engleski

Going Over to the Dark Side: Two Auto-ethnographies of Engaged Medical Anthropology

The question whether every research in medical anthropology is, to a certain degree, engaged and, to a certain degree, applied, is by no means novel. The idea that anthropological fieldwork is an embodied experience is, logically, nowhere more obvious than in the field which deals with sickness, health, illness, happiness, suffering. Furthermore, many methodological manuals in medical anthropology have emphasized that it takes “courage” to do it (Kiefer 2011) or that it is not an arena for “faint-hearted” (Hill 1991). Not actually willing to perceive medical anthropologists as courageous Jedi Knights, I will use two examples of my own research to try to show that engagement and/or activism in medical anthropology is difficult to avoid. Both researches, one on the existence of complementary and alternative medicine on the medical market of post-socialist Croatia and the second one, current, on the experiences and discourses of high-conflict divorces in, again, a rapidly changing society, were initially never intended as applied. However, in both instances I ended up working with the related NGOs on the attempts at changing the necessary legislation, participated in numerous meetings at the related Ministries, Government bodies, TV shows and even public protests, actively and, on many occasions, not in the role of a “coolheaded” researcher. Does that, in the context of medical anthropology, mean I have gone over to the dark side, or is it the only way to do medical anthropology?

applied medial anthropology, auto-ethnography

nije evidentirano