Jerome Crowder

Experimental Ethnography Online: The asthma files

This essay describes The Asthma Files, an experimental, digital ethnography project structured to support a collaborative research process and new ways of presenting academic research. While examining ways in which asthma is understood, cared for and governed in varied settings, the project also examines how digital tools can be used to support new research practices, new ways of expressing ethnographic analyses and new ways of drawing readers to ethnographic work. The Asthma Files is an experiment in ethnography, and in science, health and environmental communication. The project responds to dramatic increases in asthma incidence in the USA and globally in recent decades, and to wide acknowledgement that new forms of asthma knowledges are needed. The project aims to advance understanding of the way asthma and other complex conditions can be productively engaged, leveraging ethnography, deep play with interdisciplinarity and deep respect for different kinds and forms of knowledges.

Living on the Edge: A Photographic Essay on Urban Aymara Migrants in El Alto, Bolivia

Like many other cities in Latin America, La Paz, Bolivia, has experienced rapid urbanizationthroughout the past two decades. Aymara-speaking migrants from theLake Titicaca region and across the Altiplano head for this capital in search of economic prosperity, and end up living in the bedroom city of El Alto, perched on the valley rim above La Paz. Once in the city, some migrants maintain strong ties with their rural origins while others disassociate themselves completely from their Aymara heritage. This photo essay explores the process of urbanization and migration among Aymara migrants in El Alto, illustrating how they maintain their rural skills in the urban context in order to survive and adapt to a new life. These photographs address issues such as transportation, employment, family, and ritual, depicting urban life on the edge of the city. Each image illustrates a facet of how Aymara migrants adapt to the urban environment by implementing known practices that they brought with them, or replacing them with newer, urban ones. The accompanying text explains each scene as well as the relationship to the subjects and the anthropological interest inherent in the images.

Ethical Issues in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research and Comparative Effectiveness Research: A Pilot Study of Community Dialogue

Community bioethics dialogues were held on the topic of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative effectiveness research (CER). Participants were 65 and older and represented either a lower income, African American group (A) or a higher income White group (B). Participants were presented with a variety of background reading and study materials. Meetings were held 2 hr per week for 6 weeks. The groups showed both independence in judgment from the investigators and diversity of opinion between the two groups. Group B addressed more topics than Group A and in some instances explored additional policy nuances. Members of Group A appeared more cognizant of issues of social justice that affect vulnerable populations and appeared leery of approaches that suggested possible disrespect for their own personal experiences. Future plans call for both repeating the dialogue with additional, diverse community groups and repeating community bioethics dialogues on new topics with the same groups.

Aymara Migrants in El Alto, Bolivia: A Photographic Essay

Since the early 1990s, I have conducted fieldwork in the Bolivian city of El Alto, investigating the effects of urbanization on Aymara migrants who move from the countryside (campo) to the capital in search of employment, education, and a better life. El Alto is perched above La Paz, spreading out across the high plain (Altiplano) and increasing in size by nearly 10% each year. Although neighborhoods (barrios) in El Alto are often defined by geographic boundaries and population density, I argue that the concept of community is based upon trust (confianza). In El Alto, ones lineage eclipses heritage, as residents are more apt to define their “community” as those they trust rather than those who live near them or friends from the campo. For two years, I lived with Alvaro and his extended family at the periphery of El Alto, in the barrio of Huayna Potosi. Over time, he introduced me to other migrants, such as Teofilo, Pablo, and Marcelo, and their families, each of whom originated from different provinces near Lake Titicaca. In essence, migrants have similar bucolic backgrounds and skills which they implement in the city in order to survive, heightening competition for employment and suspicion between neighbors.

Visualizing Tensions in an Ethnographic Moment: Images and Intersubjectivity

ABSTRACT Images function as sources of data and influence our thinking about fieldwork, representation, and intersubjectivity. In this article, I show how both the ethnographic relationships and the working method of photography lead to a more nuanced understanding of a healing event. I systematically analyze 33 photographs made over a 15-minute period during the preparation and application of a poultice (topical cure) in a rural Andean home. The images chronicle the event, revealing my initial reaction and the decisions I made when tripping the shutter. By unpacking the relationship between ethnographer and subject, I reveal the constant negotiation of positions, assumptions, and expectations that make up intersubjectivity. For transparency, I provide thumbnails of all images, including metadata, so that readers may consider alternative interpretations of the images and event. Video abstract Read the transcript Watch the video on Vimeo

Dissecting Images: Multimodal Medical Anthropology

When Foucault spiraled into the historical depths of the rise of the modern clinic and the doubleedged sword of biopower, he foregrounded the primacy of the medical gaze (Foucault 1973). With each successive advance in the technologies of visual and auditory perception came dominance over and subjugation of the body and its diseases, the biopower complex began. First, advancing technologies of auscultation then visualization permitted an increased penetration into the body; feeling and hearing from without, then seeing organs, then cells, and then the tiniest of microprocesses that power the cells. Along with the increased capacity to perceive came the capacity to name, to classify, to manipulate, and ultimately to control and to cure. That process of striving to visualize, understand, and control continues. Taking inspiration from this trajectory of Foucault’s conception of the gaze, the authors in this special issue dissect images, their content, the processes that created them, and their ability to display, distort, and preserve minute slices of our lived moments. Images, both moving and still, used in these articles bring with them insights into the multimodal environment where we live and work (Collins, Durrington, and Gill 2017). They show how we interact with other people and objects in our environment, they include information on the places and spaces where research took place, and they preserve metadata that demonstrate the timing of events and of the interactions of the researchers. We emphasize the trust, timing, and tempo of the processes that surround making meaning of the images both by participants and researchers. By engaging these images as data, as actors themselves, we can tweak our theoretical notions about how they play an expanded role in the work of medical anthropology. Central to our theme of considering images (and more broadly multimodality) for use in medical anthropology is our recognition that images (and other modes) are representations of the world filtered by the positionalities of the makers themselves, influenced by unique experiences that brought them to that point in time. Their conscious effort to use a camera to capture something of interest reflects their intent, or motivation, to do more than simply document and describe for an audience. Images become an extension of a way of thinking, visually connecting maker with participant along lines of thought. In this special issue, we share six examples of how images inform and enhance our approaches to the body and its well-being, encouraging logophiles to consider making images in a multimodal sense for more than illustration in film or print production. Rather, we encourage people to include the dynamic process of the production of knowledge, in which researcher, participant, and audience are each present and contribute to the work.

File Naming in Digital Media Research: Examples from the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof ) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs.