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- Convenor:
-
Barbara Andersen
(Massey University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Napier 208
- Sessions:
- Friday 15 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
This panel explores intimacy as an analytical concept in the anthropology of health care.
Long Abstract:
Incorporating concepts like kinship, love, sexuality, friendship, care, and reproductive labour, intimacy denotes relationship forms that are commonly seen as private, personal, and properly outside politics and the state. Scholars of governmentality and contemporary liberalism have, however, used the concept of intimacy—namely, "proximate, close relations: local, microlevel, private, embodied, involving the psyche"—in order to examine "relational life" in an open-ended way, including in terms of state-citizen exchanges (Wilson 2016). Public or private health care can be productively examined as a site of intimacy, wherein the state and individuals may be brought into embodied, intimate, or affective relation with one another. Conversely, this panel will also examine moments when failed or reduced intimacy is crucial to enacting care or even understood as a moral virtue by the state, health professionals and patients. We invite ethnographically-grounded papers that investigate health services, medical care, and the state using intimacy as an analytical lens. This panel is sponsored by the Society for Medical Anthropology in Aotearoa (SOMAA). All are welcome to submit abstracts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 15 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Australian residential aged care as a site of intimacy between physical things, public spaces and nursing home residents to expand the conceptual frame of intimacy to that between person and place so that the social forces made manifest into materiality can be examined.
Paper long abstract:
Is it possible for older people to have a sense of home living in a nursing home? What is at the core of feeling at home in a contested cultural space of nursing home? This paper investigates the everyday experience of older people doing daily activities, such as handling mobility aids and walking, in the nursing home environment. This paper aims to argue that the fusion of person and place is at the core of feeling at home, and the sense of home is made possible for the residents in the public spaces of nursing home in their repetitive sensory engagement with the physical things and spaces. Exploring Australian residential aged care as a site of intimacy, this paper articulates the primordial and reciprocal relationship between physical things, spaces and person as deeply embodied, intimate and affective. While the government regulations are made manifest through the materiality of physical things and spaces, the residents' everyday engagement with things and spaces become the embodied processes of incorporating the materiality of statecraft, which lead to the mutual constitution of the regulating state and the compliant nursing home residents. This paper is based on the author's 12-month fieldwork conducted in two Australian metropolitan residential aged care facilities as part of an ethnographic study of residents' lived experiences. To rethink anthropological understanding of care in term of intimacy between person and place, this paper offers both insights and empirical materials.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the interrelationship between emotional intimacy, feeling and affective relationships between peer facilitators and perinatal women as part of a larger feasibility study carried out in a Northwest coast city in the UK.
Paper long abstract:
Postnatal women have shown they prioritise availability of non-stigmatising psycho-social support. Access to support can facilitate the transition to parenthood across all levels of wellbeing (Brugha, Morrell, Slade and Walters 2011). As part of a larger feasibility study carried out in a Northwest coast city in the UK, we developed a brief 3-pronged intervention consisting of a 20 minute contact early in pregnancy and 6-12 weeks postnatally to support women to identify their own support needs and how to access them. The intervention consisted of 1) A face-to-face meeting with a non-professional peer facilitator in a supportive way; 2) access to detailed and accurate information about existing local services via an electronic interactive community map developed for the study; and 3) use of If-Then planning (a simple way to help people make a plan to translate their intentions into action). The intervention was delivered alongside statutory maternity care provisions. This paper will discuss findings from qualitative interviews with 26 women that suggest the skills developed and personal qualities of the peer facilitators enabled the development of affective relationships with the women. The study confirms learnings from previous research recognizing that perinatal women wish for "continuity of carer" provider and of emotional intimacy, i.e. being known, valued and respected.
Paper short abstract:
Utilising semi-structured interviews with young adults in the Sydney region, this paper demonstrates that explanatory models around sexual health in this demographic has diverged from dominant models to capture holistic notions of health.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws on qualitative research conducted in the Sydney region around safe-sex attitudes, involving in-depth interviews with twenty-eight 18 to 30 year old adults. To capture participant's explanatory models around safe sex as a notion, and actual safe sex behaviour, participants were asked how they defined 'safe sex'. Despite living in a society where biomedicine is the dominant ethnomedical model, and where safe sex literature reflects biomedicine's focus on physical safety, the majority of participants offered a markedly biosocial definition. Participants espoused messages around physical safety while also making social issues such as consent, trust and transparency of intentions central to their response. Yet, remnants of abstinence education were also present, with associated notions presented as logical by some and attributed to the dogmas of religious schooling by others. This paper argues that the definitions provided by participants do not occupy a liminal space between the physical safety messaging of biomedicine and the spiritual safety messaging of the church. Rather, the young adult community's definition of safe sex emphasises holistic health outcomes, with considerations for physical, mental and emotional health. Thus 'safe sex' is not considered a single prescriptive behaviour, but seen as an umbrella term for a variety of different behaviours that shift with different contextual factors. The implications of divergent notions on safe sex in the public health arena mean that campaigns around safe behaviour may not capture or be perceived to apply to the nuanced views held by the population.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken at mindfulness-based retreats for Australian teens, this paper examines the retreat as a site of intimacy between teens, staff, the retreat space, and the role of ritualised practices in forming an intimate space for self-exploration and sharing.
Paper long abstract:
Adolescence is a particularly challenging period, with significant social and academic pressures, as well as concerns around future employment, social comparisons and body image. The proportion of young Australians with mental health issues has risen over the past decade, however few young people seek professional help (McGorry 2014). Young people most commonly go online for support and information regarding their mental health, as it is safe and stigma-free.
Mindfulness-based programs have become an increasingly popular approach to enhance the emotional well-being of young people. However, the context in which these programs take place poses significant challenges.
This study looked at a 5-day mindfulness-based retreat program, using participant observation of two retreats and follow-up qualitative interviews with some of the attendees, to evaluate the impact of the retreat on the attending adolescents. This paper will discuss these findings, which suggest that the accepting environment of the retreat that encouraged open sharing, as well as the structure of the program, enabled the development of affectionate relationships between all those attending, both staff and teens. It explores the role of the retreat space and program in creating an intimate and supportive environment for adolescents to investigate themselves, which they were able to access both in solitude (through their meditation practice) and in relation to others (through group discussions). This paper builds on current knowledge around the application of mindfulness for young people in their development, while presenting examples on the importance of undertaking any self-exploratory practices in a safe and supportive environment.