Abstract
Alexandra Ryborg Jønsson: The Unhealthy. Anthropological Encounters with Priorities and Health Perceptions of Older People Living with Multimorbidity Based on ethnographic research among the chronically ill elderly in Lolland, the article demonstrates how "health" as a morally weighted concept is reproduced by the field worker. Recognition of such positionality emerges gradually throughout the author's fieldwork, and the article shows how increasing critical awareness is reflected in the fieldwork itself. It is argued that medical anthropological studies require constant reflection on how the fieldworker produces empirical objects. Owing to this, the perspective termed "empathic research" is introduced; "empathic" refers to the anthropologist's responsibility to make practices, experiences and narratives understood within the specific local context. The analysis stresses the need for anthropologists to remain critical towards positioning and normative groundings within the research project and seek for knowledge on how individuals are embedded within a society set in a contextual frame of time and politics. Following this, a focus towards social inequality in health must become a commitment to engage in the world as anthropologists. The discussion establishes grounds for an empathetic way of collecting knowledge that entails an epistemological focus on situational existence.
| Original language | Danish |
|---|---|
| Journal | Tidsskriftet Antropologi |
| Volume | 77 |
| Pages (from-to) | 25-45 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| ISSN | 0906-3021 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2018 |