another research interests post
I’m posting a brief blurb about my dissertation project so that I can find a group for the symposium. The goal of my dissertation is to analyze the durability of distinct medical cultures in technologically advanced healthcare systems that rely on “western” allopathic medical theory. Durability is defined as the tendency to maintain or develop diverse medical practices even as the forces of globalization seem to press healthcare practices everywhere toward a single standard.
Social scientists must offer a general theory that explains enduring cultural and national differences in the practice of medicine, even as scientific, evidence-based medicine globalizes. My project aims to develop an empirically grounded theoretical framework with which to describe national and cultural differences in the practice of evidence-based medicine. That is, even when the scientific evidence upon which modern medicine is based is identical almost everywhere in the world, how is the actual practice of that medicine affected by differences in cultural context? How much of modern medicine, which most Americans take for granted as science in practice, relies on culturally specific explanatory models? And to what degree does the practice of medicine in different contexts require a transformation of medicine’s cultural content?
How does this fit into our recycle theme? Well, my theory suggests that pre-existing cultural patterns are essentially recycled and re-adapted to new technologies and practices. Rather than the introduction of new technological practices (such as advanced allopathic medicine) leading to wholesale change in behavior, such practices and encountered, understood, and co-opted using cultural content specific to the community in question. So “conventional wisdom” once applied to exposing children to inclement weather is re-adapted and re-applied to a new situation, and used to rationalize exposure to inoculation Or now-defunct cultural prohibitions on bathing while ill are referenced by doctors in order to express the severity of illness to a patient. (Both of these are examples from one of my cases.)
No doubt I will talk about this more at the next seminar!
-Mari A.-H.
