From the Archive: “Exposure and Exclusion: Disenfranchised Biological Citizenship among the First-Generation Korean Americans”

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This week on the blog we are featuring an article from a past issue of the journal as part of our “From the Archive” series. In this highlight, we explore “Exposure and Exclusion: Disenfranchised Biological Citizenship among the First-Generation Korean Americans” by Taewoo Kim, Charlotte Haney, and Janis Faye Hutchinson, available here. This article was featured in Volume 36, Issue 4 (December 2012).

In the midst of an uncertain future of health insurance in the United States, it is important to reflect on how larger social systems affect individual experiences of health and illness. Our contributing authors at Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry frequently express the need for ethnographic approaches to healthcare analysis. In this article, the authors documented how the healthcare system in the United States in 2012 disenfranchised those of marginal health insurance status. Based on fieldwork with a highly uninsured and underinsured Korean American population, the authors argued that the vulnerability of these disenfranchised biological citizens is compounded through exposure to health risks and exclusion from essential healthcare.

According to the authors, the ﬁrst-generation Korean Americans interviewed faced the double burden of increased health risks from long, stressful work hours and lack of access to healthcare due to the prohibitive costs of health insurance for small business owners. Even as their health needs became critical, their insurance status and costly medical bills discouraged them from visiting healthcare institutions.

Based on a multi-sited ethnography of Korean–American communities in Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, this study attempted to describe the condition of marginal insurance in the United States. The authors trace health risks among Korean Americans from “daily life to life in crisis.” By mapping the connections from an unequal social structure where risks are unevenly distributed, to the disproportionate prevalence of disease, the authors discuss the impact of inequality on the bodies of the disenfranchised population.

The authors build off of Nikolas Rose’s term biological citizen, defined as encompassing “all those citizenship projects that have linked their conceptions of citizens to beliefs about the biological existence of human beings.” The authors argued that their participants were left out of such developments and strategies due to the participants’ place in the employment structure and healthcare payment schemes. The high concentration of small business owners among the ﬁrst-generation Korean Americans led to long work hours in risk-laden conditions as well as high rates of marginal insurance driven by sky-rocketing private health insurance costs. These risks were compounded by limited access to appropriate preventive measures and medical intervention.

This combination of exposure to precarious working conditions and exclusion from healthcare increases Korean Americans’ vulnerability, particularly to chronic illnesses including hypertension, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease. These conditions are the bio-devaluation that results from biological disenfranchisement.

Through detailed ethnographic research with uninsured and underinsured Korean Americans working in family-run businesses, the article focused on the daily practice of “doing-without-health,” pushing the discussion of barriers to healthcare-seeking toward an examination of how those barriers cultivate subjectivities of disenfranchised biological citizenship. The authors also describe how such disenfranchisement multiplies the participants’ vulnerabilities by exposing them to disproportionate health risks and excluding them from essential care.

First, the authors examined the daily-lived experience of risk exposure. Social and economic contexts of risk included the uneven distribution of economic activities and opportunities that Korean Americans face after immigration. The authors discussed several circumstances which contributed to social and economic risks, such as institutional barriers which disregarded educational attainments and professional experiences in South Korea, linguistic barriers, already difficult and stratified economics in the United States, stressed relationships with the surrounding communities, and fear of robbery and theft. These factors exposed the Korean American participants to health risks, such as overwork and stress, on a daily basis.

Second, the authors discussed how exclusion from care operated within the studied community settings. Uninsured and underinsured participants experienced discouragement from using healthcare services. A long-term uninsured status and widely circulated stories of ﬁnancially devastating medical bills create a distance between Korean Americans and healthcare institutions. Underinsured participants similarly encountered healthcare discouragement through high out-of-pocket costs. With tight budgets, underinsured participants feared the high cost of medical care and avoided visiting doctors.

Combined, these factors illuminated the embodiment of the social inequality among uninsured and underinsured Korean Americans; the authors linked exposure to health risks and exclusion from healthcare. Through an ethnographic examination of the daily practice of “doing-without-health” among a marginalized sub-group in society, the authors articulated how disenfranchised biological citizenship goes beyond creating institutional barriers to healthcare and shaping subjectivities of the disenfranchised.

Article Highlight: Vol. 41, Issue 1, “‘Hunger Hurts, but Starving Works.’ The Moral Conversion to Eating Disorders”

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This week we’re highlighting Gisella Orsini’s “Hunger Hurts, but Starving Works.” The Moral Conversion to Eating Disorders article. Orsini suggests that eating disorders are the result of moral self-transformative processes. Women in Malta and Italy with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders are thus actively and deliberately engaged with cultural moral values embodied in thinness and the control of bodily needs and pleasure. Thus, the more control over hunger, the higher the level of satisfaction and the degree of moral conversion achieved.

Orsini begins by discussing the history of eating disorders within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), highlighting that the explanations of onset, classification, and treatment has often been, and to a large extent remains, unclear. Yet before the medical category of “eating disorders,” behaviors which would now be considered symptoms of pathology had different meanings, often characterized as holy behavior or as a wonder of nature. Medieval European nuns often adopted strict starvation practices in order to reach unity with Christ. Pre-Victorian and Victorian era “fasting women” were admired by the rest of society and were considered curiosities by scientists and doctors. Orsini narrows the modern gap between the biomedical construction of illness and the self-perception of patients through an understanding of the narratives of people with eating disorders and framing it as a process of self-transformation.

Between 2012 and 2014, Orsini conducted comparative qualitative research in Malta and Italy. Even though the prevalence of eating disorders was relatively similar between the two countries, the social reactions to eating disorders were markedly different. The Italian government considers eating disorders to be a “social epidemic, which leads to serious problems in terms of public health.” Malta, by contrast, has almost no concern with eating disorders at the public level as well as a lack of public and private treatment institutions. Both countries aligned with the international trend of eating disorders being mostly female.

In framing eating disorders as a moral conversion, on the basis of the interview narratives she collected, Orsini suggests that eating disorders could be considered as the body becoming a physical symbol of an attempt to redefine their lives. Yet the biomedical approach views the behavior of people with an eating disorder as stemming from a mental condition. Orsini states, “anorexics, bulimics and binge eaters actively and deliberately adopt behaviors in relation to food and their own bodies in order to morally improve themselves.” All of Orsini’s participants sought to dominate their bodily needs in order to improve themselves morally. Furthermore, all recalled negative moral feelings, such as guilt and shame, when their behavior was not in line with their moral values of purity and control. In this way, moral values became moral imperatives.

Yet not all people with eating disorders reacted to their diagnosis’ pathologization in the same way. Anorexics tended to be the most resistant to their newly achieved satisfactory personhood with illness. Bulimics and people with binge eating disorder, on the other hand, tended to experience relief at being labeled “ill,” identifying more with their condition as a disorder rather than a moral conversation.

Orsini states that although the main objective of people with eating disorders is thinness, this thinness is simply the end result of several behaviors that aim to ameliorate one’s self in highly moral terms. The process of a moral conversion requires an individual to adopt views, attitudes, or patterns of behavior that are generally thought of as morally better than their previous views. Orsini then further divides the three discussed eating disorders into levels of conversion: achieved moral conversion for anorexia nervosa, attempting moral conversion for bulimia nervosa, and rejecting moral conversion for binge eating disorder.

In the case of anorexia nervosa, Orsini presents the circumstances of Elisa, a 28-year-old woman in residential treatment in Italy. Elisa’s narrative of transforming her body from being “sinful and dirty,” to a “pure and sinless body” through her anorexia is an example of an achieved moral conversion. Yet she was forced to abandon her new perspectives and values in order to live. Elisa had to decide if the costs of her anorexic beliefs justified the benefits, leading to a painful moral choice.

For bulimia nervosa, Orsini discusses that people who are diagnosed with bulimia after having had a history with anorexia can be said to have lost the ability to practice the core values associated with anorexia, even though they still consider such values (such as controlling hunger and thinness) to be core values in their lives. Orsini’s participants who were not diagnosed previously with anorexia often spoke of their daily frustrating struggle to control their hunger; while they are unable to totally control their eating, the compensatory behavior of self-induced vomiting, laxative use, or over-exercising was still an attempt at thinness. This continuous attempt to control their hunger, followed by “repairing the damage caused by their moments of weakness,” is an example of how they are attempting moral conversion.

Finally, for Orsini, binge eating disorder is seen as a case of rejecting moral conversion. While the people in Orsini’s research diagnosed with binge eating disorder still described thinness and control over food as a core value in their lives, unlike the anorexics and bulimics, people with binge eating disorder did not believe they deserved to ameliorate themselves. Their self-transformative process can be understood as a form of self-punishment as well as a statement of their perceived failure in being the person they want to be.

Michelle, a 34-year-old Maltese woman, spoke of her body as a sign of failure after gaining a significant amount of weight during and after pregnancy. Orsini states Michelle never referred to her body in aesthetic terms, such as “ugly,” but instead as a mark of her inabilities and moral dissatisfaction. She states, “If I was slimmer, if I am slimmer, I would be a better person” (p. 134). For Michelle, bingeing was a manifestation of her moral failures.

In conclusion, Orsini reiterates that only viewing people with eating disorders as having a physiological or psychological dysfunction underestimates the active role their conditions and cultural meanings of their behaviors. Through her analysis of the narratives of people with an eating disorder in Malta and Italy, she reveals how anorexics, bulimics, and binge eaters deliberately engage in a number of practices aimed at losing weight in order to improve themselves in moral terms. Their actions are further divided into an unofficial moral hierarchy, wherein anorexics embody an ideal moral-selfhood.

Article Highlight: Vol. 41, Issue 1, “‘They Treat you a Different Way:’ Public Insurance, Stigma, and the Challenge to Quality Health Care”

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This week we are highlighting “They Treat you a Different Way:” Public Insurance, Stigma, and the Challenge to Quality Health Care by Anna C. Martinez-Hume, Allison M. Baker, Hannah S. Bell, Isabel Montemayor, Kristan Elwell, and Linda M. Hunt. The authors argue that stigma is a public health issue which should be addressed in Medicaid policy. Even though Medicaid eligibility is expanding to include more low-income adults, issues within the social context of public insurance and the experience of stigma may result in increased disparities in health care.

In this article, the authors examined the experiences of stigma when using public insurance as described by a group of low-income individuals eligible for Medicaid in Michigan and how such stigma influences their health-seeking behavior. Social scientists have long been concerned with the impacts of stigma on an individual’s social identity. Sources of stigma affecting health care experiences may include race, class, gender, and illness-status, all of which have serious consequences for health status. Underutilized care, delayed care, forgoing tests, infrequent check-ups, and lower quality of life have all been linked to health care stigma.

Patients in this study often reported stigmatization based on having public insurance, or no insurance, and reported feeling ignored, disrespected, or overlooked. As patients experience low satisfaction with their health care providers, the result is often missed follow-up appointments, changes in their providers, and reluctance to access necessary services. The authors discuss that groups who experience stigma in the health care system are most likely to be individuals who enter into the system as already stigmatized patients.

Racial categories within health care structures also distinguish between types of people, often leading providers to unknowingly treat some patients differently than others. The authors discuss how providers are taught through their medical training, published articles, and clinical guidelines to presume racial and ethnic groups share genetic, socio-economic, and cultural characteristics. These assumptions ignore complex social problems and highlight the multidimensional processes of differential treatment in health care.

Understanding the intersectionality of personal attributes, such as race or illness-status, and public insurance status can improve the appreciation for how experiences of stigma are compounded. Clinical encounters which manifest stigma have important health consequences for patients.

From their research, the authors explore participants’ stories about being treated differently while receiving Medicaid coverage and focused on two central stigma themes: receiving poor quality care, and experiencing negative interpersonal interactions.

One example of receiving rushed or poor quality of care comes from a woman named Destiny. She recounted her experience of taking her son to a clinic:

“The wait was an hour long…and then they were very quick with us, they didn’t take their time to ask questions…It’s like they weren’t patients, they were just another number, you know, to get them out the door, and the next one in… [The doctor] just sent us on our way without even fully understanding what the problem was… [My son] had a really bad cold or bronchitis and I told the doctor before he’s allergic to amoxicillin, penicillin, and he actually wrote him an amoxicillin script. It was in his ﬁle. He didn’t even read through his ﬁle.”

Mistreatment by staff or health care personnel based on public insurance status included shaming, being disrespected or ignored, not being believed, or being patronized. Shannon described her negative interpersonal interactions:

“When we had Blue Cross and Blue Shield, we were treated much differently even by the receptionist. People treat you differently. They look at you differently… I sometimes don’t want to pull out my green [Medicaid] card when I’m in the line at the pharmacy…the lady in front of me has a Blue Cross Blue Shield card and the way they talked to her or interact with her…is much different than when I roll up with my green card and my cardboard [Medicaid health plan] card. It’s ‘here, sign this, birth date, co-pay, have a great day.’”

These stigmatized experiences often lead to discontinuity of care and even resistance to returning to these facilities for care. The authors consider an especially concerning story from Carrie, whose stigma experience is amplified by her HIV-positive status:

“My doctor asked me to swab myself one time when I was being tested for STDs… How the hell can you work in infectious disease and you don’t want to swab me? Like okay, I can do that. But how humiliating is that? I’m switching doctors…I just don’t want to go. I want to be able to sit down and talk to somebody about what’s going on with me because I’ve been missing medicine, and that’s serious. It’s a serious thing, and they’re so callous to it.”

As the authors’ research elaborates, Medicaid use has long carried a stigma in the United States as a symbol of waste and excess of the welfare system. This carries with it a set of assumptions about the individuals who rely on these resources. The social construction of low-income individuals who enroll in Medicaid characterizes these people as lazy, willingly unemployed, less educated, and ultimately, undeserving. Inequitable health care received under the stigma of public insurance is fundamentally a public health issue, creating further disadvantages for the health of already vulnerable people.

SfAA 2017 Conference Feature Part 1: “Experiences and Identity in Long-term and Chronic Illnesses”

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This week on the blog we are highlighting part one of a paper session from the 2017 Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Annual Meeting which took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico from March 28th through April 1st. This session was entitled “Experiences and Identity in Long-term and Chronic Illnesses” and featured Beth Moretzsky, Karen Dyer, Marlaine Gray, and Ellen Rubinstein (full program from the SfAA meeting available here). Here, we present a summary of Beth Moretzsky and Ellen Rubinstein’s presentations. Next week we will feature part two with Karen Dyer and Marlaine Gray.

Beth Moretzsky (GSU) – Cancer Survivorship as Contested Category and Lived Reality

Moretzsky begins by maintaining the term “cancer survivor” is a social category and societal label which does not adequately represent the individuals it claims to include. The label does not encompass the multifaceted, lived experiences of those living with post-cancer treatment and instead conveys a cultural idea of what these individuals can represent to other people. In 2014 the American Cancer Society identified over 14 million living individuals in the United States who received a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives. Moretzsky states that as we think about how to reach, support, and provide services for this population that has unique medical and social needs, we need to understand how this term “cancer survivor” is interpreted. We also need to appreciate how people who have had cancer respond to this label frequently used by non-profit organizations and the medical community.

Life after treatment for cancer is a period of complicated uncertainty. Rather than a unified “survivorship” experience which is often portrayed by the media, Moretzsky’s fieldwork examines how people characterize their own lives post-treatment. Between June and August of 2016 Moretzsky conducted 19 interviews with individuals who had completed treatment for several types of cancer. Her goal was to determine how participants conceptualize the idea of “cancer survivorship,” whether or not they thought of themselves as a “cancer survivor,” and how stories of experiences, treatments, and diagnoses were carried into the present.

Three main findings of Moretzsky’s research state that “cancer survivor” was rejected as a useful category because of (1) a confusing biological and medical usage, (2) a tendency to define people solely on their illness, and (3) because of various social implications of the term’s usage. Many people merged “cancer survivor” as a biomedical term, indicating a stage in the medical process, with a colloquial label for individuals who had undergone this diagnosis. The line between the social and medical categories often blurs, revealing a meaning- and value-laden term with little practical use. Yet no one can seem to agree upon who falls within the category. Moretzsky asks, who gets to define and speak about illness for these individuals?

In this research, the discomfort over the use of the “cancer survivor” term came up time and time again. Cancer “survivors” are represented as heroes who have triumphed over this illness, perpetuating problematic notions of who gets defined as a survivor, as well as the negative social impacts of applying this label. Moretzsky argues the label placed onto people disregards the experiences of those individuals. The public’s support of individuals battling cancer conjures up the image of a successful warrior rather than an individual with a complex daily experience. The models of success paints “survivors” as strong, optimistic, and successful, even if those individuals do not see themselves in those narratives of triumph. Moretzsky states that not all individuals with a history of cancer view themselves as the pink warriors that the media shares every October. While some participants stated they felt driven to become better people as a result of their cancer, almost as if they needed to fill our societal search for heroes, others strongly resisted this categorization as a “cancer survivor.” The latter often argued against problematic notions that there was something special about them that warranted their persistence, saying the model should instead be: “Don’t be a hero. Ask for the help you need.” These varying responses to treatment contradict the notions of “surviving heroically” and suggested complexity and diversity to human experiences.

Additionally, for many with lingering side effects, financial problems, and emotional complications, this term “cancer survivor” signified a success that may never be achieved, and misrepresented the challenges they continue to face long after treatment completion.

Moretzsky argues that subjectivity is a better model and representation of a person because it is an inherently dynamic concept. Subjectivity allows for agency in how people are self-identifying. To follow the lead of subjectivity would mean we could enable those who have completed cancer treatment to define themselves and categorize their own lives as they see fit. Rather than upholding the category of “cancer survivorship,” allowing individuals to self-identify according to their own experiences would enable other sentiments to be expressed. In Moretzsky’s research, nearly all those who did identify as a “cancer survivor” accepted the original definition of “cancer survivorship” as a biomedical phase of treatment, still expressing problems with some of the heroic language hidden in “survivorship.”

This research suggests that many organizations, particularly those providing post-treatment services for cancer, should critically assess their language. If “cancer survivors” do not identify in that way, it limits the reach of organization marketing to this population, potentially missing many of the people they are trying to help.

Ellen Rubinstein (and Benjamin Crabtree) (RWJMS) – Lost in Translation: The Perils of Prioritizing Cancer Survivorship in Primary Care

Rubinstein begins by describing “Parker” as a man in the Denver suburbs who had left Colorado many years ago to attend a Big 10 college and compete as a pole vaulter. In his sophomore year, after what was assumed to be pain and damage from a sports-related injury, blood tests revealed he had osteosarcoma, or bone cancer. “One day I’m on campus and literally the next day I was back in Denver searching for hospitals around the world.” After a brutal round of chemotherapy, Parker’s leg was amputated mid-thigh. Eight years later the pain started again “out of nowhere.” Even though Parker’s pain was directly related to his cancer-caused amputation, Parker disclosed that he felt it may be better not to tell his primary care physicians about his cancer history. “All of a sudden your treatment for what’s wrong stops right there… It can really take over medically.”

Rubinstein explains that Parker’s story provides us with an opportunity for critical reflection on the push to integrate “cancer survivorship” into routine primary care practice. For Parker, pain was a far more salient issue than cancer. Even though the two ailments were intertwined, he spoke of them as if they were separate entities with their own biography. Rubinstein states Parker did not like to identity himself as a “cancer survivor.”

The story of the “cancer survivor” is a story about the multiple translations, or semiotic events, that occur both within the context of an office visit and within the wider context of a patient’s life. The status of “survivorship” occurs at the moment of diagnosis, where a patient plays an active role as an embattled warrior who is supposed to emerge from the fight victorious. Yet as clinicians begin to recognize that cancer is a chronic condition, it becomes impossible to escape cancer’s existential clutches, leading to a problematic life sentence. Rubinstein quotes, “One cannot just live, but must always be not-dying.”

Further, there is a distinction between “I have” and “I am” diseases. “I am” encroaches on an individual’s self-identity categories. Cancer “survivorship” falls into a similar category: “I have” cancer during an active treatment, but “I am” a cancer survivor. In the transition from active treatment to follow-up care, going from having a disease as part of the body to occupying a medically and clinically delineated subject position, this one medical event now defined them. Rubinstein discusses that many people survive other sickness events yet are not referred to as “survivors.” One participant states she has a history of mononucleosis and hypertension, yet has never been referred to as a “mono survivor” or “hypertension survivor.” Identifying as a “cancer survivor” overshadows the remainder of individual complexity.

Rubinstein argues the medical community is so steeped in cancer rhetoric that when a patient complains of various maladies, such as sexual dysfunction or weight gain, the immediate or inevitable response is that “these are well-known late and long-term effects of cancer and its treatments.” In making this assumption however, clinicians have already ignored what the patient is saying. If the patient does not identify their symptoms as being related to their cancer, then what is the benefit of forcing them to interpret their symptoms in that way?

Part of this framing of symptoms stems from a political and economic necessity for identifying cancer “survivors” as a unique population with distinct medical needs. Making a kinship of individuals who have experienced cancer, contrasted against those who have not, makes them a large and powerful constituency. Yet cancer in reality is slippery, chaotic, and constantly being redefined. Experiences and outcomes vary widely, making it impossible to group together the vast array of subjectivities into one entity. Rubinstein argues that current biomedical discourse does a poor job of capturing complex and diverse lived experiences.

Rubinstein concludes by asking if an individual does not consider themselves as a “cancer survivor,” then what are the broader implications for their health and well-being when clinicians insist that their current problems are the direct result of their cancer or cancer treatment. How much does etiology matter in the moment of the clinical encounter, and how much does it influence a patient’s future relationship with their primary care physician? Rubinstein states that in de-emphasizing the “survivor” in primary care conversations, we recognize that a history of cancer is only one set of concerns among many.

Part two of “Experiences and Identity in Long-term and Chronic Illnesses” featuring Karen Dyer and Marlaine Gray will continue next week.

Message from the Society for Applied Anthropology 2017 Annual Meeting

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“Like the roads to Rome, all trails lead to Santa Fe” (Ruth Laughlin, Caballeros, 1931)

The Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry editorial team sends our greetings this week from the Society for Applied Anthropology 2017 Annual Meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This year’s meeting will be held March 28th – April 1st, with session listings and other helpful information available here. We hope all of our readers attending the conference have safe travels to– and many productive conversations at– this year’s meeting.

This year’s theme is “Trails, Traditions, and New Directions,” embracing the Santa Fe location as a place steeped in centuries of traditions, where Native histories reach back 10,000 years and follow paths through time and across geographical space. Metaphorically, this theme highlights the importance of understanding the history and intended destination of those “theoretical trails” that we follow when engaging our community partners, methodology, and active interpretations. Presentations that approach current issues from a historical perspective—including health disparities, energy and climate change, interpreting culture—or any of our broad concerns are encouraged, as is work that critically examines the motivations that have guided social science research and practice in the past.

Highlights from this conference will be featured on the blog next week.

Best wishes,

The CMP Editorial Team

Article Highlight: Vol. 41, Issue 1, “Innocent or Intentional?: Interpreting Oppositional Defiant Disorder in a Preschool Mental Health Clinic”

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To begin article highlights from our latest edition of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry (Vol. 41, Iss. 1), this week we are featuring Christine El Ouardani’s Innocent or Intentional?: Interpreting Oppositional Defiant Disorder in a Preschool Mental Health Clinic. This article examines contradictions clinicians face when attempting to identify and interpret “intentionality” in young children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). El Ouardani argues that conceptualizing intentionality as a developmental, interpersonal process may help to make sense of the multiple discourses and practices clinicians use to try to reconcile the contradictions inherent in diagnosing ODD.

El Ouardani begins by introducing “Carla,” a three-year-old who arrived for evaluation and clinical diagnostic determination at the Preschool Behavior Disorder Clinic (PBDC). At first Carla appears as any typical preschooler, energetic and affectionate, but the care team quickly learns she would frequently have violent outbursts and tantrums, lashing out at her family members, other children, or even nearby animals. This type of aggressive, disruptive behavior represents the main reason for the referral of preschoolers to mental health clinics. Early intervention into and treatment of such behaviors is thus of great interest to researchers and clinicians in the field of child mental health care in hopes of helping the young children adapt and cope with life more effectively and prevent the development of later, more destructive behaviors.

El Ouardani discusses that many of the children seen in the PBDC were given a diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) as “a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months” that impairs a child’s social and/or academic functioning. Yet with very young, preschool-aged children, the diagnosis is controversial. Many children displaying aggressive behavior come from chaotic or otherwise problematic social environments in which this kind of behavior is a reasonable reaction. El Ouardani states that clinicians “must reconcile their characterization of disruptive behavior as a matter of ‘self,’ with the social environments that seem to be producing this kind of behavior.” El Ouardani also draws attention to the values and assumptions of current treatment models and diagnostic procedures. These modules are often based on white, middle-class norms of a “proper” family, moral assumptions of how parents should discipline their children, and the assumed role of a child in social institutions. Many patients at the PBDC did not fall into those characterizations; the reality of their lives are much different.

Moving to a discussion of agency and intentionality, El Ouardani then examines the biomedical, disease model of mental illness, which attempts to remove the blame for the illness from the individual. “Ideologically, then, those afflicted with mental disorders bear no responsibility for the behaviors that directly result from their disorders,” El Ouardani writes, since the biological processes of mental illness are taken out of the patient’s control. Thus, ODD as a category defined by “intentional” defiance conflicts with the disease model of mental illness. “A central concern of psychiatric therapeutics is to motivate and use the intentionality of a patient to regain control over the self.” Yet the idea that preschool-aged children are fully capable of acting with this type of intention, and possess the capacity to do so, is disputed. Therefore clinicians diagnosing a young child with ODD are forced to face the disparities between what is out of the child’s control, and what is the “will” of the child.

While discussing the diagnostic criteria for ODD as described in the DSM-IV, El Ouardani emphasizes the criteria for an ODD diagnosis requires the child to be aware of his or her own behavior and is purposely trying to upset or defy the person with whom they are interacting. From this criteria, ODD-labeled children are manipulative and spiteful, qualities that require a degree of intentional malice and deception. These characteristics are not thought to be present in other kinds of childhood mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, neurodevelopmental disorders, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Clinicians also attribute ODD children with controlling their behavior to influence “weaker” adults, depicting these children as culpable and intentional in their attempts to “confuse and subvert the efforts of their caretakers who are trying to control their behavior.”

El Ouardani discuses that determining intentionality is a complex process, especially because of a child’s limited verbal capacity for expressing internal states. “In order to identify intentional defiance and diagnose ODD, clinicians had to delineate authentic displays of emotion from those that are inauthentic and manipulative.” El Ouardani explains that nuanced, intersubjective exchanges between the children and the clinicians are not captured within the DSM-IV diagnosis. Clinicians often feel frustrated when they perceive a child is trying to manipulate them. This can be compared to clinicians stating “that they feel bad for children with depressive symptoms. They theorized that disruptive behavior in depressed children is a way to cope with internal pain.” This difference means the clinicians feel less personally attacked by children without the ODD diagnosis, becoming less frustrated. Further, by diagnosing a child with multiple disorders the clinicians can discursively split the child’s “self” into different intentional and non-intentional parts. However, this leads to ODD being categorized as a feature of the individual’s character, who that child is as an individual, rather than as a biological disease.

Explanations for why a particular child’s behavior were not always attended to within the PBDC. “Clinicians tended to rely upon the widely accepted idea that behavior and psychopathology is a result of interactions between biological temperament and the social environment. According to this model of developmental psychopathology, innate temperament interacts with problematic interpersonal relationships and chaotic household environments, causing the child to react to these negative circumstances with disruptive behavior.” Yet this strategy still leaves ambiguities over etiology and treatment.

El Ouardani concludes her article with a discussion of the treatment modality. Clinicians regularly spend the majority of the treatment focused on teaching caretakers how to more effectively discipline and relate to the children. The clinicians primarily focus on a lack of consistency in discipline and structure in both interactions and routines, thus, if the caretakers correctly implement strategic routines, the child will then change their behavior over time. “However, clinicians also informally acknowledged these techniques, which took time and energy that many of the caretakers coming from stressful, low-income, single-caretaker families did not necessarily have.”

Dr. Christine El Ouardani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development at California State University, Long Beach. She is a cultural, medical, and psychological anthropologist who focuses on the anthropology of childhood and lifecourse in Morocco and in North America. El Ouardani’s current book project, Discipline and Development: Negotiating Childhood, Authority, and Violence in Rural Morocco, examines the everyday lives of children and youth in a Moroccan village as they move through their families, classrooms, and medical clinics. She analyzes disciplinary interactions between children and caretakers in their extended families and local schools that were often both violent and playful, demonstrating how local conceptions of authority, care, pain, and violence are constructed and enacted in everyday life at different points throughout childhood, and in different institutions. El Ouardani shows how examining the nuances of child socialization practices over time and children’s roles in family and community life provides a sharp lens through which to consider larger-scale political, economic, and social change, in this case, contested norms of authority and violence in Moroccan families. For more information, visit her information page on the Department of Human Development, California State Universtity, Long Beach, available here.

SPA 2017 Biennial Meeting: Breakfast Lecture with Richard Shweder and Byron Good

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This week we’re featuring a summary of The 2017 Biennial Meeting of The Society for Psychological Anthropology Breakfast Lecture. This year, the Breakfast Lecture presented a conversation with the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Richard Shweder, and the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Byron Good. In this event, Dr. Shweder and Dr. Good reflect on morality and “the mental” in both Cultural Psychology and Psychological Anthropology, discussing how profoundly different worlds still share some moralities and orientations. They also discuss some critical challenges and opportunities for psychological anthropology. By interviewing each other, a foundational technique in anthropology itself, Dr. Shweder and Dr. Good explore their past works, theoretical orientations, and their anticipation of where anthropological explorations of psychological processes are heading.

2016 SPA Lifetime Achievement Awardee Richard Shweder

The conversation begins with Dr. Good asking Dr. Shweder to “tell us about your history.” Dr. Shweder delves into his upbringing in Great Neck on the north shore of Long Island, at the time an emerging suburb with a very progressive, left-wing population. He discusses the first time he heard the word anthropology in his 11^th grade English class when “Mr. Beal” said, “for any of you who don’t know what to do in life, there’s this thing called anthropology.” After graduation Dr. Shweder went to the University of Pittsburgh where Dr. Arthur Tuden, an Africanist and Cultural Anthropologist, taught his Introduction to Anthropology class, bringing in the study of culture with current events and ultimately solidifying Dr. Shweder’s path in Anthropology. From Pittsburgh, Dr. Shweder progressed to Harvard, where he states several figures had an impact on his intellectual growth, including Cora DuBois and John Whiting. After finishing his Ph.D. at Harvard, Dr. Shweder taught at the University of Nairobi in Kenya before finally landing at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Shweder then, discussing approaches and schools of thought in Cultural Psychology, defines Cultural Psychology as “the study of differences in mentalities across human populations.” Psychological Anthropology, for Dr. Shweder, has been more interested in taking universal psychological schemes and applying them to particular cultures to see whether or not different practices or beliefs were essentially manifestations of a broader psychological concept, such as a variation on an Oedipus complex. There is not a denial of universals in Cultural Psychology, however, since, to Dr. Shweder, there is not a way of studying differences without also studying universals. Dr. Shweder describes his way of defining the Cultural Psychology of Morality as “investigating the fates of moral absolutes in history and to show the way they get transformed, take on different content, and lead to different judgments.” To Dr. Shweder, behind a culture or individual is a set of moral absolutes, or rules of moral reason. Yet these moral absolutes and rules are abstract concepts which do not present determinations of actual cases, histories, or cultural contexts. Cultural Psychology is not about looking for likenesses, but looking for the differentiations and local adaptations that have taken place. For Dr. Shweder, the psychological means looking at differences in “the mental.” “The mental” refers to what people know, think, feel, want, and value as good and bad. Dr. Shweder states, “Anywhere you look in the world you’re going to find that people know, think, feel, want, and value things as good and bad. In some sense, that’s what it means to be a person.”

Dr. Shweder follows up with a discussion that anthropologists are supposed to fairly represent the groups they study; to try to portray their way of life in a way that the people the anthropologist is writing for might see them not as “exotic aliens,” but as morally sensitive persons who do things for recognizable reasons. Dr. Shweder proposes the conspicuous use of the notion of “oppression,” or seeing the social order as oppressive, combined with the now popular term “agency,” suggests that to have agency was to be opposed to culture. Thus, for Dr. Shweder, the concept that there might be people whose agency was used to carry forward a cultural tradition which was in a framework where they felt they could be fulfilled, was gone. “When I went to India I was in a world where if I approached it as ‘a good liberal,’ assuming everything is free choice and the world is there to satisfy my preferences, I would have seen it as an oppressive order. Yet the people who live there, for the most part, feel quite at home with rich, meaningful lives,” Dr. Shweder states.

Building off the discussion of morality, Dr. Good then engages with concepts of morality and oppression. Dr. Good states that for him, the experience of morality is often an experience of oppression. He expresses that many people spend at least parts of their lives resisting or fighting against morality, feeling that the moral system around them is actually an oppressive system causing them to live their lives “wrongly” within it. It seems to Dr. Good that reading ethics with a grand “they” or a grand “we” misses, ethnographically, another side of the story. Dr. Shweder responds that there is a multiplicity of the moral world. The moral world has many goods and desires that are in conflict with each other, and one cannot have them all. This sets up the dynamic of resistance since the system of conflict and prioritization pushes alternatives to the side. Dr. Shweder states that within any society there is the orthodox and the heterodox, that which is center stage and that which is done covertly. The mistake is to privilege one ethic over another, to act as if that privileging itself is not a choice or commitment, or to label the ethic of autonomy as the “natural way” in which anyone who is fully enlightened will ultimately go. Dr. Shweder cautions against the view of “liberalism as destiny,” where there are stages of moral development, the height of moral development being an autonomous, individualized person or society.

2017 SPA Lifetime Achievement Awardee Byron Good

Dr. Good then discusses his personal and academic history. He starts by commenting that his childhood and upbringing couldn’t have been more different than Dr. Shweder’s, growing up on a Mennonite farm in the Republican mid-west. Dr. Good spent much of his life feeling that religion and divinity grounded and oriented aspects of his academic life. “I don’t romanticize ethical norms if they, over time, have become more and more interested in controlling our lives in ways that we have very little direct knowledge of,” Dr. Good states. “I don’t romanticize suffering.” While at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, Dr. Good started studying mathematics before spending a year at the University of Nigeria. Dr. Good expressed this time as having a powerful impact which changed his life. “My worldview became profoundly different,” he states. Coming back from Africa convinced that there had to be something more than mathematics, Dr. Good decided to go to Harvard Divinity School. It was there that he began taking courses in anthropology and religion. Attending the University of Chicago for his Ph.D., Dr. Good states his first year at Chicago was Clifford Geertz’s last year. Yet even after Geertz left, Dr. Good still considered him a mentor and inspiration. This was also a very political moment for universities and the country in general. Dr. Good describes how he came of age in anthropology in a time of the Vietnam War, in a time of activism, and in the time of the Civil Rights Movement. These were all very powerful influences on how Dr. Good conceptualized the importance of anthropology.

Discussing his research, Dr. Good describes the time he spent in a genuinely post-colonial conflict setting of Aceh, Indonesia. He became very aware of colonialism and its colonial history and how it had impacted political life along with a diverse set of religious and cultural influences. It was a setting that had a history of tremendous violence. “It was my first experience of working in areas of really intensive conflict,” Dr. Good states, “and I have to say that I went home from that experience very affected by listening to stories of violence.” Terms like “post-colonialism” and “post-colonial subjectivity,” and even terms like “haunting” and “hauntology” became central to his vision of what Psychological Anthropology can be today. Dr. Good poses the question of how one does Psychological Anthropology in settings of violence. “My thinking about hauntology started off with being in Aceh, and thinking about what Aceh was like post-tsunami and post-conflict,” Dr. Good remarks. Aceh was a place where ghosts and spirits of the dead were everywhere, alongside the ghosts of the recent violence and the emergence of political gorillas who had been previously hidden away. “Suddenly Aceh was no longer in the midst of a war and people who had been fighting were coming back and appearing in everyday life,” Dr. Good explains, “and I began thinking about post-authoritarian Indonesia and why it is that there are certain moments in a society that ghosts begin to appear in a very powerful way, and ghosts that are related to historical violence.” Dr. Good became fascinated with the relationship between historical memory, histories of violence, how they make themselves present, and how they reintroduce themselves in psychological experience.

To wrap up the Breakfast Lecture, Dr. Shweder discusses how the issue of nationalism is front and center in a very powerful way at the moment. He suggests that anthropologists should be qualified to talk about the ethno-national impulses people are facing and examine why it is that some people feel like their way of life, or their control over their life, is being threatened by globalization, for example. He calls on anthropologists to give a native point of view instead of simply reacting with fear and mainstream ideology. “This is anthropology. There are in-groups and there are out-groups. People have ways of life and traditions; they want to exercise control over their way of life. This has to be examined,” Dr. Shweder states. He further discusses that one of the things that’s exceptional to the United States is that we are a nation in which constitutional patriotism is the binding feature. In principle, that means there is space for cultural diversity. “The ways in which tyranny can be built up and balanced through distribution of power are all rich topics right now. Immigration. Making sure we represent minority views in a way that majority groups understand them and why the way they live is both meaningful and justifiable.” Dr. Shweder finishes by stating that there are also threats to anthropology from within. He warns against a “liberal tyranny” which can be compared to a “white-man’s-burden-style” of thinking with regard to cultural differences. Dr. Shweder sees this as using the notion of oppression or exploitation as an excuse for interventions into other people’s ways of life rather than starting by seeing whether or not one can understand other practices and social organizations in a morally-motivated way. Dr. Good closes the conversation session by encouraging anthropologists to be engaged in both theoretical debates within the discipline as well as policy and implementation projects and practices which can benefit the people in the communities we study.

Richard Shweder is the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology (1991) and Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology (2003), both published by Harvard University Press. Dr. Shweder is also an editor or co-editor of many books in the areas of cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, and comparative human development. For more information on Dr. Shweder, visit his page at the University of Chicago here, as well as the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2017 Biennial Conference Breakfast Lecture website, available here.

Byron Good is a Professor of Medical Anthropology at, and former Chair (2000-2006) of, the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. Dr. Good is director of the International Mental Health Training Program, funded by the Fogarty International Center to train psychiatrists from China in mental health services research. Dr. Good’s broader interests focus on the theorization of subjectivity in contemporary societies, focusing on the relation of political, cultural, and psychological renderings of the subject and experience, with a special interest in Indonesia. He is the editor or co-editor of many significant volumes, books, and is a former editor-in-chief of our Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry journal (1986-2004). For more information on Dr. Good, visit the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine website here, as well as the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2017 Biennial Conference Breakfast Lecture website, available here.

Message from the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2017 Biennial Meeting

Posted by sonya.petrakovitz

The Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry editorial team sends our greetings this week from the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2017 Biennial Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s meeting will be held March 9-12th, with session listings and other helpful information available here. We hope all of our readers attending the conference have safe travels to– and many productive conversations at– this year’s meeting. As a reminder, we continue to accept guest blog submissions on topics spanning cultural medical anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and medical humanities.

Highlights from this conference will be featured on the blog next week.

Consider submitting an abbreviated version of your SPA conference presentation as a guest blog, or write a commentary on one of the keynote speeches at the event. We look forward to sharing the work and research of our readers with our colleagues on the blog! If you are interested in submitting a guest blog, please contact social media editor Sonya Petrakovitz at smp152@case.edu for details.

Best wishes,

The CMP Editorial Team

Guest Blog: “Telemedicine in Ghana”

Posted by sonya.petrakovitz

This week on the blog we are hosting a guest post by Heather Baily, a Doctoral student in Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. Here, she presents some of her research on telemedicine in Ghana.

In November 2015, Tanja Ahlin and Mark Nichter issued a “Take a Stand” statement in the Critical Anthropology for Global Health interest group (available here), calling for more anthropologists to study telemedicine. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication tools, namely cell phones and computers, to exchange information regarding patient health. A recent report from the World Health Organization (2016) states that universal health coverage cannot be achieved without this form of e-health. Universal health coverage, as well as comprehensive primary health care, has been an overarching goal of the international health and global health community since the Alma Ata conference in 1978, but these goals are very difficult to achieve. Telemedicine is poised to help achieve greater health coverage and access, yet the field is still very new, particularly in resource-poor settings, and is evolving rapidly alongside cell phone technology.

In June of last year, I traveled to Ghana to investigate the ways in which telemedicine is being used there. Ghana is in the midst of scaling up a successful telemedicine pilot project into a national telemedicine program through Ghana Health Services. Public health administrators in the pilot project districts, as well as doctors and nurses who worked with the program, all spoke favorably of the new technology. Each clinic and hospital has a designated smartphone to be used for various medical communication purposes, including receiving calls from patients, over-the-phone consultation from doctors at the regional hospital call center, and direct contact with the other clinics and district health offices through encrypted instant messaging apps, such as WhatsApp.

Practitioners reported decreased maternal mortality since the implementation of this program, as well as an increase in utilization of local clinics and trust in the staff. In Ghana, once someone has completed medical training of any kind, such as a community health nurse or a registered midwife, they must complete their “national service,” a two-year contract in an assigned village. Typically, community health nurses are younger and not from the village in which they are assigned to work. A “small girl/boy” is a common term used in Ghana for a young person, indicating not only their age, but their social status and lack of social legitimacy. Thus, being able to access and connect a patient to a doctor at a hospital over the phone has helped the nurses achieve more legitimacy and overcome their “small girl/boy” status.

I draw from several areas of anthropological theory when examining the impacts of telemedicine in Ghana, specifically the anthropology of reproduction since my dissertation research focuses on obstetric care. The concept of authoritative knowledge is particularly useful in this case. Authoritative knowledge is knowledge that is given more weight than other types of knowledge, or ways of knowing, by collective assessment in a local setting and is displayed in everyday practices (Jordan, 1990; Davis-Floyd & Sargent, 1997; Ivry, 2010). This concept relates to legitimacy in the health care setting as authoritative knowledge shapes interactions between patients and caregivers, access to knowledge, and health care decision-making. Access to physicians may alter the hierarchy of who has authoritative knowledge, adjust healthcare seeking patterns, or disrupt local power structures and “knowing” about birth.

Science and Technology Studies provides a foundation from which to examine the historical contexts and meanings of technologies and how people interact with them. The introduction of a communication technology which links rural areas to clinicians at a regional hospital complicates questions of the way people interact with technology, especially as it regards obstetric care. Rayna Rapp (1999) examined technologies used in assisting reproduction, which she calls “technologies of knowing.” In this study, she examined the production of knowledge as a result of new technology. Following this tradition, it is important to examine the intersections of technology, reproduction, and knowledge by investigating ways in which the introduction of a new technology changes how a patient might acquire and use knowledge.

Studying telemedicine from an anthropological perspective builds on our understanding of how people interact with technology, particularly when seeking healthcare treatments, and how technology can influence a universal human experience, such as pregnancy and childbirth. As telemedicine is widely regarded as the much-needed direction medical care is heading around the world, it is crucial to examine ways it can shape an individual’s interaction with a technology and with the community at large.

About Heather:

Heather Baily is a dual degree Ph.D./MPH student in Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. She has a MA in Anthropology from CWRU and a BA in Anthropology and Sociology from Colorado State University. Her research investigates the intersections of new telecommunication technologies used in healthcare and local structures of reproductive knowledge and authority in Ghana.

References Cited:

Davis-Floyd, R., & Sargent, C. F. (1997). Childbirth and authoritative knowledge: Cross-cultural perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ivry, T. (2010). Embodying culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Jordan, B. (1990). Technology and the social distribution of knowledge: Issues for primary health care in developing countries. In J. Coreil and J. D. Mull, (Eds.), Anthropology and Primary Health Care pp. 98–120).

Rapp, R. (1999). Testing women, testing the fetus: The social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge.

World Health Organization. (2016). Global diffusion of eHealth: making universal health coverage achievable. Report of the third global survey on eHealth. Geneva.

Books Received for Review: February 2017

Posted by sonya.petrakovitz

This week we are featuring previews of four books received for review at Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry (available here). These previews provide a snapshot of recent publications in medical anthropology, global health, and the history of medicine that we’re excited to discuss in our journal and with our followers on social media.

via UC Press

Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health

Salmaan Keshavjee

From the University of California Press, Blind Spot is a historical and anthropological case study of how market-based ideologies and neoliberal health policies impact global health and development programs. “A vivid illustration of the infiltration of neoliberal ideology into the design and implementation of development programs, this case study, set in post-Soviet Tajikistan’s remote eastern province of Badakhshan, draws on extensive ethnographic and historical material to examine a ‘revolving drug fund’ program — used by numerous nongovernmental organizations globally to address shortages of high-quality pharmaceuticals in poor communities.” The books discusses how the privatization of health care can impact outcomes for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

For more information, visit the University of California Press website here.

via Berghahn Books

Cosmos, Gods, and Madmen: Frameworks in the Anthropologies of Medicine

Roland Littlewood and Rebecca Lynch, eds.

“The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.”

For more information, visit the Berghahn Books website here.

via UC Press

A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering

Iain Wilkinson and Arthur Kleinman

“What does human suffering mean for society? And how has this meaning changed from the past to the present? In what ways does “the problem of suffering” serve to inspire us to care for others? How does our response to suffering reveal our moral and social conditions?” This highly anticipated book investigates how social science has been shaped by problems of social suffering. The authors discuss how social action, through caring for others, is reshaping the discipline of social science and offers a hopeful, intellectual basis for a fundamentally moral stance against indifference, cynicism, and inaction. They argue for an engaged social science that bridges critical thought with social action, seeking to learn through caregiving, and achieving greater understanding that operates with a commitment to establish and sustain compassionate forms of society.

For more information, visit the University of California Press website here.

via UC Press

It’s Madness: The Politics of Mental Health in Colonial Korea

Theodore Jun Yoo

“This book examines Korea’s years under Japanese colonialism, when mental health first became defined as a medical and social problem. As in most Asian countries, severe social ostracism, shame, and fear of jeopardizing marriage prospects compelled most Korean families to conceal the mentally ill behind closed doors. This book explores the impact of Chinese traditional medicine and its holistic approach to treating mental disorders, the resilience of folk illnesses as explanations for inappropriate and dangerous behaviors, the emergence of clinical psychiatry as a discipline, and the competing models of care under the Japanese colonial authorities and Western missionary doctors. Drawing upon printed and unpublished archival sources, this is the first study to examine the ways in which “madness” was understood, classified, and treated in traditional Korea and the role of science in pathologizing and redefining mental illness under Japanese colonial rule.”

For more information, visit the University of California Press website here.