This innovative, practical guide introduces researchers to the use of the video reflexive ethnography in health and health services research. This methodology has enjoyed increasing popularity among researchers internationally and has been inspired by developments across a range of disciplines: ethnography, visual and applied anthropology, medical sociology, health services research, medical and nursing education, adult education, community development, and qualitative research ethics.
This handbook provides an up-to-date reference point for ethnography in healthcare research. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the chapters offer a holistic view of ethnography within medical contexts. This edited volume is organized around major methodological themes, such as ethics, interviews, narrative analysis and mixed methods. Through the use of case studies, it illustrates how methodological considerations for ethnographic healthcare research are distinct from those in other fields. It has detailed content on the methodological facets of undertaking ethnography for prospective researchers to help them to conduct research in both an ethical and safe manner. It also highlights important issues such as the role of the researcher as the key research instrument, exploring how one’s social behaviours enable the researcher to ‘get closer’ to his/her participants and thus uncover original phenomena. Furthermore, it invites critical discussion of applied methodological strategies within the global academic community by pushing forward the use of ethnography to enhance the body of knowledge in the field. The book offers an original guide for advanced students, prospective ethnographers, and healthcare professionals aiming to utilize this methodological approach.
A unique and innovative resource for conducting ethnographic research in health care settings, Ethnographic Research in Maternal and Child Health provides a combination of ethnographic theory and an international selection of empirical case studies. The book begins with an overview of the origins and development of ethnography as a methodology, discussing underpinning theoretical perspectives, key methods and challenges related to conducting this type of research. The following substantive chapters present and reflect on ethnographic studies conducted in the fields of maternal and child health, neonatal nursing, midwifery and reproductive health. Designed for academics, postgraduate students and health practitioners within maternal and child health, family health, medical sociology, medical anthropology, medicine, midwifery, neonatal care, paediatrics, social anthropology and public health, the book will also illuminate issues that can help health practitioners to improve service delivery.
Describing the principles and methods of ethnography used by nurse researchers, the authors demonstrate how to: conduct ethnographic research in health settings; analyze and interpret data collected from field work; make ethical decisions related to the role of being an ethnographer; and how to put ideas in writing.
In 2003 the Bush Administration's New Freedom Commission asked mental health service providers to begin promoting "recovery" rather than churning out long-term, "chronic" mental health service users. Recovery's Edge sends us to urban America to view the inner workings of a mental health clinic run, in part, by people who are themselves "in recovery" from mental illness. In this provocative narrative, Neely Myers sweeps us up in her own journey through three years of ethnographic research at this unusual site, providing a nuanced account of different approaches to mental health care. Recovery's Edge critically examines the high bar we set for people in recovery through intimate stories of people struggling to find meaningful work, satisfying relationships, and independent living. This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.
This edited collection explores the multiple ways in which ethnography and health emerge and take form through the research process. There is now a plethora of disciplinary engagements with ethnography around the topic of health, including anthropology, sociology, geography, science and technology studies, and in health care professions such as nursing and occupational therapy. This dynamic and evolving landscape means ethnography and health are entangled in new and different ways, providing a timely opportunity to explore what these entanglements do and affect in the social production of knowledge. Rather than discussing the strengths (and limitations) of ethnography for engaging with health, the book asks: what does ethnography enable, make visible and possible for knowing and doing health in contemporary research settings and beyond?
Medical Humanitarianism provides comparative ethnographies of the moral, practical, and policy implications of modern medical humanitarian practice. It offers twelve vivid case studies that challenge readers to reach a more critical and compassionate understanding of humanitarian assistance.
Africa has emerged as a prime arena of global health interventions that focus on particular diseases and health emergencies. These are framed increasingly in terms of international concerns about security, human rights, and humanitarian crisis. This presents a stark contrast to the 1960s and ‘70s, when many newly independent African governments pursued the vision of public health “for all,” of comprehensive health care services directed by the state with support from foreign donors. These initiatives often failed, undermined by international politics, structural adjustment, and neoliberal policies, and by African states themselves. Yet their traces remain in contemporary expectations of and yearnings for a more robust public health. This volume explores how medical professionals and patients, government officials, and ordinary citizens approach questions of public health as they navigate contemporary landscapes of NGOs and transnational projects, faltering state services, and expanding privatization. Its contributors analyze the relations between the public and the private providers of public health, from the state to new global biopolitical formations of political institutions, markets, human populations, and health. Tensions and ambiguities animate these complex relationships, suggesting that the question of what public health actually is in Africa cannot be taken for granted. Offering historical and ethnographic analyses, the volume develops an anthropology of public health in Africa. Contributors:Hannah Brown, P. Wenzel Geissler, Murray Last, Rebecca Marsland, Lotte Meinert, Benson A. Mulemi, Ruth J. Prince, Noémi Tousignant, and Susan Reynolds Whyte
In the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, medical patients engage a variety of healing practices to seek cures for their ailments. Patients use the expanding biomedical network and a growing number of traditional healthcare units, while also seeking alternative practices, such as shamanism and other religious healing, or even more provocative practices. The Patient Multiple delves into this healthcare complexity in the context of patients’ daily lives and decision-making processes, showing how these unique mountain cultures are finding new paths to good health among a changing and multifaceted medical topography.
