Experiences of pregnancy in adolescence of internally displaced women in Bogotá : an ethnographic approach

Antecedentes: El embarazo en la adolescencia es mayor en mujeres en condición de desplazamiento interno en Colombia, con respecto a las no desplazadas. Dicha condición es definida como un problema con consecuencias significativas desde el punto de vista biomédico y epidemiológico. Sin embargo, es necesario indagar estas experiencias desde las perspectivas de las mujeres que lo han experimentado, específicamente en el contexto del conflicto armado y del desplazamiento. Objetivo: Este artículo tiene por objeto comprender cómo interpretan las mujeres en condición de desplazamiento interno sus propias experiencias de embarazo en la adolescencia en el contexto del conflicto armado Colombiano a través de una aproximación etnográfica en una comunidad receptora en Bogotá. Métodos: Con base en 10 años de experiencia trabajando en la comunidad, realizamos un año de trabajo de campo a través de observación participante, 20 entrevistas a profundidad para reconstruir sus historias de vida y 8 talleres con las mujeres en condición de desplazamiento en un barrio en Ciudad Bolívar, en Bogotá. Realizamos análisis temático de la información para analizar los datos de las mujeres desplazadas y explorar como ellas entendieron sus experiencias de embarazo en la adolescencia tras el contexto del desplazamiento. Resultados: Los principales temas que emergieron de las experiencias de las participantes incluyeron la violencia en áreas rurales, su niñez (incluso los significados de embarazo a temprana edad y el enamoramiento), y las diferentes reacciones frente al embarazo (como la estigmatización) por parte de sus familias y sus parejas. Conclusión: El embarazo en la adolescencia en mujeres en condición de desplazamiento interno tiene dinámicas complejas e incluye el contexto violento que viven en las áreas rurales de donde son originarias, pero principalmente la violencia que vivieron durante su niñez. La experiencia de embarazo durante la adolescencia les genera sentimientos de pertenencia y las anima a sobrellevar las condiciones del desplazamiento. Estos hallazgos pueden ayudar en la construcción de políticas públicas y al personal de salud para trabajar con esta población.Q2Q1Paciente femeninoBackground: Pregnancy in adolescence is higher among internally displaced women in Colombia than nondisplaced women. It is defined as a problem with significant negative outcomes by both biomedical and epidemiological approaches. However, little is known about pregnancy during adolescence from the perspective of women who experienced this in the specific context of armed conflict and displacement. Aim: This article focuses on how internally displaced women understand their experiences of pregnancy in adolescence in the context of armed conflict through an ethnographic approach in a receptor community of internally displaced women in Bogotá, Colombia. Methods: Based on 10 years of experience in the community, we conducted 1 year of fieldwork, using an ethnographic approach. We collected life stories of 20 internally displaced women through in-depth interviews and ran 8 workshops with them and other women from the community. We used thematic analysis to analyse the responses of internally-displaced women and understand how they made meaning around their experiences of adolescent pregnancy in the context of displacement. Results: The main themes that emerged from participants’ experiences include rural violence, early family life (characterized by violence and mistreatment at home), meanings of pregnancy at an early age (including being challenged and feelings of love), and reactions to their pregnancies during adolescence (such as stigmatization) from their families and partners. Conclusion: Our analysis of the in-depth interviews and the workshops suggests that adolescent pregnancy among women who are internally displaced has complex dynamics, characterized by the violent context of the rural areas, but primarily by the violence experienced during their childhood. The experience of pregnancy during adolescence brings feelings of ownership and also challenges, together with the forced displacement. This understanding will provide insights for policy makers and healthcare providers on how to work with this specific population who have experienced pregnancy in adolescence.https://scienti.minciencias.gov.co/cvlac/visualizador/generarCurriculoCv.do?cod_rh=0001363227https://scienti.minciencias.gov.co/cvlac/visualizador/generarCurriculoCv.do?cod_rh=0000186929Revista Nacional - Indexad

Engineering flesh: towards an ethics of lived integrity

The objective of tissue engineering is to create living body parts that will fully integrate with the recipient’s body. With respect to the ethics of tissue engineering, one can roughly distinguish two perspectives. On the one hand, this technology is considered morally good because tissue engineering is ‘copying nature’ On the other hand, tissue engineering is considered morally dangerous because it defies nature: bodies constructed in the laboratory are seen as unnatural. In this article, we develop a phenomenological-ethical perspective on bodies and technologies, in which the notion ‘lived body’ and concrete experiences of health and illness play an important role. From that perspective, we analyse the practice of tissue engineering by focussing on one specific example: the engineering of heart valves. On the basis of this analysis, we propose that the ethics of tissue engineering should be framed not in terms of ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ but in terms of ‘good embodied life’ and ‘lived integrity

Identity struggles during resettlement : an ethnographic approach of internally displaced adolescent mothers in Bogotá

Q1Q1Madres adolescdentes en BogotáMany internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia are teenage mothers, who experience unique gendered identity struggles in the rural areas where they were born and during processes of displacement and resettlement. We chose an ethnographic approach both to collect the life stories of 20 displaced adolescent mothers who had resettled in Bogotá and to conduct eight workshops. The analysis shows that the participants struggled with their identities as ‘women’ in the rural areas in the context of violence and armed conflict when they faced motherhood while still being adolescent and becoming displaced and when they embraced the formal ‘displaced person’ identity while enduring difficulties with the receptor communities during resettlement. The new identity status as ‘displaced’ that they wished for as a basis for benefits does not imply that the identity struggles are over. Our analysis shows that the gendered struggles of adolescent IDP mothers with multiple identities that are not easily aligned are accumulating, resulting in a complex challenge during resettling.https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5016-6119Revista Internacional - Indexad

Infrastructural Work in Child Welfare: incommensurable politics in the Dutch Child Index

The Dutch Child Index is a nationwide information system (IS) designed to alert professionals about each other’s involvedness with at-risk children, enabling identification of individual at-risk children, improvement of multidisciplinary collaboration and timely interventions. In this paper, we study the infrastructural work and complexities engaged in making the collaborative system of the Child Index function in real life and in care situations. We use the information infrastructure perspective as an analytical lens and describe the infrastructural work that is performed to make the Child Index become part of actual practices. We also identify flexibility, heterogeneity and the connection to existing platforms as difficulties participants have had while performing infra- structural work. The paper makes two main contributions. First, it provides an in-depth empirical analysis of this specific collaborative and preventive infrastructure. Second, based on this empirical analysis, we argue that when developing and understanding infrastructures, it is important to identify limits to the integrative capacity and disciplining power of ISs as result of conflicting infrastructural work due to incommensurable politics. perspective as an analytical lens and describe the infrastructural work that is performed to make the Child Index become part of actual practices. We also identify flexibility, heterogeneity and the connection to existing platforms as difficulties participants have had while performing infrastructural work. The paper makes two main contributions. First, it provides an in-depth empirical analysis of this specific collaborative and preventive infrastructure. Second, based on this empirical analysis, we argue that when developing and understanding infrastructures, it is important to identify limits to the integrative capacity and disciplining power of IS’s as result of conflicting infrastructural work due to incommensurable politics

‘We just been forced to do it’ : exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

Q2Q1Background: Armed conflict in Colombia has a history of 50 years that continues to this day. According to the Victims Record of Colombia, from 1985 to 2013 2.683.335 women have been victims of the armed conflict. Women have been described as the main victims of the armed conflict, especially in the Colombian cultural context that in some regions is still considered to be a ‘machista’ and patriarchal one. In contrast, some authors have explicitly stressed Colombian women’s agency instead of positioning them only as victims. Some of them are described as ‘survivors’ of the war, emphasizing their impressive resistance to the outcomes of war and forced displacement. In contrast to the background of these scholarly discussions, our study focused on how displaced women living in Bogotá themselves articulate their experiences of agency and victimization. This paper will therefore explore how women, in reconstructing their life stories, expressed the tussles between victimization and agency. Methods: We used qualitative methods conducted within an ethnographic approach. Based on ten years of experience in the neighborhood and one year of fieldwork, we collected the life stories of twenty internally displaced mothers, and ran eight workshops with them. We analyzed the narratives with a specific focus on how women expressed victimization and agency in four important periods in their life that related to the process of displacement: when they left home, when they became pregnant, when they were forced to leave their towns, and when they arrived in Bogotá. Results: Participants’ life stories showed how they struggled with agency during their lives. They were victims of abuse and violence during childhood and finally decided to leave their homes. They decided to have their babies despite the fact that they were abandoned by their partners and families, and after doubts about and attempts to have an abortion. Throughout the process of displacement the participants had been engaged in ambiguous relationships with armed groups. Finally they arrived in Bogotá and faced adverse circumstances but were looking for better opportunities for them and their children. Conclusion: The analysis of how internally displaced women narrated their life stories showed us that the concepts that dominate scholarly debates about agency, victimization and survivorship do not do justice to the life stories of the participants in our study. These stories show that changes with a major impact were loaded with ambiguity and were characterized by helplessness, lack of control and agency simultaneously. The reconstruction of these life stories goes beyond the stereotype of displaced women as only ‘victims’, but points also to their agency and courageous decisions they made in contexts that were not controlled by them and where support was often lacking. Instead of label them, it is important to understand the complexity of the life experiences of IDW, in order to build policies that offer them aids as victims, but also build policies and intervention programs that empower them as agents in order to support them during resettlement.https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5016-6119Revista Internacional - Indexad

Combining stool and stories: exploring antimicrobial resistance among a longitudinal cohort of international health students

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health concern that requires transdisciplinary and bio-social approaches. Despite the continuous calls for a transdisciplinary understanding of this problem, there is still a lack of such studies. While microbiology generates knowledge about the biomedical nature of bacteria, social science explores various social practices related to the acquisition and spread of these bacteria. However, the two fields remain disconnected in both methodological and conceptual levels. Focusing on the acquisition of multidrug resistance genes, encoding extended-spectrum betalactamases (CTX-M) and carbapenemases (NDM-1) among a travelling population of health students, this article proposes a methodology of ‘stool and stories’ that combines methods of microbiology and sociology, thus proposing a way forward to a collaborative understanding of AMR. METHODS: A longitudinal study with 64 health students travelling to India was conducted in 2017. The study included multiple-choice questionnaires (n = 64); a collection of faecal swabs before travel (T0, n = 45), in the first week in India (T1, n = 44), the second week in India (T2, n = 41); and semi-structured interviews (n = 11). Stool samples were analysed by a targeted metagenomic approach. Data from semi-structured interviews were analysed using the method of thematic analysis. RESULTS: The incidence of ESBL- and carbapenemase resistance genes significantly increased during travel indicating it as a potential risk; for CTX-M from 11% before travel to 78% during travel and for NDM-1 from 2% before travel to 11% during travel. The data from semi-structured interviews showed that participants considered AMR mainly in relation to individual antibiotic use or its presence in a clinical environment but not to travelling. CONCLUSION: The microbiological analysis confirmed previous research showing that international human mobility is a risk factor for AMR acquisition. However, sociological methods demonstrated that travellers understand AMR primarily as a clinical problem and do not connect it to travelling. These findings indicate an important gap in understanding AMR as a bio-social problem raising a question about the potential effectiveness of biologically driven AMR stewardship programs among travellers. Further development of the ‘stool and stories’ approach is important for a transdisciplinary basis of AMR stewardship

Standardizing Slimness: How Body Weight Quantified Beauty in the Netherlands, 1870–1940

This chapter investigates the history of one of the most powerful quantitative beauty standards: weight. The chapter argues that weight is neither a natural nor a neutral standard for the beauty ideals of slimness and fatness. It is shown first how, in late nineteenth-century Netherlands, weight had not yet become a standard of beauty but was rather a bodily curiosity, measured at fairgrounds. The chapter then analyses Dutch newspaper advertisements for slimming remedies to show that, by the 1930s, weight was strongly established as a standard of beauty, scales having ceased to be a fairground attraction. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the consequences of this new standard of beauty, which complicated its character by partially separating it from the visual