AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract

The main argument of the article presented here is relevancy of autoethnographic techniques to medical anthropology. In order to argue this the author appeals to history of Anthropology which is developing from the interest to abstract objects in social organization and culture of societies remote of Europe (so called ‘Others’), being constructed on the base of European equivalents, to the interest to a particular person and his/her life circumstances, being taken through a lens of ‘self’. In the article the foundations of autoethnography as both a field method and analytical tool are presented; brief thematic overview of autoethnografic work in the field of medical anthropology is given.

References

• Aceves, Joseph (1971) Social Change in a Spanish Village, Cambridge, Mass.; L.: Schenkman Publishing Company, xii, 145 p.
• Adams, Tony E., Stacy Holman Jones and Carolyn Ellis (2015) Autoethnography, Oxford; N.Y.: Oxford University Press, xii, 203 p. (Ser. Understanding Qualitative Research)
• Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam (1995) ‘Introduction: What’s “Native” About Non-Russian Anthropology?’ in: Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam (ed.) Culture Incarnate: Native Ethnography in Russia, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 3–28.
• Bochner, Arthur P. (2014) Coming to Narrative: A Personal History of Paradigm Change in the Human Sciences, Walnut Creek, Ca.: Left Coast Press, Inc, 350 p.
• Chang, Heewon, Faith Wambura Ngunjiri and Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez (Eds.) (2013) Collaborative Autoethnography, Walnut Creek, Ca.: Left Coast Press, Inc, 200 p.
• Clifford, James (1988) The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art, Cambridge, Mass.; L.: Harvard University Press, xiv, 381 p.
• Crapanzano, Vincent (2010) ‘The End – the Ends – of Anthropology’, Paideuma, Bd. 56, pp. 165–188.
• Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams and Arthur P. Bochner (2010) ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 12, no 1, Art. 10. Available at: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108 (15.05.2016).
• Firth, Raymond (1989) ‘Introduction’, in: Bronislaw Malinowski, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, With a New Introduction by Raymond Firth, transl. by Norbert Guterman, L.: The Athlone Press, pp. xi–xix.
• Friedl, Ernestine (1962) Vasilika: A Village in Modern Greece, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, xviii, 110.
• Geertz, Clifford (1983) Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, N.Y.: BasicBooks, viii, 244 p.
• Herzfeld, Michael (1985) The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Greek Village, Princeton: Princeton University Press, xx, 313 p.
• Herzfeld, Michael (1987) Anthropology through the looking-glass: Critical ethnography in the margins of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xii, 260 p.
• Kasyanova, Alexandra (2008) ‘Tselitel’nitsa? Net, – ved’ma! Trasformatsiya predstavleniy o “professii” v sel’skikh soobschestvakh Krasnodarskogo kraya,’ Zhurnal sotsiologii i sotsial’noy antropologii, vol. XI, № 2, pp. 67–79 (in Russian).
• Keefer, Jeffrey M. (2010) ‘Autoethnographer Communities of Practice,’ in Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Lone, Vivien Hodgson, Chris Jones, Maarten de Laat, David McConnell, Thomas Ryberg (eds) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networked Learning 2010, Lancaster: Lancaster University, pp. 207-214.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1960) A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, x, 228 p.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1989) A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, With a New Introduction by Raymond Firth, transl. by Norbert Guterman, L.: The Athlone Press, xxxiv, 315 p.
• Manuylov, Alexander (2012) ‘The Practices of ‘Privacy’ in a South Russian Village (a Case Study of Stepnoe, Krasnodar Region)’, Baiburin, Albert, Catriona Kelly & Nikolai Vakhtin (eds.) Russian Cultural Anthropology After the Collapse of Communism, London; New York: Routledge, pp. 130–154.
• Manuylov, Alexander (2015) Russian Greeks / Greek Russians: Parameters of Identity, Bergen: University of Bergen.
• Peirano, Mariza G. S. (1998) ‘When anthropology is at home: the different contexts of a single discipline’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, pp. 105–28.
• Pillay, Daisy, Inbanathan Naicker and Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan (Eds.) (2016) Academic Autoethnographies: Inside Teaching in Higher Education, Rotterdam; Boston; Taipei: Sense Publications, xii, 200 p.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. (1952) Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, viii, 219 p.
• Reed-Danahay, Deborah E. (Ed.) (1997) Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Oxford; N.Y.: Berg, xiv, 277 p.
• Rogozin, Dmitriy (2015) ‘How autoethnography works?’, Sotsiologicheskoye Obozreniye, vol. 14, № 1, pp. 224–273 (in Russian).
• Triandafyllidou, Anna (2000) ‘‘Racists? Us? Are You Joking?’ The Discourse of Social Exclusion of Immigrants in Greece and Italy’, King, Russell, Gabriella Lazaridis, and Charalambos Tsardanidis (ed.) Eldorado or Fortress?: Migration in Southern Europe, New York: Palgrave Publishers, pp. 186–206.
• Triandafyllidou, Anna and Mariangela Veikou (2002) ‘The hierarchy of Greekness: Ethnic and national identity considerations in Greek immigration policy’, Ethnicities, 2:2, pp. 189–208.
• Voutira, Eftihia (2006) ‘Post-Soviet Diaspora Politics: The Case of the Soviet Greeks’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 24, pp. 379–414.