EMBODYING THE EVERYDAY: HEALTH AND HERITAGE PRACTICE RELATIONSHIPS IN LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES IN NEW YORK CITY

Abstract

The sociocultural factors related to immigrant health perceptions and practices have been long flattened and essentialized in discussions of urban community health, leading to programs and policies that fall short in holistically addressing community needs. Responding to this shortfall, in this article, I take a phenomenological approach to understanding the relationships between ecological heritage practices and health in Latin American and Caribbean immigrant communities in New York City. Through ethnographic accounts of heritage practices, I identify broad themes related to everyday practice: health care pluralism, space and time constraints, social identity, and biological health. Foodways and the preparation of traditional dishes featured prominently in the 20 semi-structured interviews and participant observation across four diverse neighborhoods. I use the embodied ecological heritage (EEH) framework to theorize the connections between the practice of heritage traditions and the well body. I illustrate how everyday negotiations around how practices are defined and described as “normal” in the context of the new environments of the immigrant experience, so capturing the fluidity of the heritage practices and the traditional body as a site of wellness. Focus on this fluidity of heritage practice stands to improve the ways in which immigrant community health resources might be developed and deployed, providing a holistic lens often lacking in urban public health systems.