Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Medical anthropologists have made contributions to the medical professions by introducing the concept of cultural competence. However, this has led to the culturalization of difference in care, which this abstract argues we now need to reckon with.

Paper long abstract

In the 1980s, medical anthropologists such as Arthur Kleinman introduced cultural competence – based on ideas about culture prevalent in anthropology at the time – to care workers. This fostered a shift away from the (false) universalism favored in the medical world.

Through ethnographic fieldwork in a self-identified ‘multicultural’ adult day service in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I observed how the idea of cultural competence has made its way into care discourses and practices. Like Kleinman in the early 2000s, I noticed how it has unsettled assumptions about universalism in care but has at times fed into a static conception of culture. However, I also encountered care workers who contested static conceptions of culture, reflecting on the idea that cultures change and are not necessarily internally coherent. This could be taken as a success of innovations driven by Kleinman and colleagues.

Yet, even less static conceptions of culture arguably uphold the culturalization of difference in care. Although ideas about what culture is and how it should be apprehended in care differ from the early days of cultural competence, culture remains seen as the defining axis of difference driving the need to address diversity in care. I observed how this contributed to othering along the lines of racial hierarchies in the adult day service. Still, a return to universalism seems equally likely to contribute to racial hierarchies. I propose that decolonial critiques in/of anthropology offer a way to make sense of this moment in care and find a balance between the two.