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Miller-Fellows.ETD.Final.pdf (3.01 MB)

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Making Medicine Amish

Miller-Fellows, Sarah
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0203-4365
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1548435040090677

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Anthropology.
Amish communities have a unique distribution of genetic disorders due to founder effect and endogamy. The aim of this research was to examine how Amish communities have responded to the presence of many rare inherited diseases. This research specifically focused on the role of genetic medicine clinics in Amish communities and how the presence of genetic diseases has shaped Amish reproduction. Through a 2-year ethnographic study, including 61 interviews, participant observation and text analysis, I explored a variety of Amish responses to genetic disorders and disability. I found that Amish communities largely accept those with disabilities as part of the fabric of God’s creation, using the emic category of special children to describe the particular role those with intellectual disabilities play in their communities. Amish communities have developed diverse social, financial, educational, vocational and medical support systems for those with disabilities. One such medical support is clinics for inherited disorders and other complex medical needs. These clinics hybridize biomedicine with Amish culture, emphasizing relationships, low cost care, Amish aesthetics and aiming to treat and manage disorders rather than prevent the births of those with disorders. Amish people’s widespread acceptance of disability has led women to use postnatal genetic testing through clinics rather than prenatal genetic testing. I argue that clinics and the practice of medicine within them provides a key example for how biomedicine becomes hybrid through its encounter with other cultures, forming in this case, a distinctly Amish medicine. This study expands previous anthropological literature by examining how hybridity can emerge as a response to issues of cultural competence and how cultural perspectives on disability can reshape medical practice.
Vanessa Hildebrand (Committee Chair)
Lawrence Greksa (Committee Member)
Jill Korbin (Committee Member)
Marsha Michie (Committee Member)
323 p.
Cultural Anthropology
Amish, genetic medicine, medical anthropology, biomedicine, Anabaptist, reproduction

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Miller-Fellows, S. (2019). Making Medicine Amish [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1548435040090677

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Miller-Fellows, Sarah. Making Medicine Amish. 2019. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1548435040090677.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Miller-Fellows, Sarah. "Making Medicine Amish." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1548435040090677

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1548435040090677
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© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.