Medical Anthropology V14.0035
Spring 2011
Rayna Rapp
First Writing Assignment
Your assignment is due in my mailbox @ 25 Waverly Place, front office, by 4PM on Thursday, 10 MARCH. Your essay should be: 12 point font, double-space typed, and paginated. Please staple. The page limit is 5 pages. Please choose one of these topics:
(1)Identify and interview one person who has had to confront a serious health problem, bodily difference, or other disability: construct an illness or disability narrative of this person’s experience.
(2) To complete this assignment, you should have a respondent in your network. Be creative if you cannot think of anyone—try your friends’ friends or relatives if you are not comfortable interviewing those with whom you are close.
(3)Before beginning, please be sure to re-read Ann Fadiman’s interaction with Arthur Kleinman’s questions concerning Illness Narratives, p. 260-61 in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Please pay attention to her (and his) methodology.
(4)Also, be sure to outline your questions in advance of conducting the interview. The illness narrative is produced via open-ended questions, but the questions need to have structure and goal. Be sure to pose questions which take into account the issues raised in class readings, which range from the symbolism of the body to the history and political economy of health. You cannot cover all of these topics, but please be sure that some of them are relevant to the questions you ask. Please attach a copy of the questions to the illness narrative you turn in.
(5)Your interpretation…
(6)You do not need to cite class-assigned readings. If something is particularly relevant, you are free to do so. But the goal of the assignment is to “think like an anthropologist” while engaging an expert respondent.
or
(1) Identify and interview one person who is a professional healer. This can be a “mainstream” MD, RN, OT/PT, or an alternative healthcare provider such as a chiropractor, acupuncturist, or someone who combines several perspectives and practices, like a nutritionist or psychotherapist.
(2) To complete this assignment, you should have a respondent in your network. Be creative if you cannot think of anyone—try your friends’ friends or relatives if you are not comfortable interviewing those with whom you are close.
3) Your questions should focus on the history of how they came to their profession, their views of conventional and unconventional medical practice, and an overview of the kind of patients they serve. If relevant, questions concerning their view of the larger medical system and its current problems may also lead to useful conversations. Again, class perspectives should inform your questions, but no direct citation of the literature is needed. Please attach a copy of the questions to the healing narrative you turn in.
To the extent that you reference course literature, please use proper citation and attach a bibliography:
citation format is “Quotation or paraphrase” (author’s last name, year: page#).
bibliography format is: Last name, First name. Year. Title of work. City: Publisher.
OR: Last name, First name. Year. “Article name.” Journal name vol.(no.):pages.
The paper can be written in first or third person, as you decide.