Individualising difference, negotiating culture: Intersections of culture and care

Abstract

In this article, we focus on developing a critical sociology of ‘cultural and linguistic diversity’ as evident in cancer care praxis, drawing on the perspectives of cancer care health professionals. Set within the context of increasing efforts on the part of healthcare providers to ‘accommodate difference’ and ‘incorporate diversity’, we aimed to utilise participants’ accounts of practice to ask: how do we and how should we think about and operationalise ‘culture’ (if at all) in cancer care settings. Drawing on eight focus groups with doctors, nurses, allied health staff and multicultural community workers, here we explore their accounts of: othering and over-simplification; the role of absences in biographical reciprocity; intimacy, care and carelessness; and entanglements of culture with other aspects of the person. Based on their accounts, we argue for a broadening of the examination of the nexus of culture and care, to focus on the problematics of othering, intimacy, reciprocity and complexity.

Equity across the cancer care continuum for culturally and linguistically diverse migrants living in Australia: a scoping review

“…This review also highlighted the need to provide further resources and training for clinicians, particularly in the development of the meaningful relationships needed to provide effective intercultural care [ 85 ]. It has been reported through focus-groups with clinicians that a lack of high-level interpreter services impedes their ability to assess patient symptoms and to develop intimate and trusting relationships with CALD patients [ 94 ]. This review also highlighted the need to expand health equity research into the field of palliative care.…”

The Association between Health and Culture: The Perspective of Older Adult Hospital In-Patients in Israel

“…The topic of cultural sensitivity to the patient population in general and to hospital patients in particular is an important part of the relationship between the medical staff and the patients, and it affects both the processes of a medical diagnosis and patient recovery. Hospitalization leads to encounters between the medical staff and people with diverse cultural backgrounds, characterized by different beliefs, attitudes, and life philosophies [ 2 , 3 , 10 , 24 ].…”

“…Attending to the cultural constructions of health opens up the discursive spaces of health communication to alternative cosmologies of health, illness, healing, and curing [ 9 ]. The problem of culture is, in fact, a problem of understanding relationality, oneself, and other people, and it is important to understand all those within the therapeutic environment (family, patients, and professionals) [ 10 ].…”

Problematizing “Planning Ahead”: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Vietnamese Health and Community Workers’ Perspectives on Advance Care Directives

“…In their analysis of the intersections of culture and medicine, Broom, Kirby, et al (2020) describe how institutional problems within health care become redefined as a problem with populations who are excluded. Difference or divergence “from an Anglo norm .…”

“…. becomes associated with problems with and problems for [people] with diverse backgrounds and biographies” (Broom, Kirby, et al, 2020, p. 4). The institutionalization of strategies to shift responsibility for problems is critically examined in Ahmed’s (2012) work on diversity in Britain and Australia, where individuals who named a problem with gendered and racial inequality became “the problem.” In turn, policy responses to “problems” failed to accommodate diversity through structural change; dividing practices were used to contain the voices of women and people of color, thus coproducing the problems they seek to redress.…”