Masculinity and undocumented labor migration: injured latino day laborers in San Francisco. (41/338)

Drawing on data collected through clinical practice and ethnographic fieldwork, this study examines the experience of injury, illness and disability among undocumented Latino day laborers in San Francisco. We demonstrate how constructions of masculine identity organize the experience of embodied social suffering among workers who are rendered vulnerable by the structural conditions of undocumented immigrant status. Theoretical concepts from critical medical anthropology and gender studies extend the scholarly analysis of structural violence beyond the primarily economic to uncover how it is embodied at the intimate level as a gendered experience of personal and familial crisis, involving love, respect, betrayal and patriarchal failure. A clinical ethnographic focus on socially structured patriarchal suffering elucidates the causal relationship between macro-forces and individual action with a fuller appreciation of the impact of culture and everyday lived experience.  (+info)

Community-based participatory research: an approach to intervention research with a Native American community. (42/338)

Community-based participatory research (CBPR), with its emphasis on joining with the community as full and equal partners in all phases of the research process, makes it an appealing model for research with vulnerable populations. However, the CBPR approach is not without special challenges relating to ethical, cultural, and scientific issues. In this article, we describe how we managed the challenges we encountered while conducting a CBPR project with a Native American community. We also suggest criteria that will enable evaluation of the project.  (+info)

The coevolution of ritual and society: new 14C dates from ancient Mexico. (43/338)

New (14)C dates from Oaxaca, Mexico, document changes in religious ritual that accompanied the evolution of society from hunting and gathering to the archaic state. Before 4000 B.P. in conventional radiocarbon years, a nomadic egalitarian lifeway selected for unscheduled (ad hoc) ritual from which no one was excluded. With the establishment of permanent villages (4000-3000 B.P.), certain rituals were scheduled by solar or astral events and restricted to initiates/social achievers. After state formation (2050 B.P.), many important rituals were performed only by trained full-time priests using religious calendars and occupying temples built by corvee labor. Only 1,300-1,400 years seem to have elapsed between the oldest known ritual building and the first standardized state temple.  (+info)

Understanding and addressing AIDS-related stigma: from anthropological theory to clinical practice in Haiti. (44/338)

For the past several years, diverse and often confused concepts of stigma have been invoked in discussions on AIDS. Many have argued compellingly that AIDS-related stigma acts as a barrier to voluntary counseling and testing. Less compelling are observations regarding the source of stigma or its role in decreasing interest in HIV care. We reviewed these claims as well as literature from anthropology, sociology, and public health. Preliminary data from research in rural Haiti suggest that the introduction of quality HIV care can lead to a rapid reduction in stigma, with resulting increased uptake of testing. Rather than stigma, logistic and economic barriers determine who will access such services. Implications for scale-up of integrated AIDS prevention and care are explored.  (+info)

Charcoal-burning suicide in post-transition Hong Kong. (45/338)

BACKGROUND: Charcoal-burning, a new suicide method, emerged in Hong Kong during the latest economic recession. Within 2 months charcoal-burning had become the third most common suicide method. AIMS: To examine the characteristics of suicides by charcoal-burning, and to delineate the pathways linking macro-level economic and social changes with the subjective experiences of those surviving a charcoal-burning suicide attempt. METHOD: Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. In the coroner's records study, the first 160 cases of suicide by charcoal-burning were compared with a control group. In the ethnographic enquiry, we interviewed 25 consecutive informants who had survived serious suicide attempt using charcoal-burning. RESULTS: People who completed suicide by the charcoal-burning method were more likely to have been economically active and physically healthy, and were less likely to have had pre-existing mental illness. Charcoal-burning suicide was associated with overindebtedness. Media reports were pivotal in linking overindebtedness and financial troubles with charcoal-burning. CONCLUSIONS: The political economy of suicide by charcoal-burning illustrated how historical, socio-economic and cultural forces shaped the lived experience that preceded suicide.  (+info)

Sustaining rural maternity care--don't forget the RNs. (46/338)

INTRODUCTION: Registered nurses provide intrapartum care to women who choose to have their babies in hospital. Considering the current national shortage of nurses, the ability of registered nurses to continue to care for women, especially in small rural hospitals, is a critical concern. PURPOSES: The purposes of the study were 1) to conduct a systematic review of the maternal-child-nursing literature in rural locations; and 2) to identify one rural Ontario hospital where nurses and physicians deliver care to women with low-risk pregnancies, and then conduct an institutional ethnography to understand the enablers and barriers to low-risk rural maternity care. METHODS: A literature search was conducted to determine the state of rural registered nurses; and a telephone survey of 25 rural Ontario hospitals was undertaken to locate a hospital in which an institutional ethnography study could be conducted. RESULTS: Registered nurses in rural areas are more likely to be multi-specialists than generalists because of the need to adapt to emergencies across the life continuum. To care for pregnant women and their families, registered nurses require many of the same considerations that physicians have outlined: access to continuing education, appropriate call-back schedules, support from other health care professionals and administrators, and a value system that respects their expertise. Results from the ethnography of one Ontario health care institution revealed that when these aforementioned considerations are addressed, registered nurses are able to provide safe, comprehensive low-risk care in a rural maternity programme. CONCLUSIONS: Registered nurses play an important collaborative role in maternity care. We need Canadian data on registered nurses so that we can educate, recruit and retain them to care for women with low-risk pregnancies in rural and remote ares of Canada. Nursing services should be reviewed. Collaborative care models integrating newer professionals such as midwives, as well as understanding the role of doulas, may help in developing sustainable care to rural women.  (+info)

Discrete hierarchical organization of social group sizes. (47/338)

The 'social brain hypothesis' for the evolution of large brains in primates has led to evidence for the coevolution of neocortical size and social group sizes, suggesting that there is a cognitive constraint on group size that depends, in some way, on the volume of neural material available for processing and synthesizing information on social relationships. More recently, work on both human and non-human primates has suggested that social groups are often hierarchically structured. We combine data on human grouping patterns in a comprehensive and systematic study. Using fractal analysis, we identify, with high statistical confidence, a discrete hierarchy of group sizes with a preferred scaling ratio close to three: rather than a single or a continuous spectrum of group sizes, humans spontaneously form groups of preferred sizes organized in a geometrical series approximating 3-5, 9-15, 30-45, etc. Such discrete scale invariance could be related to that identified in signatures of herding behaviour in financial markets and might reflect a hierarchical processing of social nearness by human brains.  (+info)

The association between negative self-descriptions and depressive symptomology: does culture make a difference? (48/338)

Research findings that depressed Americans endorse more negative self-related adjectives than controls may be related to a shared self-enhancement cultural frame. This study examines the relationship between negative core self-descriptors and depressive symptoms in 79 Japanese and 50 American women. Americans had more positive self-descriptions and core self-descriptors; however, there were no cultural group differences in number of negative self-descriptors or core self-descriptors. There was a significant correlation between negative core self-descriptor and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for Americans only, explaining 10.6% of the BDI variance. Analysis of variance revealed that there was significant BDI group differences for American negative core self-descriptor only. Theoretical possibilities are discussed.  (+info)