In a Medical Humanities blog (published on May 23rd, 2023), Susanne Lundin shows how ethnology as a humanistic discipline can contribute to understanding cultural impacts of medical research.
Susanne writes: “For ethnologists, everyday life becomes a keyhole into how cultural norms are activated in people’s lives, allowing us to see what is considered normal and thus obvious and invisible. Ethnology’s insights reveal the unspoken rules that determine daily routines in homes or workplaces; or, in a medical humanities context, how the digital delivery of medical care creates particular behavioural patterns. For instance, today’s patients have become more like customers. Ethnology examines how such phenomena are rooted in complex historical and cultural patterns”.
The blog is the first section of a 2-part series and discusses the questions ethnologists ask to address medical issues. The second section will be focused on how ethnologists address those questions reflexively.