Love, marriage and HIV: Using comparative ethnographic research as a method for building theory in medical anthropology

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Parker ◽  
Ida Susser
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Wardlow ◽  
Jennifer Hirsch ◽  
Daniel Jordan Smith ◽  
Shanti Parikh ◽  
Richard Parker ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Sebastian Mohr

In this article, I suggest the performative effects of diagnosis as an analytical tool to explore the transformations in people’s intimate lives that being diagnosed brings with it. As an analytical term, I understand the performative effects of diagnosis to describe trajectories in people’s intimate lives that emerge in the interplay between a person’s intimate sense of self, that is, their gendered and sexualed self-perceptions, and the logics and norms contained in medical diagnoses. I develop this term in the context of ethnographic research on Danish war veterans’ understandings of and experiences with intimacy and extrapolate it conceptually in this article through scholarship in feminist theory, trans studies, STS, and medical anthropology and sociology. The argument that I make throughout is that the performative effects of diagnosis allows scholars to explore transformations in people’s intimate lives without a foreclosure about the normative dimensions of these transformations. In that sense, rather than only asking how biopolitical and cis- and heteronormative normalcy constitutes itself, the performative effects of diagnosis provide the opportunity to explore how these dimensions are (re)configured and (un)done in and through medicalized intimacies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1220-1249 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEERT DE NEVE

AbstractThe article considers narratives and experiences of love marriage in the garment city of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, South India. As a booming centre of garment production, Tiruppur attracts a diverse migrant workforce of young men and women who have plenty of opportunity to fall in love and enter marriages of their own making. Based on long-term ethnographic research, the article explores what love marriages mean to those involved, how they are experienced and talked about, and how they shape postmarital lives. Case studies reveal that a discourse of loss of postmarital kin support is central to evaluations of love marriages by members of Tiruppur's labouring classes. Such marriages not only flout parental authority and often cross caste and religious boundaries, but they also jeopardize the much-needed kin support youngsters require to fulfil aspirations of mobility, entrepreneurship, and success in a post-liberalization environment. It is argued that critical evaluations of love marriages not only disrupt modernist assumptions of linear transformations in marital practices, but they also constitute a broader critique of the neoliberal celebration of the ‘individual’ while reaffirming the continued importance of caste endogamy, parental involvement, and kin support to success in India's post-reform economy.


Author(s):  
Jeferson Santos Araújo ◽  
Vander Monteiro da Conceição ◽  
Marcia Maria Fontão Zago

Objective: to interpret the meanings attributed by men with prostate cancer to the experience regarding their bodies and masculinities during illness. Method: ethnographic research with 17 men, guided by the narrative method and theoretical framework of medical anthropology and masculinities. The information was collected through recorded interviews, direct observation and field diary records, which were analyzed by inductive thematic analysis. Results: men undergo body and identity transformations when they get sick with prostate cancer, transiting through multiple masculinities, resigning their actions, and occupying subordinate positions in relation to other healthy bodies, which are marginalized in their social relationships and allied with regard to establishing their affective relationships. Conclusion: this evidence enhances and deepens the knowledge disclosed in the literature and contributes to the strengthening of nursing care actions when dealing with the sick.


Author(s):  
Jerome W. Crowder ◽  
Elizabeth Cartwright

As photography becomes more prevalent in ethnographic research, scholars should more seriously consider the photo essay as a medium for sharing their work. In this Position Piece, we present guidelines for the creation of ethnographic photo essays for medical anthropology that do not simply combine image and text, but create a balance that allows words to provide context for the image(s) and images to reinforce or challenge the text. We feel there are three basic elements every photo essay must consider that are informed by the theory and practice of visual anthropology. While a solid background in visual anthropology is not necessary to produce a successful photo essay, being mindful of these three elements in relation to your work will help you develop a photo essay that combines the best of what both media offer your audience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-65
Author(s):  
Alexa S. Dietrich

The materiality of pollution is increasingly embodied in humans, animals, and the living environment. Ethnographic research, especially from within the fields broadly construed as medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, disaster anthropology, and science and technology studies are all positioned to make important contributions to understanding present lived experiences in disastrous environmental contexts. This article examines points of articulation within recent research in these areas, which have much in common but are not always in conversation with one another. Research and writing collaborations, as well as shared knowledge bases between ethnographic researchers who center different aspects of the spectrum of toxics- based environmental health, are needed to better account for and address the material and lived realities of increasing pollution levels in the time of a warming climate.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Swetlana Torno

Most ethnographies of childbirth are situated in the field of medical anthropology and focus on the interplay of different medical traditions and power relations. A smaller number of works examine activities and rituals accompanying childbirth in the context of integrating new members into the community and constituting the “person” by means of creating or changing relations to the “socio-cosmological universe.” Following the latter, the paper analyzes rituals and practices surrounding childbirth and the socialization of children during their first year of life in Kyrgyzstan. I argue that personhood is established through careful work on relationships to entities situated in the social and cosmic domains of the society. The paper draws on ethnographic research in north Kyrgyzstan and explores ideas about conception, rules of conduct during pregnancy, and the life cycle rituals zhentek toĭ, beshik toĭ, and tushoo toĭ. 1


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