CFP for AAA 2014 session on Medical Interpreting

[Michael Nathan]

Dear Linguistic Anthropology and Medical Anthropology list members:   
 
We are inviting papers for a panel at the 113th annual AAA meetings in Washington DC, December 3-7 2014.  We are reaching out to member of the Linguistic and Medical Anthropology community.  We are particularly interested in papers addressing issues surrounding interlinguistic medical interpreting in the live medical encounter, but welcome related submissions as well.  We had a well attended session last year, and hope to build on our core themes, including attention to cultural factors, power dynamics in institutional relationships, inter-subjectivity, and the co-construction of meaning in interpreted clinical encounters. 

Our abbreviated preliminary session abstract is noted below.  
 
Thanks for your interest!  
 
Michael Nathan, MD              mnathan1 at partners.org

Lissie Wahl-Kleiser, PhD        Elizabeth_Wahl at hms.harvard.edu

Seth Hannah, PhD                  seth_hannah at HMS.HARVARD.EDU
 
Harvard University and Harvard Medical School.  
 
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Producing Intercultural Discourse in the Clinical Encounter
 
Clinical encounters between providers and patients or clients involve a wealth of meaning, communication practices, understandings and misunderstandings.  Intercultural encounters in these settings add multiple layers of complexity, with increased potential for miscommunication and interpretation by both provider and patient.  Contemporary practice between linguistically discordant practitioners and patients conventionally requires bilingual third party presence in the encounter by phone, video, or in person.  These engagements may be required by law or institutional policy.  
            In spite of the promotion, regulation, training, and certification engaged in these processes, the encounters themselves remain understudied an under-problematized.  There is a lack of anthropologic critique of interpreter issues in their social, political, and ethical domains.    
            This panel will present papers looking critically at the production of such encounters, both at the institutional and personal encounter levels.