For my ethnography, like I mentioned in last weeeks blog, I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting. Large quantity of people to Inter y with. However, munchinson chapter seven reminded me that I need to alwaysa be ready to adapt to my situation. Especially because my research question is so broad at the moment, I don’t think this will be hard.
I’m still having trouble recording all my field notes. It’s been really difficult for me to type fast enough and when I can’t type fast enough, remember what all was said. I have awful memory, in almost all my conversations I have with people I often forget what I’m even talking about mid sentence. It would be great to use a tape recorder but that is not at all feasible for my project, given the subject matter. Maybe however for my formal interviews, it’ll be more appropriate.
As per usual I’m writing as I read and already I’m excited for this reading. I want to major in anthropology and focus on medical anthropology, to then use in a career as a midwife/female health nurse practitioner or DNP. I especially want to advocate for black birth-givers, people with vaginas who want control over their reproductive system, and trans people who are often unrepresented in this field. I feel like having a better understanding of people’s backgrounds and cultures, as well as non-western medical practices will really make me able to achieve those goals.
I really like the way this author writes, I dislike when ethnographers write in a more academic way. I feel like it disuades a lot of readers because some ethnographers writing is so dense and takes a long time to get through.
I like how the author talks about the importance of ethnography and anthropology in remedying health issues across the world. I wish more people understood this, and more social science was necessary for all healthcare workers to engage in. I never thought about how the concept of global healthcare is incredibly too broad to effectively help different communities. It reminds me of many instances of healthcare workers trying to help international communities based on what they think the community needs, rather than actually talking to members of the community and seeing what they actually need. It frustrates me how social sciences are ridden off as irrelevant, when so many healthcare workers would benefit from having a better understanding of the people they treat. Not only would it benefit healthcare workers, but peoples lives would be saved. Even just having a class on ethics be a requirement would be so beneficial.
I was looking into the differences in MD/PA and NP/DNP programs. Literally all I could find is that people who go to medical school instead of nursing school take more time learning hard sciences that they rarely go onto use in their careers, rather than actually spend time in the field with patients. It’s such a shame to me that nurses have to spend so much time advocating for their patients and have less authority than a doctor who spends minimal time getting to truly understand the patient. Anyways…
Irma’s story, as the author stated, is similar to that of birth-givers around the world. For me, what came to mind was how even some of the most successful, wealthy, and highest achieving black women in America, Beyoncé and Serena Williams, almost died during childbirth. In both cases this was due to lack of precautionary protocol, pertaining to the fatal complications that are much more common in black women. For Williams, she had to push to get the doctors to scan her to figure out exactly what was wrong, a scan that revealed she had a blood clot in her lung. If this is the state of childbirth for some of the wealthiest black women in America, it is not hard to fathom the case of Irma and how thousands of birth-givers like her have to endure sub-par care and unnecessary hardship.
Dixon’s description of infrastructural violence and the magnitude of its effects provides supporting evidence for the importance of decolonization and abolition. She exemplifies the fact that the structures and systems that we have to operate in, are often built to exclude impoverished people of color.