Paper short abstract:

Drawing from research on thalassaemic patients in Greece, this paper aims to discuss the centrality of “blood” in narratives of illness, identity, relationality and sociality, in the specific ethnographic context.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic research on thalassaemic patients in Greece, this paper aims to discuss the centrality of "blood" in narratives of illness, identity, relationality, sociality, in the specific context. Thalassaemia is a genetic condition related with severe forms of anemia. Being dependant on systematic transfusions, on biomedically treated blood, thalassaemic women and men talk a lot about blood, its quality, where it comes from, who should manage it, who does it belong to, etc. Both on the individual and collective levels, when discussing the thalassaemic experience, blood and/or the absence of it, are key in processes of identification and belonging and in dealing with shifting boundaries between self and other, natural and technical.

Multiple parallel significations of blood are present in this context, demonstrating, on the one hand, the ongoing usefulness of the concept in the process of the anthropological inquiry, and highlighting on the other hand the transformations which are the taking place in the ways it is being conceptualized