Doctor-patient communication: cross-cultural studies

[Jim Wilce]

Hi Susan:

There isn't a whole lot on the "co-construction of the patient's narrative
by the doctor and patient in the medical interview", but I treat patient's
narratives, as co-constructed with practitioners in my book,

Wilce, James M. 1998. Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of
Complaint in Rural Bangladesh. New York: Oxford University Press.

Specifically, in several chapters there I explore the way that patient's
narrative "rights" are challenged by kin and practitioners in Bangladesh.
Not only are patients interrupted, but in some cases even their authorial
rights as the subject of their bodily existence are challenged.  The book
also explores the construction of patient's stories in divination, in which
the patient is silent and sometimes not even present but represented by the
"client" who is not the patient but a relative.  In these cases divination
projects different sorts of characterological and psychological attributes
onto patients, with a significant gender difference.

In chapter 11 I explore how one lament performer is constructed by her
relatives as a "psychiatric patient" on the basis of the markedness of the
style and content of her sung-wept narrative.  This did not entail simply
calling her "mad" but also forcing her to see a mullah/imam who prescribed
herbal remedies for her alleged love madness.  The status of her lament as
art vs. subversion is central to the dialogic emergence of the lament
performances and their on-the-ground critique.

Best,

Jim

Jim Wilce
      Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Asian Studies
        Northern Arizona University
        Box 15200
        Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5200

fax 520/523-9135
office ph. 520/523-2729
email jim.wilce at nau.edu
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jmw22/ (includes information on my 1998 book,
Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural
Bangladesh)
http://www.nau.edu/asian