Paper short abstract:

This paper is about "corridor" as the liminal space when chronically ill population are to navigate the uncertainty in hospital. The corridors are a metaphor that has allowed ethnographer to understand the nature of uncertainty and recognise how Javanese people govern the uncertainty.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is about "corridor" as a space of uncertainty in medical setting. When medical knowledge and practices of understanding bodies produced in the 'Global North' used in the 'Global South', the gap frequently occurs between science and tradition. Medically, limb loss bodies and chronically ill populations can be identified as disabled people. But they may be perceived from a mixed socio-cultural perspective and seen as oddities or abnormalities represented in various cultural perceptions. Describing specific characters of cancer patients who are facing amputation, I have found the corridor is a liminal space or passageway when people are compelled to navigate the uncertainty to fill the 'gap'.

The "corridor" is as open space with peace and the lack of hierarchy- bringing into the hospital network and creating in the hospital a zone or a space where various information is shared in an informal way, with sense of openness, transparency, flexibility, hope and perhaps freedom. However, this space may also lead to the position of emotional or mental disorder- leading to the space of emotional outrage like anger, grief, desperation, and depression due to loss or disability. This paper will analyse how specialists, Residents, nurses, patients' family govern these uncertainties in Java: resorting to scientific explanation, friendship, fate, God's involvement, and resignation.