Institutionalising Fever Epidemics and Fever Care in Contemporary Kerala
During the mid-1990s, the south Indian state of Kerala witnessed a wave of ‘fever epidemics’, to for which fever clinics were established in an attempt to combat them. This chapter demonstrates how fever was framed as an epidemic and became institutionali
- PDF / 195,071 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 173 Views
Institutionalising Fever Epidemics and Fever Care in Contemporary Kerala
Abstract During the mid-1990s, the south Indian state of Kerala witnessed a wave of ‘fever epidemics’, to for which fever clinics were established in an attempt to combat them. This chapter demonstrates how fever was framed as an epidemic and became institutionalised as a disease, and then examines the context of establishing fever clinics as a cure. A detailed ethnography of these fever clinics demonstrates how the institutionalisation of disease and cure happens through practice within the microcosm of a clinic. It is argued that the institutionalisation of fever as a disease happened through two acts: first, through the discourse on fevers produced at the societal level by interactions among the health professionals, the media, organisations representing various systems of medicine, and the people; second, in the course of rendering fever care at the fever clinic, which involved diagnosis and treatment. This chapter maintains that the institutionalisation of disease and cure happens in accordance with the dominant system of medicine. However, the processes at the fever clinic demonstrate that fever care is not necessarily based on a theoretical understanding of physiology and pathology as claimed by the allopathic medical fraternity—rather, it is a process of confronting disease by skilled trial and error. The chapter concludes by cautioning against the power of institutionalisation that not only generates a threat about fevers but also limits alternatives for tackling them.
Keywords Discourse analysis Fever epidemics Fever Institutionalizing fever Plural systems Multi-site ethnography
3.1
clinics
Fevers as Discourse
Fever is conceptualised as an illness that acquires meaning depending on the actors and the context involved, and whose meaning will be interpreted based on the discourse in which it is embedded. This chapter examines fevers as understood by
Portions of this chapter are also to be found in Contribution to Indian Sociology 2011, 45(3), 373–397. © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 M. George, Institutionalizing Illness Narratives, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1905-0_3
49
50
3 Institutionalising Fever Epidemics and Fever Care …
the medical fraternity, laymen, public health experts, the media, and so on, in order to situate their understanding in their respective contexts. The everyday activities of individuals produce certain notions about fever that, in turn, can also determine everyday actions regarding the distress associated with fever along with relevant government policies. Thus, fever is understood as a discourse within Kerala society where the very notion of fever among various social groups has to be historically and culturally situated within the prevalent societal discourse on health, illness, and medicine. For instance, fever for the medical fraternity could be largely influenced by the prevalent discourse on medicine, in which fever may be treated as a symptom marked by a physiological
Data Loading...
