Biomedicine on the spatial periphery: The (Re)production of a metaphorical landscape by rural health care practitioners in Northern California

Journal/Book: Med Anthropol Q. 1999; 13: 4350 North Fairfax Drive Suite 640, Arlington, VA 22203, USA. Amer Anthropological Assoc. 163-185.

Abstract: I examine the use of spatial concepts by rural health care practitioners in Northern California and suggest that rural and urban spatial metaphors are important means of expressing and (re)producing problems associated with their search for legitimacy and moral authority within a field of relations defined by biomedicine. I present three broad ways in which spatial metaphors are used by rural health care practitioners to continuously enact a ''metaphorical landscape.'' I situate this landscape in the context of a hierarchical field of relations within biomedicine, which is itself underpinned by a distinct urban bias and the uneven distribution of material and technological resources. I suggest that this landscape is partly the result of the rural health care practitioners' position within this field of relations and partly the result of implicit and historically situated frameworks of spatial meanings derived from capitalism. [rural health care practitioner, United States, landscape, metaphor, embodiment].

Note: Article Lockhart C, Univ Calif San Francisco, Med Anthropol Program, Box 0850, San Francisco,CA 94143 USA

Keyword(s): rural health care practitioner; United States; landscape; metaphor; embodiment; NARRATIVE REPRESENTATIONS; ILLNESS EXPERIENCE; CULTURE; BODY

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