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- Convenors:
-
Sarah Bourke
(Australian National University)
Keiko Kanno (University of Oxford)
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- Stream:
- Health, Disease and Wellbeing
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Where does responsibility lie in deciding what 'being well' is at the population level? This panel invites anthropological papers which explore the complexities of defining human health beyond the local.
Long Abstract:
Cultural concepts of wellbeing have long been studied within anthropology. However, in the last decade, there has been a global shift to recognise the importance of people-centred measures of wellbeing at the population level, driven by political desire to move beyond the use of economic statistics as the sole basis of policy change. In 2019 New Zealand was the first country to announce that it will begin to measure its success as a nation on the basis of the wellbeing of its citizens, rather than GDP growth rate. The World Happiness Report ranks 156 countries according to the perceived happiness of their citizens and has gained significant media coverage since its inception in 2012. Wellness, defined as a state of holistic health, is a big business that has seen exponential growth over the last few years and is currently estimated to be worth $4.2 trillion globally. Medical anthropologists are adept at analysing and critiquing the biomedical roots and definitions of health, disease, and wellbeing practiced in situ. However, as the science, measurement, and management of 'being well' moves beyond the local and into the global, one must ask: Whose definitions of 'being well' are really being taken into account? And where does the responsibility lie for your/my/our/all health in a world where 'being well' is the newest form of privilege, luxury, or commodity?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Sarah Bourke (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Identifying the social and cultural determinants of health for Indigenous Australians requires a fundamental paradigm shift in the way these data are collected. This paper focuses on a national study in Australia which placed Indigenous perspectives at the centre of their research model.
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, are strong, resilient and resourceful. It is well known that Indigeneity (the quality of being Indigenous) and the practice of culture reinforce good health and wellbeing outcomes. However, Indigenous population statistics collected by the Australian Government are often used to paint a picture of universal disadvantage and deficit in comparison to non-Indigenous Australians. This 'deficit discourse' has led the general public, media, and government officials to blame Indigenous individuals and communities for their own social and health burdens, without acknowledging the ongoing pervasive and systemic colonial processes at work in Australia. In response, Indigenous health researchers and organisations have worked together to establish their own national epidemiological survey of Indigenous Australian wellbeing which recognises the fundamental role of culture in living well. My doctoral thesis focused on the development of this survey, called the Mayi Kuwayu National Study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing. I undertook extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the researchers and staff who worked on the Mayi Kuwayu Study to explore the anthropological implications of quantifying cultural determinants of health for Indigenous Australians. The major findings of my research revealed how Indigeneity itself may be embedded within epidemiological research, and how the creation of data which reflect Indigenous lifeworlds is a source of power in the Indigenous health narrative. This paper focuses on the potential of such data to support Indigenous self-determination and wellbeing alongside decolonising health research in Australia and beyond.
Edoardo Occa (University of Milan - Bicocca Doctors with Africa CUAMM)
Paper short abstract:
The paper stems on nine years of managing community health programs / ethnographic work in Tanzania where still influential Ujamaa social structures and mind-set re-define the meaning of personal wellbeing and social disease. Paradigms of health development strategies are under critical lens as well
Paper long abstract:
Between 1967 and 1985 Tanzania experienced the social engineering known as Ujamaa the “African way to socialism”. In Swahili, it means "brotherhood /familyhood" and still it frames the understanding of well-being. This is felt as a symbolic dimension, which is stratified across generations, visible between the faults of structures of power.The vernacular expression chosen means " we don't have much, but we cooperate well"Where showing off excessive wealth is linked to destabilising forces, the concept of well-being appears in bas-relief on the narrative plot of relationships, meaning the circularity across cohesion, values and behaviours.Consolidated mutual aid practices deriving from the setting of Ujamaa are still in place, such as fields worked collectively for poor families and community health agents exempted from local fees. Vital organs of this process are the dialectic between elder’s council and institutional government, as well as an urgent exogamy between languages and ethnic groups. The social body and the state of well-being question the paradigms of public health interventions which, while acting on the ganglia of society (maternal and child health), assess the results in terms of quantitative outcomes only. Accessing to services, being an indicator of equity, defines a hermeneutic grid parallel to the value scales of the communities. On the horizon of anthropology of development, an ethnography that resolves the dichotomy between the frame of cultural materialism and the “thick description”, opens to auroral scenarios for re-elaborating the concept of wellbeing and of the responsibility that social anthropology entails.
Keiko Kanno (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
With foci on localised and nationalised concepts of health and well-being, I explore how nomads and city dwellers identify the concepts of well-being, and how such understanding has changed over time in post-socialist Mongolia. This paper delves into the social and political dynamics of well-being.
Paper long abstract:
Some people may take well-being as a fundamental human right, while others may see it as a form of privilege, luxury, or commodity. Mongolia’s economy and the healthcare sector have changed drastically after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the number of Mongolians travelling abroad to seek high-quality medical treatment has been growing (Snyder et al., 2015). A study suggests that employment, educational background, place of residence, and the levels of health knowledge may be correlated in Mongolia (Demaio et al., 2013). However, how these factors may relate to health and well-being in post-socialist Mongolia is not well understood. With foci on localised and nationalised concepts of health and well-being, I explore how nomads and city dwellers identify the concepts of health and well-being, and how such understanding has changed over time. This paper delves into the social and political dynamics of well-being in post-socialist Mongolia.
Constanze Tress (University of Luxembourg) Anastasia Badder (University of Cambridge) Deborah Platzbecker (Trier University)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on a range of materials from Luxembourg and Germany, we explore how the coronavirus pandemic has set off sociopolitical processes that create new forms of (in)visibility, reveal existing inequalities, and spur new modes of assessing risk and valuing well-being in economic and moral terms.
Paper long abstract:
(Un)expendable citizens – well-being and risk in times of a crisisKleinman, Das, Scheper-Hughes, Farmer, and others have long argued that definitions of health, illness, and risk are always embedded within particular politics and economics and are at once based on and support differences in power and social positioning. These underlying logics are often rendered invisible as they become part of the fabric of people’s everyday lives. In recent months, however, the global coronavirus pandemic has acted as a catalyst, setting in motion sociopolitical processes and discourses that have created new forms of (in)visibility, emphasized existing imbalances, and made clear the ways in which everyone’s suffering (and well-being) is not regarded as equal. Like many countries, Luxembourg and Germany have instituted policies and made a number of statements about work, risk, and well-being. Considering well-being in the pressing sense of being able to care for life and limb, access infrastructures, and undertake practices that help secure one’s own future, we draw on these discourses and our own interviews with a worker from a German packaging company and a translator in Luxembourg, to illuminate how new categories and assessments of entitlement have been brought about. This paper will examine how well-being in times of crisis is assessed on different and sometimes competing scales, for example when individual well-being and risk is measured against the well-being of a country, and the ways these assessments link the bodies of individuals and groups in different social and organizational hierarchies to economic and moral terms.