From Illness Narratives to Social Commentary: A Pirandellian Approach to “Nerves”

Migliore, Sam

doi:10.1525/maq.2001.15.1.100

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…In light of elders' responses to our questions about depression, we suggest that depression is a cultural and social construction and a form of communication (Migliore, 2001;Mills, 2000) often expressed through metaphor and embedded in a story that expresses a range of emotions, mental processes, and physical symptoms (Fernandez, 1974). Constructions of depression include folk beliefs about the causality, ontology, and treatment of depression, and are based in elders' cultural, ethnic, and religious traditions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context and culture: African-American elders’ experiences of depression

Black

Gitlin

Burke

2010

Mental Health, Religion & Culture

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The word ''depression'' is used in many forums, such as clinically or colloquially. Our study explored how the word is used culturally and experientially in a particular group of individuals. In this article, we examine the meaning of depression to a sample of 60 African-American men and women with varying levels of health and functional status. We presented the word depression in our interview questionnaire but did not pre-define the word, nor did anyone in the sample ask us to define it. A key finding of this article is that the way in which persons construct an experience of depression, their expression of it, and their perception of an appropriate resolution emerges from their belief system. Our data offered a window into the internal world of elders, particularly the cultural and religious beliefs and traditions that shaped their processes of defining, interpreting, and resolving depression. For this group, resolving depression meshed with the spiritual adaptive strategies, such as reliance on God, community, self, and others, that they used throughout life to deal with negative circumstances.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context and culture: African-American elders’ experiences of depression

Black

Gitlin

Burke

2010

Mental Health, Religion & Culture

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“…Although significant anthropological attention has been given to the psychological and cultural context of physical illness in the global South (from "folk illness" to "culture-bound syndromes") (Carey 1993;Kleinman 1986;Migliore 2001), social scientists have also turned their ethnographic attention to medically unexplained illness in the global North (Barker 2005;Kilshaw 2010;Kroll-Smith and Floyd 1997;Nettleton 2006;Nettleton et al 2004). For example, anthropologist Joseph Dumit has described "contested, emerging illnesses" as "illnesses you have to fight to get" (2006) or "new socio-medical disorders" (2000) and has suggested that they are characterized by five features: chronicity, biomentality, therapeutic diversity, cross-linkage, and legal explosivity (2006:578).…”

Section: Medically Unexplained Illnesses and Competing Medical Epistementioning

confidence: 99%

Lyme Disease and the Epistemic Tensions of “Medically Unexplained Illnesses”

Dumes

2019

Medical Anthropology

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In the US, disagreement over the biological basis of "chronic Lyme disease" has resulted in the institutionalization of two standards of care: "mainstream" and "Lyme-literate." For mainstream physicians, chronic Lyme disease is a "medically unexplained illness" that presents with an abundance of "symptoms" in the absence of diagnostic "signs." For Lyme-literate physicians, and complementary and alternative medicine practitioners more generally, symptoms alone provide sufficient evidence for medical explanation. Drawing upon ethnographic research among mainstream and Lymeliterate physicians, I suggest that medically unexplained illness is not a biomedical anomaly but an intrinsic feature of biomedicine.

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“…With the disappearance of indigenous healers, increased reliance on bio-medicine, and the resulting stigma attached to folk illnesses and their traditional treatments (Nigenda et al 2001), an illness such as susto would have disappeared or been re-interpreted by Gregorians. These symptoms are common to other populations' general feelings of malaise and can encompass other folk illnesses (see, for example, the "nerves" literature: Low 1985Low , 1994Low and Davis 1989;Lock 1993;Davis and Guarnaccia 1989;Migliore 2001) and therefore could theoretically represent another folk illness rather than susto. In particular, Gregorians with less exposure to urban mestizo culture, as defined by Gregorians themselves, but nonetheless preferring biomedicine, would be more likely to express symptoms of a folk illness and label it as low/variable blood pressure.…”

Section: Understanding Low/variable Blood Pressure In Larger Sociostrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Articulating Distress on Multiple Levels: Illness, History, and Culture Among the Kumiai of Baja California, Mexico

Fleuriet

2007

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Illness among disenfranchised indigenous communities in Mexico reflects not only disease but also structural relations of power based on ethnicity, gender, and economic status. As such, physiological explanations of illness alone are not sufficient to understand and address suffering caused by common illnesses. Among the Kumiai Indians of one rural community in Baja California, one of the most commonly reported health problems is presión baja (low blood pressure), and the overlapping condition of alternating high and low blood pressure. Low/variable blood pressure is most likely to affect women from one of two clans and who are relatively poorer than other community members. For these women, low/variable blood pressure embodies the lived experience of and response to high rates of diabetes, local gender relations, and a changing kinship structure. As a local idiom of distress that carries national cultural currency as a reflection of the experiences of indigenous Mexican women living in rural poverty, low/variable blood pressure requires interventions that directly target diabetes but also gender-sensitive economic development programs to promote community health.La enfermedad entre comunidades oprimidas indígenas de México refleja no sólo la enfermedad misma, sino las relaciones estructurales de poder referidas a etnicidad, género y estatus económico. Es así que las explicaciones fisiológicas referidas sólo a la enfermedad son insuficientes para entender y resolver el sufrimiento causado por enfermedades comunes. Entre los indios de Kumiai de una comunidad rural en Baja California, uno de los problemas de salud más comúnmente reportados es de presión sanguínea baja, y las condiciones alternantes entre presión baja y alta. Las condiciones de presión sanguínea baja afectan en su mayoría a mujeres de uno de los dos clanes, y a quienes son relativamente más pobres que el resto de los miembros de la comunidad. Para estas mujeres, la presión sanguínea baja involucra la experiencia cotidiana y la respuesta Mexican Studies/All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions misma a los altos niveles de diabetes, relaciones locales de género, y a una cambiante estructura de parentesco. Como un indicador local de aflicción que involucra a la cultura nacional como reflejo de las experiencias de mujeres indígenas mexicanas que viven en la pobreza rural, las condiciones de presión sanguínea baja requieren de intervenciones que directamente se enfoquen en la diabetes misma, pero que también consideren programas de desarrollo económico sensibles a asuntos de género para así promover una salud comunal.

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From Illness Narratives to Social Commentary: A Pirandellian Approach to “Nerves”

Cited by 13 publications

References 57 publications

Context and culture: African-American elders’ experiences of depression

Context and culture: African-American elders’ experiences of depression

Lyme Disease and the Epistemic Tensions of “Medically Unexplained Illnesses”

Articulating Distress on Multiple Levels: Illness, History, and Culture Among the Kumiai of Baja California, Mexico

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