Selling Sex, Studying Sexuality: Voices of Costa Rican Prostitutes and Visions of Feminists

This paper explores the images of disembodiment and disengagement put forth in feminist representations of prostitution and prostitutes and contrasts them to the embodied and engaged experiences of fifty-three street prostitutes in San Jose, Costa Rica. The importance of focusing on the global as well as local context is emphasized.Cet exposé explore les images de désincamement et de désengagement présentées dans les représentations féministes de la prostitution et des prostituées et les compare aux expériences incarnées et engagées des prostituées de la cinquante-troisième rue à San José à Costa Rica. On souligne l’importance de se concentrer au contexte mondial anisi qu'au contexte local

"Force Fields" of Motherhood and Maternal Empowerment: An Indigenous Mother in Canada Engages the Narratives of African Caribbean Mothers in Barbados

Isabel is a grandmother from a northern Cree community in Saskatchewan. As she copes with temporarily losing custody of her young grandson, she engages with the stories of two mothers from the eastern Caribbean, one who lives a similar life to hers and one from over two hundred years ago. This article presents that narrative engagement and argues that it constitutes a force field of maternal affinity that allows Isabel to recollect her own grandmother’s strength and perseverance. This kind of maternal affinity—extending across geographical distance, cultural divides, and historical periods—can be a source for maternal empowerment in three ways. First, it establishes a motherline that is significant in times of distress. Second, it gives rise to redemptive narratives that help mothers living with HIV and addiction navigate and mitigate the intruding forces of marginalization and disruption. Third, it creates a sense of longevity and safety that can be a much needed reprieve from the oppressive surveillance and scrutiny that Indigenous mothers in Canada face

“Most Often People Would Tell Me I Was Crazy”: Defending against Deviance Ascribed to Alternative Birth Choices

Childbirth-related discourses and practices have fluctuated over time in Canada. A medicalized model currently dominates, but there is increasing plurality in how birth is conceptualized and enacted. From a sample of twenty-one first-time mothers who were interviewed about their childbirth-related experiences, we explored how women described and defended their alternative birth choices within the broader social context of medicalized birth. Data were thematically analyzed and explored in relation to theoretical work on stigma and deviance, since these concepts emerged as salient to women’s narrated experiences. Findings illustrate that mothers who make alternative childbirth choices are often marked as deviant and may elicit moralizing judgments from others, which largely stem from perceptions of risk and/or safety. To counter or avoid feared and experienced deviance, women managed information about the birth of their child through passing, covering, normalizing through reframing, and condemning the condemners. This information management allowed women to present themselves as responsible, competent mothers in the face of deviance. Although previous research has demonstrated birth-related stigma in relation to the choice to birth at home or unassisted, our findings suggest that ascriptions of deviance may also extend to women’s choice of midwifery and doula care despite their increasing prevalence as part of maternity care in Canada. Since these birth options are progressively available and used, and have some empirically documented benefits for mothers, further exploration of how they and other alternative childbirth options are perceived, experienced, and morally valued by women and the general public is warranted

The Interpersonal Skills of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Insights From Collaborators Working at the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office

Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that discourse and practice involving community-engaged scholarship must pay attention to the notion of interpersonal skills in various aspects and across multiple dimensions and disciplines. This approach is crucial to ensure that research is done effectively and ethically, that good quality data are produced from such research, that subtle, systematic forms of micro-aggression and oppression are minimized, and that community voices and knowledge have a meaningful and significant place in scholarship activities

Constructing a complex of contagion: The perceptions of AIDS among working prostitutes in Costa Rica

This paper explores the perceptions of HIV/AIDS held by a group of women working as prostitutes in San José, Costa Rica. Adopting the theoretical perspective of critical medical anthropology, the analysis of the prostitutes' constructions of HIV/AIDS is linked to the political and historical context of power that constitutes a medical cultural hegemony. The way in which the research participants associate threats of HIV/AIDS with violence to create a complex of contagion that both perpetuates and challenges the hegemonic model of disease is discussed. Specifically, biomedicine's designation of the prostitute as the "vector" of disease is contrasted with the position that the prostitutes create for themselves. Through a critical analysis of this complex of contagion, oppressive power structures come into sharp focus.Costa Rica contagion prostitute HIV/AIDS violence

Competing models of illness and disease: the study of leishmeniasis in Campeche, Mexico

Bibliography: p. 155-164.Health intervention programs often fail because the biomedical model and folk model of disease are in competition and are incongruous. There is a need for an integrated explanatory model of disease that accounts for both the clinical and cultural perspectives. The purpose of this study is to construct such a model. The parasitic disease, leishmaniasis, in Campeche, Mexico is the subject of this investigation. Five rural villages in the tropical forest of Southern Campeche were studied in order to determine the cultural perceptions of the disease. This research was conducted over a three month period in association with an ongoing investigation of leishmaniasis centered in the University of Yucatan, Merida. The construction of the integrated model requires that a folk model of the disease be developed first. This involves two processes. The introductory study sets forth the broader, cultural beliefs of health and illness in general. The second study develops a specific model of leishmaniasis encompassing the popular, family and expert models. The results of these investigations show that the concepts of strength, equilibrium, personal responsibility, and the etiological agent are prominent to the people's understanding of disease. The symptomatic severity is determined by the degree of incapacitation, pain, and life endangerment. Criteria for treatment success includes the rapidity of cure, painlessness, and ease of access to the treatment. Patient trust is also crucial to treatment choice. Therefore, herbal and self - administered treatments are preferred for all diseases. Leishmaniasis is considered to be severe given the associated economic loss, role strain, pain, and treatment availability. The biomedical model may be drawn from the ongoing medical investigations and the current literature. Biomedically, leishmaniasis is considered to be very mild and non-burdening. The synthesized model is constructed for the health intervention strategy. The disparities between the two competing models may be resolved by expanding the categories of the existing models or by bridging the two models with a new construct. The contrasting perceptions of the burden of illness is the greatest impediment to the intervention campaign. Therefore, the bridging mechanism proposed is a systematic scoring method that provides a standardized, repeatable measure of burden. This measure accounts for both models and may provide an evaluative mechanism for the intervention. The efficacy of the intervention may improve as the burden of leishmaniasis is clarified and refined, outlining the specific targets of the health care program. The process involved in the construction of these models may be utilized in the study of other diseases and the intervention attempts, particularly when the existing models of the disease are incongruous. This study emphasizes the relevance of anthropological inquiry to the health care intervention process