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Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview
In this paper, I analyze the illness stories narrated by a mother and her 13-year-old son as part of an ethnographic study of child chronic pain sufferers and their families. In examining some of the moral, relational and communicative challenges of giving an account of one’s pain, I focus on what i...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2009
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813524/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19957024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-009-9162-2 |
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author | Buchbinder, Mara |
author_facet | Buchbinder, Mara |
author_sort | Buchbinder, Mara |
collection | PubMed |
description | In this paper, I analyze the illness stories narrated by a mother and her 13-year-old son as part of an ethnographic study of child chronic pain sufferers and their families. In examining some of the moral, relational and communicative challenges of giving an account of one’s pain, I focus on what is left out of some accounts of illness and suffering and explore some possible reasons for these elisions. Drawing on recent work by Judith Butler (Giving an Account of Oneself, 2005), I investigate how the pragmatic context of interviews can introduce a form of symbolic violence to narrative accounts. Specifically, I use the term “genre of complaint” to highlight how anthropological research interviews in biomedical settings invoke certain typified forms of suffering that call for the rectification of perceived injustices. Interview narratives articulated in the genre of complaint privilege specific types of pain and suffering and cast others into the background. Giving an account of one’s pain is thus a strategic and selective process, creating interruptions and silences as much as moments of clarity. Therefore, I argue that medical anthropologists ought to attend more closely to the institutional structures and relations that shape the production of illness narratives in interview encounters. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2813524 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-28135242010-02-13 Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview Buchbinder, Mara Cult Med Psychiatry Original Paper In this paper, I analyze the illness stories narrated by a mother and her 13-year-old son as part of an ethnographic study of child chronic pain sufferers and their families. In examining some of the moral, relational and communicative challenges of giving an account of one’s pain, I focus on what is left out of some accounts of illness and suffering and explore some possible reasons for these elisions. Drawing on recent work by Judith Butler (Giving an Account of Oneself, 2005), I investigate how the pragmatic context of interviews can introduce a form of symbolic violence to narrative accounts. Specifically, I use the term “genre of complaint” to highlight how anthropological research interviews in biomedical settings invoke certain typified forms of suffering that call for the rectification of perceived injustices. Interview narratives articulated in the genre of complaint privilege specific types of pain and suffering and cast others into the background. Giving an account of one’s pain is thus a strategic and selective process, creating interruptions and silences as much as moments of clarity. Therefore, I argue that medical anthropologists ought to attend more closely to the institutional structures and relations that shape the production of illness narratives in interview encounters. Springer US 2009-12-03 2010 /pmc/articles/PMC2813524/ /pubmed/19957024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-009-9162-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2009 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Buchbinder, Mara Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title | Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title_full | Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title_fullStr | Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title_full_unstemmed | Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title_short | Giving an Account of One’s Pain in the Anthropological Interview |
title_sort | giving an account of one’s pain in the anthropological interview |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813524/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19957024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-009-9162-2 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT buchbindermara givinganaccountofonespainintheanthropologicalinterview |