Health Anthropology Research Articles

Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology.

Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology.

Health Anthropology - Contributions to the Construction of New Spaces

Health Anthropology - Contributions to the Construction of New Spaces

Institutional one health and animal-human health connections in Nthongoni, Eastern Kenya.

In recent years, there has been increased global advocacy for the use of a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach: a One Health approach, with the goal to achieve optimal health outcomes for people, animals and their shared environment. This study explored One Health implementation and practice in Kenya. Further, I used a case study of Nthongoni, a remote rural area in Eastern Kenya, to help us to understand and think about implementation of One Health in an area where mainstream biomedical system runs parallel to or is in conflict with, a deeply entrenched indigenous health system. I used a qualitative research approach including participant observation, and key informant and general respondents' in-depth interviews. Data was transcribed verbatim, translated, checked for consistency and coded for content and thematic analysis. The findings indicate that although Kenya's One Health approach was hailed as a key strategy and a model for other countries in the region, the approach faced significant challenges including insufficient funding, competing priorities and concerns over its sustainability. But while the formal One Health is embroiled in structural and politico-economic influences that curtail its operationalization and success, this study illuminates a lay one health that is part of lived realities in Nthongoni, inviting us to reflect on the place for and status of traditional healers, and meaning of health for people and animals. The study further provokes our thoughts over whether One Health should integrate or do away with traditional health systems, or be abandoned altogether. I argue that incorporating traditional health knowledge and practitioners in One Health might help to make health care more robust and culturally responsive. The work contributes to debates on anthropology of health in general and to anthropological understanding of both the lay one health and the institutional One Health agenda.

LOCAL MITIGATION OF PANDEMIC FOR SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC HEALTH ACCORDING TO JAVANESE CULTURE AND BELIEF

Disease prevention is almost always done with a modern approach through medical science or other public health sciences. This approach is the primary reference in mitigating the spread of the disease. In fact, in Indonesian society, there are local wisdoms in the traditions of each ethnic group in tackling the spread of disease, for example, the Javanese tradition. Javanese culture has local wisdom in dealing with pandemics passed down from generation to generation. This study attempts to answer how the mitigation pattern in Javanese culture is. Anthropologically, pandemics can be studied under health anthropology on disease. By taking the case of the Javanese people in Indonesia, this article describes local ways of preventing and overcoming disease outbreaks or mitigating disease outbreaks. The data source of this article is produced from qualitative research through interview techniques, focus group discussions, online seminars, and the study of manuscripts from magazines published in Java. The results showed that local communities, in addition to knowing the causes of disease, also developed ways to prevent and eliminate diseases, and mitigate outbreaks and pandemics. Javanese people see the mitigation of diseases physically and psychically. Physical mitigation tends to be in line with modern medical methods and the application of new normal. The mitigation of psychics is done by using mantras and songs and developing Javanese attitude of “narima ing pandum” (take it as it comes).

The cultural system biomedical health in perspective in the community Ilé Alákétu Asè Ifá Omo Oyá.

This study was developed at the intersection of health sciences and anthropology in order to understand the value of traditional Afro-Brazilian Medicine portrayed in houses of Candomblé exploring its member's interactions with the biomedical system of health. The anthropology of health aims to understand the phenomenon of health as a socio-cultural elaboration and from this, develops the notion of cultural health system, the theoretical operator of this study. This proposal can contribute to the challenges faced in the field of collective health by enabling dialogue between cultural health systems, supporting the creation of more effective policies. This ethnographic-inspired article was developed from a specific bibliographic survey, followed by participant observations and interviews with members of the community Ilé Alákétu Asè Ifá Omo Oyá, located in São Paulo. The health practice in candomblé manages to reach gaps left by biomedicine by associating itself in a non-authoritarian, colonialist or exclusive way taking into account the symbolic, cultural, subjective and spiritual processes involved in the processes of illness. This practice brings other possible ways of interpretation, treatment and cure for health problems.

PRAKTEK PENGOBATAN SUKU SAKAI BATHIN SOBANGA

This study discussed the eastern healing practice in Sakai Batin Sobanga at Sobanga Asal Hamlet, Bengkalis, Riau. Sakai tribe is well known in the community for its healing practices. Badike is a ritual that has been widely studied from various disciplines, while the ritual practices of other Sakai tribes are not widely known. This is a qualitative study with an ethnographic approach, in which the researchers stayed for two months in Kasumbu Ampai Village, Sobanga Hamlet, Mandau District, Bengkalis Regency, Riau. Data were taken through participatory observation and in-depth interviews with informants. The informants were bomo and several community leaders. The data were analyzed descriptively and then written in the form of narrative using Kalangie and Foster’s eastern healing theory to get a general trend. This study found that the medical practice in the Sakai Batin Sobanga tribe is an integral system, so that a ritual is precondition for the next one. Badike ritual cannot be carried out if personal healing ritual, tetomeh ritual, baulin and jungkul ritual have not been carried out. The Badike ritual is the last stage of the Sakai Tribal healing practice in Batin Sobanga. Religion-based healing and western medicine practices are also found in Batin Sobanga. Bomo is always open to his patients and gives them a space to go to a doctor or tuan guru. This research contributes to the anthropology of health, ethnomedicine, especially its novelty about the process of medical practice in the Sakai Tribe in Batin Sobanga.

Pijat Kendiku: Antara Kearifan Lokal dan Kekecewaan terhadap Pengobatan Medis

The current era of modernization has entered every line of human life, including the medical world. However, not all people can reach medical treatment even though the government has provided health service facilities. In line with this, traditional alternative medicine such as massage is still popular to cure ailments among the public. The author tries to raise the reasons why people prefer traditional medicine over medical treatment. This study used qualitative ethnographic methods with data collection techniques that are interviews and observations. The result of the research serves as documentation of cultural features in the health sector that is still developing in society. As an analytical technique, the author used James C. Young's health anthropology perspective. The data analyses used are data collection, data reduction, and data presentation in descriptions. This research showed that people prefer massage as a healing method for many reasons, such as having more affordable prices, being unprepared for the risk of medical treatment, feeling disappointment with medical treatment that does not work, and trusting in personalistic illness

Beyond Hegemony: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of the covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract Starting from a Gramscian perspective, this article offers anthropological understandings of time in the experience of pandemics in Italy. The Gramscian suggestion is to go beyond hegemony in order to study the bodily life of powers. The author explores the anthropological sense of pandemics, also touching on philosophical approaches among contemporary studies. Following this, some questions about Italy are raised. What was the Italian experience of quarantine? Is it true that there was a ‘failure’ of the health model, above all in the northern regions, which had been praised as a pioneering model of public–private sector collaboration? Is it true to read the covid-19 pandemic as evidence of ‘victory’ for Italy’s central regions, such as the model of Umbria, with its centres of anthropological resistance? The instruments for answering these questions can be found in the critical anthropology of public health as outlined in the article.

Uncertainty at the heart of therapeutic patient education (TPE): aheuristic resource in favor of self-statements

This article stems from the synthesis of four research studies in anthropology of health, around perinatality and severe epilepsies, with a view to propose a reflection at the interface of the notions of uncertainty, "self-statements" and TPE. The role of storytelling is questioned in the context of pathologies with high uncertainties, as much on a diagnostic as on a therapeutic and social level. A better understanding of storytelling is indeed a central identity and epistemological issue in the development of an adapted TPE system. The four research studies presented in the article are based on a qualitative ethnographic method, with participant observations and semi-structured interviews, but the article is presented in the form of a multidisciplinary literature review established on the basis of the results of these works. The results of this synthesis demonstrate that thanks to their enunciative structure, the "sayings of oneself" contribute towards the identity reconstruction of the subject in the context of TPE, allowing them to better adapt to the multiple uncertainties that characterize some care. The narration represents the ferment of an identity which, once upset by rare disease and handicap, must be able to be rebuilt in particular within the framework of a TPE program. In doing so, beyond the transmission of medical information, TPE must be able to support the "self-explanations" of patients and/or caregivers in order to allow them to fully commit to taking in charge of their affections.

Venenos, curas y matayuyos Trabajadores agrícolas y saberes sobre plaguicidas en Uruguay

Since the beginning of the 21st century Uruguay has been going through a sojization process that has been linked to an exponential increase in the volumes of pesticides used. Although there is evidence that exposures to these products pose a risk to human health, they remain part of the dominant technological package of this productive system. Based on the proposals of critical medical anthropology of environmental health and Latin American sociocultural epidemiology, this article discusses results obtained among workers linked to the application of pesticides in soybean production in Uruguay, for having beig characterized as a social group particularly vulnerable to exposures to these substances' effects. The results indicate that popular knowledge regarding the danger of pesticides combines body knowledge as well as expert knowledge which are appropriate and resignified in a popular pesticide hazzard clasification.

Le film de recherche comme modalité de production d’un discours scientifique en anthropologie de la santé

Dans le cadre d’une recherche socio-anthropologique portant sur les usages médicamenteux des personnes âgées polymédiquées en Suisse, une anthropologue et une réalisatrice élaborent un film de recherche interrogeant le statut scientifique qu’il est possible d’attribuer aux films de recherche et engagent une réflexivité à deux voix sur les divers défis épistémologiques, techniques et déontologiques rencontrés. Cette démarche leur permet d’interroger l’apport d’une production filmique de recherche au champ anthropologique. La mise en présence des données audiovisuelles donne à voir le terrain dans toute son épaisseur, et permet également aux acteurs de l’étude de développer une nouvelle mise en récit, qui montre leur expertise. Elle est particulièrement significative pour l’analyse anthropologique dont la réflexion se façonne, lors de la réalisation de terrains, grâce à la mobilisation de l’intuition et de l’imagination ethnographique du/de la chercheur.e et ouvre l’échange entre pairs.

Blessing unintended pregnancy

Within public health and medical anthropology research, the study of women’s agency in reproductive decision making often neglects the role of religion and women’s spirituality. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at a shelter for homeless (mostly African American) mothers in the southeastern United States. We explore the inadequacy of rational choice models that emphasize intentionality and planning, which our research shows are in tension with the vernacular religious and moral ethos of pregnancy as a ‘blessing’ or unplanned gift. Our findings confirm that young and disadvantaged women may view pregnancy and motherhood as opportunities to improve their lives in ways that mediate against their acceptance of family planning models. For these women, the notion of ‘blessing’ also reflects an acceptance of contingency and indeterminacy as central to the reproductive experience. We also question the increasingly popular distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in contemporary public health.

Nagoya Protocol and Infectious Diseases: Hindrance or Opportunity?

While strong concerns have emerged in the health science community over the application of the Nagoya Protocol concerning the sharing of pathogens (and microbiota) collected from humans, specific issues are not solved in relation to the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol. These issues should be put under scrutiny by legal researchers together with scientists from different disciplines (such as human medicine, health anthropology, global health).

Presentación: Antropología médica y de la salud: Aportes desde el Sur Global

Presentación de E. Jean Langdon y Julio Portocarrero al dossier dedicado a la antropología médica y de la salud.

Gestión de políticas públicas en salud: Mujeres migrantes en una ciudad de la Patagonia, Argentina

Este trabajo busca caracterizar la gestión cotidiana de la política pública en salud que tiene como destinatarias a mujeres migrantes de zonas rurales de Bolivia en una ciudad de la Patagonia, Argentina. El trabajo de campo se realizó entre los años 2016 y 2018 en dos centros de atención primaria de salud, ubicados en barrios periurbanos de la ciudad de Comodoro Rivadavia, a través del acompañamiento en las tareas cotidianas de efectoras de salud, encuentros, charlas y entrevistas con profesionales, funcionarios y mujeres migrantes. Se evidencia una política focalizada y tutelar en lo que respecta a la salud de migrantes, que vela una lectura generizada, etnicizada, de clase social y generacional, fundamentando técnicas de control y subjetivación, que en algunos casos se presentan disputadas. Desde un enfoque etnográfico, aportes de la antropología de la salud, del Estado y una perspectiva de género interseccional se da cuenta de la producción y gestión del riesgo, así como de sus tensiones en contextos de desigualdad.

Approaching Actually Existing Neoliberalisms: Citizenship, Responsibility, and (Health)care in Anthropology

Neoliberalism seems to be a ubiquitous concept, both in anthropological scholarship and in the public discourse, as global social inequalities continue to grow. In anthropology, neoliberalism has been particularly popularized in the past decade and a half, but - as is the case with most anthropological concepts - the consensus on its meaning has not been met. Furthermore, it is not rare to see neoliberalism being used in scholarship without an operational definition. Concurrently with its popularity, the concept attracted numerous criticisms. In this review article, I present a short overview of how neoliberalism has originated, then used, and criticized in anthropology and its sister disciplines such as human geography. Additionally, I focus on the transformations in the nature of the state, governance, and subjectivity that occur in late capitalism, as well as how we can approach those transformations ethnographically. The increased unavailability of welfare provision in neoliberalism has been heavily investigated in anthropology of health and care. I thus particularly discuss how the concepts of care and responsibility have been used in anthropology to that end.

Dreaming partnership, enabling inequality: administrative infrastructure in global health science

AbstractThis article examines the fiscal and administrative infrastructures underpinning global health research partnerships between the US and Uganda, and the power dynamics they entail. Science studies scholars and anthropologists have argued for the importance of studying so-called ‘boring things’ – standards, bureaucracies, routinization, codes and databases, for example – as a way to bring to the surface the assumptions and power relations that often lie embedded within them. This article focuses on fiscal administration as an understudied ethnographic object within the anthropology of global health. The first part of the article is a case study of the fiscal administration of a US–Uganda research partnership. The second part describes the institutionalization of some of the administrative norms and practices used by this partnership within the ‘global health enabling systems’ employed by US universities working in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. I analyse a case study and ‘enabling systems’ to show how these administrative strategies create parallel infrastructures that avoid direct partnership with Ugandan public institutions and may facilitate the outsourcing of legal and financial risks inherent in international partnerships to Ugandan collaborators. In this way, these strategies act todisablerather thanenable(or build) Ugandan research and institutional capacity, and have profound implications for African institutions as well as for the dream of ‘real partnership’ in global health.

Dialogues of existencialist psychology with the concept of territory

Jean-Paul Sartre, based on the phenomenological method and existentialist philosophy, described human reality as freedom in situation, understood in the indissoluble unity between itself and itself, that is, between freedom and facticity. Existence of the subject is not given abstractly, it occurs in a concrete space, circumscribed in materiality and acquires meaning in the light of the project of being. In defining the concept of situation, Sartre uses the notions of "my place" and "my surroundings", portraying materiality as a boundary condition of freedom. From this notion of spatiality, the present work aims to establish relations between the Sartrian concept of situation, as defined in Being and Nothingness, and the concept of territory used in several areas of knowledge that approach the relation between person and environment, such as geography, anthropology, ethology, psychology and other areas of health. The multiple possibilities of interdisciplinary interlocution of the notion of territory result from the dynamics of the concept, which is not limited to the physical environment, but brings together social and symbolic aspects in an integrated and dialectical way. Discussing the approximations between the concepts of territory, territoriality and situation contribute to the interdisciplinarity of the different areas that use them in professional practice

Critical Ecological Medical Anthropology of Rural Transformation in Izmir-Ali̇ağa-Horozgedi̇ği̇ Village

<div><!--block-->Before 1970, inhabitants of Horozgediği Village in Aliağa, used to make their living from vine growing, olive, tobacco, cotton and wheat farming, horticulture and animal husbandry but after Aliağa was declared to be an industrial site, the village started to industrialize in the early 1970’s. The village was surrounded by iron and steel factories and was subject to rural transformation. Following the transformation of agricultural areas into industrial sites after the 1970’s, a health migration is now taking place in the village due to the resulting heavy air pollution and the diseases and health problems considered to be related to this. The air pollution caused by the industry has disrupted the whole ecological balance of the village. All living creatures from vegetation to animals have become sick and cancer has started to be frequently mentioned in the village (Sofuoğlu, Baytak, Bayram, Müezzinoğlu, Odabaşı, Seyfioğlu, Elbirve Tuncel, 2008). These frequently experienced health problems in the village have caused households to migrate slowly over time. The problems created by this rural transformation have been interpreted through the works of social scientists such as Zerzan (2009), Güvenç (2016, 2010, 2008), Latour (2008), Beck (2011), which are considered to be covered by critical ecological health anthropology (Young, 2002). In this study, the participant observation technique for anthropology was used. Unstructured in-depth interviews were conducted with the inhabitants of the village and people who have migrated from the village, doctors from various departments of Public Health who had previously carried out research in the village, environmental and cultural platforms, and also journalists. The research findings have been published under headings such as “Like Hell: Air Pollution and Its Effects on Health”, “Health Migration: Karanfil/Carnation Street” and “ From Bağ-Bahçe to Industry, from Farming to Nakliyecilik. As a result, the people of this region, which was expected to develop economically under the name of development, are instead more impoverished and their health has been adversely affected.&nbsp;</div>

The anthropology of mental health and illness: epistemology, ethics, and politics

The anthropology of mental health and illness: epistemology, ethics, and politics