buenos Aires (uba) por el financiamiento
para la realización de este proyecto y a la Facultad de Ciencias
Sociales, en particular a la carrera de Trabajo Social, por el apoyo permanente
mediante los diversos proyectos de investigación y actividades
que llevamos a cabo.
This article explores how university students with mental health struggles engage in “illness‐identity” work, the process by which an individual resituates their self in relation to their illness, using a phenomenological approach. Grounded in 24 semi‐structured interviews with Canadian university students between the ages of 18 and 24 years who self‐identify as experiencing mental health struggles, I argue that students do not perform illness‐identity work by making the “I Am” or “I Have” illness identity statements commonly cited in the anthropological literature. Instead, these students focus on the phenomenological content of their struggles making what I call “I Experience” statements. In doing so these students normalize their struggles by understanding them as fluid and ephemeral experiences which exist as a continuum, refuting a construction of mental health struggles as discrete entities objectively present or not in the individual body.
Resumen Basado en el trabajo etnográfico que realicé junto a un grupo de travestis brasileñas trabajadoras del sexo en Río de Janeiro y Barcelona, en este artículo pretendo analizar las formas en que ellas emplean las tecnologías para transformar y embellecer unos cuerpos que cuestionan el modelo biomédico de nuestra sociedad: sus cuerpos no son leídos como “dóciles”, “saludables” ni “productivos” ya que tampoco “encajan”, ni pretenden encajar, en el binarismo sexual dominante. Por otro lado, la belleza - en tanto campo político y transformador - es uno de los principales elementos que las travestis tienen para encontrar su lugar en el mundo a partir de sus tránsitos (trans)nacionales: mientras se convierten en bellas travestis, están al mismo tiempo construyéndose como sujetas sociales que reclaman cierta inteligibilidad. Por lo tanto, la belleza para las travestis es un espacio (transitorio) de liberación que, en definitiva, pone en evidencia cómo ciertas tecnologías biopolíticas han fallado al producir cuerpos indisciplinados y bellas travestis que - con su supervivencia - se rebelan frente a un poder heteronormativo que considera que sus cuerpos no son dignos de duelo y, en consecuencia, “merecen morir”.
How we shape and socially present our body has extraordinary social importance: appearance is our first business card by which people frame and judge us. This evaluation ends up conditioning our daily lives, from social to professional opportunities. In Portugal, as in many other contexts, one of the most important criteria for determining whether someone is healthy and beautiful is thinness. In a society where thinness and physical perfection are pursuable ideals, this article explores through qualitative methodologies the impact of the discourse linked to the problem of obesity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the multiplication and exacerbation of body-related conflicts in Portuguese women aged 18 to 65.
Resumo A forma como moldamos e apresentamos socialmente o nosso corpo tem uma extraordinária importância social: a aparência é o nosso primeiro cartão de visita a partir do qual as pessoas nos enquadram e julgam. Esta avaliação acaba por condicionar o nosso quotidiano, desde às nossas oportunidades sociais até às profissionais. Um dos critérios mais importantes para determinar se uma pessoa é saudável e bonita - em Portugal, assim como em muitos outros contextos - é a magreza. Numa sociedade em que a magreza e a perfeição física são ideais a perseguir, este artigo explora através de metodologias qualitativas o impacto do discurso ligado ao problema da obesidade causado pela pandemia de COVID-19 na multiplicação e exacerbação de conflitos relacionados com o corpo em mulheres portuguesas entre os 18 e os 65 anos.
Based on the ethnographic work I conducted with a group of Brazilian travesti sex workers in Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona, this article aims to analyze how they adopt technologies to transform and beautify their bodies that question the biomedical model of our society: their bodies are not read as “docile”, “healthy”, or “productive” since they do not “fit into”, nor pretend to fit into the dominant sexual binary. On the other hand, beauty - as a political and transformative field - is one of the main elements that travestis have to find their place in the world through their (trans)national displacements: they are self-constructing as social subjects who claim some intelligibility while they become beautiful travestis. Therefore, travestis believe that beauty is a (transitory) space of liberation that, ultimately, reveals how certain biopolitical technologies have failed to produce undisciplined bodies and beautiful travestis who - through their survival - rebel against a heteronormative power that considers that their bodies are not worthy of mourning and, consequently, “deserve to die”.
Cтатья посвящена молекуляризации тела и значениям тел киборгов в рамках анимации.Мыанализируем такие фильмы, как «Призрак в доспехах» (Мамору Осии, 1995), «Призраквдоспехах: SAC_2045- Устойчивая война» (Синдзи Арамаки, Митихито Фудзии, КэндзиКамияма, 2021), «Ганнм» (Хироси Фукутоми, 1993) и «Алита: Боевой ангел» (реж. РобертРодригес, 2019), в контексте актуальных философских дискуссий. Анализ телесности прово-дится в двух направлениях. Во-первых, мы исследуем формы презентации модульных тел и ихсоциокультурные связи. В этих сюжетах эволюция тела за органические рамки превращает егов пространство, где персонаж осознаёт свою субъектность, и оно становится инструментом,открывающим нарциссический опыт всемогущества, физической мощи и мастерства. Вместестем, иногда это приводит к отчуждению персонажей от своего тела и экзистенциальнымисканиям. Поэтому, мы также рассматриваем экзистенциальные поиски/кризисы персонажей,возникающие в связи с модуляризацией их тел, и философские смыслы, на которые они указы-вают. В центре рассуждений оказываются постгуманистические идеи, отличающиеся неприя-тием картезианского антропоцентризма и разграничений понятий «машина-человек», «разум-тело», «женщина-мужчина».
Ключевые слова
анимационный фильм; тело киборга; желание; модульность; картезианские оппозиции; постгу-манизм
This article discusses the molecularization of the body and the meanings pointed out via cyborg bodies in the context of animated characters. We analyze films of Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045- Sustainable War (Shinji Aramaki Michihito and Fujii Kenji Kamiyama, 2021), Gunnm (Hiroshi Fukutomi, 1993), and Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019) in the context of related philosophical discussions. We carry out the discussion about the body on two axes. First, we examine forms of presenting the modular bodies and discuss their socio-cultural connections. In these narratives, the evolution of the body beyond organic boundaries transforms it into a space where the character reflects the subjectivity and a tool that offers a narcissistic experience of omnipotence regarding bodily strength and competence. However, it sometimes causes the characters to become alienated from their bodies and engage in existential inquiries. Thus, secondly, we examine the existential inquiries/crises of the characters arising from the modularization of their bodies and the philosophical connotations that these emphases indicate. If on this axis, posthumanist arguments that stand out with objections to Cartesian distinctions such as machine-human, mind-body, woman-man, and anthropocentric approaches, constitute the focus of the discussions.
Keywords
Animation Film; Cyborg Body; Desire; Modularity; Cartesian Distinctions; Posthumanism
Matthean scholars have predominantly viewed Jesus’ healing ministry through the lens of ‘fulfillment of prophecy’, which connects his healings to David the shepherd and the fulfilment of the covenant, the restoration of the covenant people, and the establishment of the new covenant. This interpretation has largely emerged from an analysis of Jesus’ healing ministry as a singular event. However, it is necessary to revisit previous studies that have posited that the stories of Jesus’ healings were arranged in a larger context and theological perspective, rather than as a disjointed list of individual events. In particular, the healing events in Matthew 8–9 appear to have been arranged with the intention of teaching discipleship, indicating that the healing stories in the Gospel of Matthew, while scattered, are part of a cohesive pattern of theological themes. These themes include the forgiveness of sins, compassion and mercy, healing through faith, and confession of Jesus as the Messiah. The author of Matthew employs this pattern to systematically present a theological perspective that acknowledges Jesus as divine and confesses him as the Messiah.Contribution: This study aimed to analyse the pattern of these theological themes as they appear in Jesus’ healing narrative. The repetition of these themes serves to establish Jesus’ divinity and reinforce the confession of him as the Messiah. Furthermore, the pattern of theological themes in the healing narrative suggests that it was constructed during a period of transition for the Matthean community, as they moved from Judaism to Christianity. The pattern highlights the community’s confession of Jesus as God and their efforts to solidify their faith.
La importancia social que está adquiriendo la soledad en las sociedades contemporáneas ha convertido esta experiencia en objeto de investigación de disciplinas como la antropología. El abordaje antropológico, tratando de redibujar los análisis tradicionales en clave individual y psicológica, busca ofrecer una lectura sociocultural y colectiva de esta realidad. Esta investigación analiza, mediante el método Photo Elicited Interview (PEI), la vivencia de la soledad en jóvenes de Almería, entre 19 y 24 años, en el contexto post-COVID desde las coordenadas de la recién surgida antropología de la soledad. Los resultados del análisis se organizan en tres niveles: subjetivo-corporal (soledades), interpersonal (procesos de desertización) y sociocultural (desiertos), conectando la dimensión subjetiva del fenómeno con los discursos sobre las trasformaciones en un medio ambiente social y relacional. Por su complejidad, este artículo desmenuza únicamente los hallazgos relativos al nivel subjetivo-corporal. La interpretación de las cuarenta entrevistas permitió reconocer seis dimensiones de la vivencia de la soledad: la emocional, la física, la existencial, la identitaria, la relacional y la transformadora; todas ellas en estrecha interacción con los factores que las agravan, como son la discriminación y el rechazo, la vida en la ciudad, la competitividad capitalista, el nihilismo y, de una manera ambivalente, las redes sociales (la digitalización neoliberal), la psicología y el aislamiento derivado de la COVID. Los hallazgos revelan una problemática de enorme calado y refuerzan la necesidad de adoptar una comprensión corporal, relacional y sociopolítica de la soledad.
Experiencias de transformaciones familiares en Tarapacá durante la pandemia de Covid19 en Chile.
Asian cities are the setting of a vast agglomeration of transportation devices and services. These means of transport are inseparable from distinct concepts and images of the city. Interventions into modes of urban transport are inspired by visions for the future of urban life and quotidian practices of traversing urban space foster particular experiences that produce distinct ideas about the city. This special issue takes the multiplicity of mobility practices in Asian cities as a point of departure to interrogate connections between embodied experiences and collective representations. Drawing on three bodies of literature that deal with the topics of urban imaginaries, infrastructures as well as the body and the city, this introduction provides a theoretical framework for the study of connections between perception and conception of cities that informs the contributions to this special issue. It sets the stage for a set of three interconnected questions that guide the contributions: How do people affectively engage with urban spaces through practices of bodily movement? How are these practices of movement related to and generative of specific ideas and representations of the city? How do these practices of movement transform, challenge, subvert, or conform to dominant ideas and representations of the city?
Link to open access full text PDF:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560323000968?via%3Dihub
In Snapshots from Home, Karin Fierke calls for radically repositioning the apparatus through which we interpret the world, inviting us to bridge the seemingly insurmountable chasm between quantum science and ancient Asian thought and practice to think about a more Global International Relations. Specifically, we are daringly tasked to consider how the ‘weird’ mathematics of quantum physics and science is paralleled by deeply relational ancient non-Western systems of knowledge. Fierke’s starting point is Bohr’s wholistic quantum physics but her main interest and focus is a deep reflection on its broad similarities with Buddhism, Hinduism and Daoism. Considering the parallels Fierke draws between the relational frames of quantum science and Daoism in the context of a raving pandemic, I feel challenged to bring the body into the conversation. How does Fierke’s apparatus prompt us to think and act ethically in relation to the emerging postgenomic body arising from recent advances in microbiology including quantum microbiology ? It is a permeable body that is deeply quantum entangled in and with the natural and social-cultural environment and/or context. What can we learn from the relational strategies and actions attached to the Daoist body to thinking about the contemporary quantized bodies and the governance of their health?
This article focuses on the origin and development of Islamic feminist hermeneutics of the foundational texts of Islam - the Quran and Sunnah -. The reinterpretation of the founding scriptures of Islam, far from the traditional patriarchal and misogynistic readings, emerged in the late 80s and early 90s, giving birth to the paradigm of Islamic feminism as critical to the identification of Islam as a source of inequalities gender. Our analysis of the first methodological proposals - as well as more recent from innovative approaches - made by Muslim theologians and thinkers women about the liberating role of sacred texts can play in the emancipation of Muslim women concludes that exegetical hermeneutics, from the beginnings of Islam, registered methodological differences that have not looked in a global policy consensus.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a prevalent health challenge in a Danish welfare context. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at two Danish gastroenterology clinics, and inspired by Charles E. Rosenberg's idea of styles of explaining widespread diseases, we outline three styles of understanding and treating gut trouble in daily clinical work: "The microbial gut," "the mindful gut," and "the lifestyled gut." Moreover, we suggest the concept of fluidity to characterize IBS as a diagnostic category that allows clinicians and patients to operate through complex understandings of permeable boundaries between body, mind, and environment to negotiate personalized solutions for embodied gut sensations.
This review explores the anthropological and sociological literature on food allergy and identifies four primary areas of research to date. The first explores the relationality and management of risk, uncertainty and stigma among parents and sufferers of food allergies. The second analyses the influence of intersectionality, specifically the effects of class, gender, race/ethnicity and disability on experiences of food allergy. The third discusses diagnostic difficulties and the impact these have on legitimacy and believability, both in the context of clinician-patient relations and in managing food allergies in public spaces. The fourth explores the ethics and uncertainties in food allergy treatments and how scientific knowledge of emerging treatments is constructed. This body of research illustrates that although an individual disease, food allergy experiences are significantly affected by socio-cultural structures, institutions, ideologies and discourses. The review concludes with four primary recommendations. First, there should be more incorporation of anthropological or sociological methodologies and perspectives into studies of food allergy. Second, studies are needed from more countries exploring lived experience of food allergy. Third, research on food allergy needs to incorporate an analysis of intersectional factors such as gender, class and race/ethnicity, and should explore the experiences of minority populations. Fourth, more research is needed on the interactions between biomedicine and local systems of knowledge, as well as the factors that shape what treatments become available, for whom it becomes available, experiences of treatment and aspects (including biases) that influence patient-clinician interactions.
Our concern in this essay is with other people’s conceptions of the person and ideas about the self. Our aim is to interpret a widespread mode of social thought often referred to as concrete, undifferentiated, context-specific, or occasion- bound thinking, a mode of social thought culminating in the view that specific situations determine the moral character of a particular action, that the individual person per se is neither an object of importance nor inherently worthy of respect, that the individual as moral agent ought not be distinguished from the social status s(he) occupies; a view that, indeed, the individual as an abstract ethical and normative category is not to be acknowledged.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) replaced Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood as a category in DSM-III. This study evaluates the validity of the new terminology by determining whether clinical diagnoses of ADD could be predicted from scores on a number of widely used psychometric and behavioral instruments. Results suggest that ADD is an inadequately specified category. Some implications of this finding are considered.
Most medical ethnographies in Africa have focused on notions and taxonomies of disease, their causes and the therapies available to treat them. This ‘negative’ pathology-oriented perspective misses, or underplays, important although often unlabelled practices and ideas of hygiene, adaptation to the environment, normative health, and the conscious maintenance of health ideals, all of which are increasingly important in planning health programs based on popular support and rooted in cultural values. It is argued in the paper that medical anthropology needs to consider, as a single domain, both disease and health, both taxonomies of disease and of health, and the study of this expanded domain. In order to more adequately identify and analyze such an expanded domain, the paper reviews numerous ethnographic works on medicine and health in Africa—including Heinz on the !Ko, Evans-Pritchard on the Azande. Buxton on the Mandari, Ngubane on the Nyuswa-Zulu, and Janzen on the Kongo—exploring their potential for understanding alternative logics in therapeutics and for explaining sources of change in medical and health thought.
This paper focuses attention on alternative modes of expressing distress and the need to analyze particular manifestations of distress in relation to personal and cultural meaning complexes as well as the availability and social implications of coexisting idioms of expression. To illustrate this point the case of South Kanarese Havik Brahmin women is presented. These women are described as having a weak social support network and limited opportunities to ventilate feelings and seek counsel outside the household. Alternative means of expressing psychosocial distress resorted to by Havik women are discussed in relation to associated Brahminic values, norms and stereotypes. Somatization is focused upon as an important idiom through which distress is communicated. Idioms of distress more peripheral to the personal or cultural behavioral repertoire of Havik women are considered as adaptive responses in circumstances where other modes of expression fail to communicate distress adequately or provide appropriate coping strategies. The importance of an 'idioms of distress' approach to psychiatric evaluation is noted.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
of older children, adults, and the family unit as a whole. These moral evaluations are, in turn, influenced by such external contingencies as popula tion demography, social and economic factors, subsistence strategies, house hold composition, and by cultural ideas concerning the nature of infancy and childhood, definitions of personhood, and beliefs about the soul and its immortality. MOTHER LOVE AND CHILD DEATH Of all the many factors that endanger the lives of young children, by far the most difficult to examine with any degree of dispassionate objectivity is the quality of parenting. Historians and social scientists, no less than the public at large, are influenced by old cultural myths about childhood inno cence and mother love as well as their opposites. The terrible power and significance attributed to maternal behavior (in particular) is a commonsense perception based on the observation that the human infant (specialized as it is for prematurity and prolonged dependency) simply cannot survive for very long without considerable maternal love and care. The infant's life depends, to a very great extent, on the good will of others, but most especially, of course, that of the mother. Consequently, it has been the fate of mothers throughout history to appear in strange and distorted forms. They may appear as larger than life or as invisible; as all-powerful and destructive; or as helpless and angelic. Myths of the maternal instinct compete, historically, witli -myths of a universal infanticidal impulse.
Any good doctor knows … that the patient’s complaint is more extensive than his symptom, and the state of sickness more comprehensive than localized pain or dysfunction. As an old Jew put it (and old Jews have a way of speaking for the victims of all nations): “Doctor, my bowels are sluggish, my feet hurt, my heart jumps — and you know, Doctor, I myself don’t feel so well either.” (Erikson 1964:51)
The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the need for a comprehensive theory of music and music-making, and for studies that seek to distinguish musical change analytically from other kinds of change, and radical change from variation and innovation within a flexible system.
The cognitive organization of the domain of emotion words on the island of Ifaluk is examined. Native speakers define and sort emotion words based on the situation in which the relevant emotion typically occurs. English emotion words, by contrast, are usually organized on physiological principles. Universal dimensions of meaning found in other studies of psychological language and culture are also found here, however, and these dimensions, being themselves multidimensional, are interpreted in light of the Ifalukian ethos, [cognitive anthropology, emotion, ethnopsychology, psychological anthropology, Ifaluk]
The Northern Yaka see the body as an expanse bounded in time and space. Alimentary traffic, olfactory exchange, and procreation constitute oriented transitions of the body boundaries. The y provide a spatiotemporal order (inner-surface-outer, high-middle-low, before-simultaneous-after, etc.) which, by symbolic transference, patterns the semantic integration of the social. natural and bodily domains and which is itself patterned by this integration. The body-self has to do with the body as receptive of, and participating in, the activities of the other: in sensorial interaction, that is, in encounter, exchange, smelling, listening, speaking and seeing, individuals serve as reciprocal points of identification. The y pattern, and are patterned by, the relationships between the psychosomatic and the sociocultural, between self and other, ascendant and descendant, male and female, etc. I am concerned with the ways these multidimensional relationships in and through the body acts and the body-self may be symbolic, i.e., when they integrate, by differentiation and mediation in a metaphoro-metonymical process, the bodily, social and natural spheres; these relationships are symptomatic when they are disintegrative, dualistic, or intrusive.
Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Ilongots 3. Knowledge, passion, and the heart 3. Knowledge, identity, and order in an egalitarian world 4. Horticulture, hunting, and the 'height' of men's hearts 5. Headhunting: a tale of 'fathers', 'brothers,' and 'sons' 6. Negotiating anger: oratory and the knowledge of adults 7. Conclusion: self and social life Appendices Notes Bibliography Index.
This book represents the fruition of four years labor--most of it, fortunately, a labor of love. The idea of translating these papers, originating with Ernest Angel, was welcomed by Basic Books because of their enthusiasm for bringing out significant new material in the sciences of man. I was glad to accept their invitation to participate as one of the editors since I, too, had long been convinced of the importance of making these works available in English, particularly at this crucial moment in the development of modern psychiatry and psychology. We asked Dr. Ellenberger to join us as the third editor because of his extensive knowledge of the literature of phenomenological and existential psychiatry and his clinical experience in using these methods in Switzerland. He and Mr. Angel are chiefly responsible for the selection of the particular papers translated. In our introductory chapters, Dr. Ellenberger and I have undertaken the task of making a bridge between these contributions and American psychiatry and psychology, while Mr. Angel has borne the major weight of the translations themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This essay is about torture and the culture of terror, which for most of us, including myself, are known only through the words of others. Thus my concern is with the mediation of the culture of terror through narration—and with the problems of writing effectively against terror.
The signs and symptoms of disease do something more than signify the functioning of our bodies: they also signify critically sensitive and contradictory components of our culture and social relations. Yet, in our standard medical practices this social “language” emanating from our bodies is manipulated by concealing it within the realm of biological signs. I try to show this by means of a patient's interpretation of the meaning of her illness. This case study illustrates that in denying the human relations embodied in signs, symptoms, and therapy, we mystify those relations and also reproduce a political ideology in the guise of a science of physical things. This I call reification, following Karl Marx's analysis of the commodity and Georg Lukács' application of this analysis to the interpretation of capitalist culture and its mode of objectifying social relations. I argue that in sustaining reification, our medical practice invigorates cultural axioms as well as modulating the contradictions intrinsic to our culture and views of objectivity. In this way disease is recruited into serving the ideological needs of the social order, to the detriment of healing and our understanding of the social causes of misfortune.
It is commonplace that the years between 1300 and 1650 saw within the intellectual culture of Western Europe important changes in the apprehension of time.1 In the Canterbury Tales the cock still figures in his immemorial role as nature’s time-piece: Chauntecleer—
Caste up his eyen to the brighte sonne,
That in the signe of Taurus hadde yronne
Twenty degrees and oon, and somwhat moore,
He knew by kynde, and by noon oother loore
That it was pryme, and crew with blisful stevene….
But although “By nature knew he ech ascensioun/Of the equynoxial in thilke toun”, the contrast between “nature’s” time and clock time is pointed in the image—
Wel sikerer was his crowyng in his logge
Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge.
This is a very early clock: Chaucer (unlike Chauntecleer) was a Londoner, and was aware of the times of Court, of urban organization, and of that “merchant’s time” which Jacques Le Goff, in a suggestive article in Annales, has opposed to the time of the medieval church.2
The dysfunctional consequences of the Cartesian dichotomy have been enhanced by the power of biomedical technology. Technical virtuosity reifies the mechanical model and widens the gap between what patients seek and doctors provide.
Patients suffer “illnesses”; doctors diagnose and treat “diseases”. Illnesses are experiences of discontinuities in states of being and perceived role performances. Diseases, in the scientific paradigm of modern medicine, are abnormalities in the function and/or structure of body organs and systems. Traditional healers also redefine illness as disease: because they share symbols and metaphors consonant with lay beliefs, their healing rituals are more responsive to the psychosocial context of illness.
Psychiatric disorders offer an illuminating perspective on the basic medical dilemma. The paradigms for psychiatric practice include multiple and ostensibly contradictory models: organic, psychodynamic, behavioural and social. This melange of concepts stems from the fact that the fundamental manifestations of psychosis are disordered behaviours. The psychotic patient remains a person; his self-concept and relationships with others are central to the therapeutic encounter, whatever pharmacological adjuncts are employed.
The same truths hold for all patients. The social matrix determines when and how the patient seeks what kind of help, his “compliance” with the recommended regimen and, to a significant extent, the functional outcome. When physicians dismiss illness because ascertainable “disease” is absent, they fail to meet their socially assigned responsibility. It is essential to reintegrate “scientific” and “social” concepts of disease and illness as a basis for a functional system of medical research and care.
* An ancestral draft of this paper was read at the symposium "Religion, Ethics and the Life Process," Institute of Religion and Human Development, Houston, Texas, March 18-19, 1974.
1. By a categorial account, I mean one which treats of the unities of being in thought. Categorial accounts have primarily a theoretical appeal. They offer an understanding of the ways in which the different significances of being can be comprehended and interrelated. As such, they contrast with metaphysical accounts or empirical scientific accounts, which deal with the structure of things rather than the rationale of things. What I will present is in many respects indebted to Hegel's concept of the dialectic as a method of relating categories so that they constitute an ordered progress from less to more encompassing categories. The dialectic is, in this sense, a metaontological method. When categories are ordered, one is offered a sequence of conceptually significant levels of being. When these relations appear sequentially in nature, they constitute a process which can be construed categorially. It is this sequence which I will treat as a process. The term "process" is appropriate, since a continuous change of categories is displayed through time. Though the categories are conceptually distinguishable, in reality they inseparably grade into each other. Finally, the temporal sequence of the categories is strictly an empirical fact and must be distinguished from the logical character of their categorial relations. That is, in the process of embodiment one observes a sequence of stages, the relations of which can be understood categorially while they occur temporally.
2. That is, when one views the world in the natural-scientific attitude, one prescinds from the significance of minds [1, pp. 1-2, 374]. Such naturalistic views are adequate for explaining displacements of matter and exchanges of energy. When one views the world as a physical system, the patterns are patterns of physical coherence requisite for coherent physical explanations. If there should appear to be certain irregularities, one would introduce uncertainty factors, not ghosts. The uncertainty factors would be physical uncertainty factors. And, at no point would spirits enter to cement physical discontinuities. The need for such an entrance could not even be articulated within a naturalistic framework.
3. Though one can give a description in behavioral terms of the activities of a person, it is not, strictly as such, a description of a person (a self-aware rational being) or even of activity (i.e., actions of a person). The category...
This pilot-study examines the self-perceptions, and explanatory models, of 42 patients with either respiratory or gastrointestinal psychosomatic disorders. For several reasons, these disorders comprise an anomalous category within the biomedical model. It is suggested that clinicians explain their chronic, unpredictable course by 'psychologization'--shifting responsibility for etiology, exacerbations or therapeutic failure to patients' emotions, personality, or lifestyle. Evidence is presented that psychologization is socially constructed, in clinical encounters over time. Patients respond to this process by reifying pathogenic emotions, personality traits, or malfunctioning body parts, and thus separating them from an idealized concept of the social self. It is also suggested that patients with gastrointestinal or respiratory conditions differ in their self-perceptions and explanatory models: a proportion of patients in each group organize their experiences around a central natural symbol--respiration or digestion/excretion. These 2 images link physiological experiences to concepts of pathogenic emotions or personality, physical weakness, and types of social relationships.
This paper explores a new approach to culture-specific mental disorders through cross-cultural examination of nerves. A number of case studies are presented from contrasting cultures. It is proposed that nerves be considered a culturally interpreted symptom rather than being culture-bound.
The folk medical system of low income black Americans is described, from an ethnographic study of a black neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona. Comparable beliefs among Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Southern whites are traced, mainly from published sources. The system is a composite of rare elements of African origin, survivals from the folk and formal medicine of a century ago, and selected beliefs from modern scientific medicine. It includes beliefs about the prevention of illness, the classification of illnesses into 'natural' and 'unnatural' categories, home remedies and preventives, and the ranking of healing practitioners, according to the perception of their ability, their modes of curing, and the types of illnesses they can cure. Folk medical beliefs are at odds with scientific medicine in many respects. Medical personnel should be aware of these differences and how they might affect patient behavior.
One important aspect of the control of behavior of patients and visitors on a hospital emergency service is the moral evaluation of the clients made by the staff. Such evaluation arises from the application of concepts of social worth common in the larger society and from staff concepts of appropriate work role. The process, however, is not a simple cause-effect matter, but the product of a reciprocal relationship between the attributes of the client and the categories of the staff. Emergency department staff, like other service occupations, attempt to establish mechanisms of control over inappropriate demands for service.
Neurologic lesions of the angular or supramarginal gyrii may produce discrete changes in the patient's conceptualization of his own body or portions of it.1 Because of such syndromes, neurologists have long been familiar with disturbances in the body image, but it remained for such introspectionists as William James and Paul Schilder to elaborate the concept of a psychologic functioning that maintained an internal mental representation of the bodily self.2 Freud probably had something of this sort in mind when he stated in The Ego and the Id, "The ego is first and foremost a body ego."3 The psychologic and psychoanalytic work of the last half century has continued to clarify and elaborate this concept. The purpose of this paper is clarification of two aspects of the body-image theory: the layering of bodyimage constructs in any person, and the extension of the body-image construct
A study of food ideology and eating behavior in a Malay village demonstrates that the relationship between belief and action is complex and not always predictable. Over-reliance upon stated beliefs, and generalizations derived from particular ecological settings, have influenced investigators into making universal and logical statements about Malay eating behavior and its health consequences--a logic which, however, does not always jibe with reality. Food ideology, like any other portion of a belief system, is subject to innovation, interpretation and rationalization, and contains within it 'rules to break rules' which assure the continued integrity of the symbolic system by patterning what might otherwise be seen as rifts in its fabric. An understanding of eating behavior must be based both on a knowledge of the subsidiary, as well as primary, clauses of food ideology, and on direct observation of the behaviors elicited by these beliefs and modified by the setting, the situation and the individual.
The Brazilian 'Economic Miracle' has had an adverse effect on infant and childhood mortality which has been steadily rising throughout Brazil since the late 1960s. An analysis of the reproductive histories of 72 marginally employed residents of a Northeast Brazilian rural shantytown explores the economic and cultural context that inhibits these mother's abilities to rear healthy, living children and which forces them to devise 'ethnoeugenic' childrearing strategies that prejudice the life chances of those offspring judged 'less fit' for survival under the pernicious conditions of life on the Alto. it is suggested that the selective neglect of children is a direct consequence of the selective neglect of their mothers who have been excluded from participating in the national economy. The links between economic exploitation and maternal deprivation are further discussed with reference to the social causes of the 'insufficient breastmilk syndrome' and the commercial powdered milk dependency of these women.
Interviews with 25 Spanish-Americans of Taos County, New Mexico, indicate that time and acculturation have greatly eroded the belief in and practice of curanderismo, the traditional folk medical system of the Southwest. Curanderismo in northern New Mexico today has moved from being a primary and important source of medical care to one used alternatively and very occasionally in cases of pediatric disorders, chronic illnesses and pain, and for those maladies still classified according to the traditional folk beliefs.
The author reviews conceptual and empirical issues regarding the interaction of neurasthenia, somatization and depression in Chinese culture and in the West. The historical background of neurasthenia and its current status are discussed, along with the epidemiology and phenomenology of somatization and depression. Findings are presented from a combined clinical and anthropological field study of 100 patients with neurasthenia in the Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic at the Hunan Medical College. Eighty-seven of these patients made the DSM-III criteria of Major Depressive Disorder; diagnoses of anxiety disorders were also frequent. Forty-four patients were suffering from chronic pain syndromes previously undiagnosed, and cases of culture-bound syndromes also were detected. For three-quarters of patients the social significances and uses of their illness behavior chiefly related to work. Although from the researcher's perspective 70% of patients with Major Depressive Disorder experienced substantial improvement and 87% some improvement in symptoms when treated with antidepressant medication, fewer experienced decreased help seeking, and a much smaller number perceived less social impairment and improvement in illness problems (the psychosocial accompaniment of disease including maladaptive coping and work, family and school problems). These findings are drawn on to advance medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry theory and research regarding somatization in Chinese culture, the United States and cross culturally. The author concludes that though neurasthenia can be understood in several distinctive ways, it is most clinically useful to regard it as bioculturally patterned illness experience (a special form of somatization) related to either depression and other diseases or to culturally sanctioned idioms of distress and psychosocial coping.
This article considers some implications of the new health consciousness and movements--holistic health and self-care--for the definition of and solution to problems related to "health." Healthism represents a particular way of viewing the health problem, and is characteristic of the new health consciousness and movements. It can best be understood as a form of medicalization, meaning that it still retains key medical notions. Like medicine, healthism situates the problem of health and disease at the level of the individual. Solutions are formulated at that level as well. To the extent that healthism shapes popular beliefs, we will continue to have a non-political, and therefore, ultimately ineffective conception and strategy of health promotion. Further, by elevating health to a super value, a metaphor for all that is good in life, healthism reinforces the privatization of the struggle for generalized well-being.
The Therapist as Exorcist
- Anderson R. I.