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ETD Abstract Container

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The Embodied Storyteller: Emerging Amidst Tensions of Body, Culture, and Medicine

Vargo, Sarah Louise
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060509

Abstract Details

2005, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Comparative Studies.
We are all embodied storytellers, to some extent. This thesis examines the tensions that Americans face as we are embedded in a cultural matrix that includes both allopathic medicine and Complementary and Alternative medicine modalities. There is a network of tensions that help to form identities—culture/nature, individuality/communality, past/present, biomedicine/CAM modalities, as well as how certain interpretations of these tensions define us respectively. What kinds of stories do our bodies tell us about how we make sense of our world? Our bodies are formed by culture and, additionally, form culture. We are inscribed with what our culture tells us is desirable and undesirable. Our bodies tell us stories that help us to make sense of our location(s) within a cultural matrix—both consciously and unconsciously. The Embodied Storyteller is written in an auto-ethnographic or self-reflexive voice. The reason for this particular utilization of voice is to illustrate more effectively some of the tensions that play out within the intellectual world with regard to scientific method, ethnographic objectivity, and folklore's position in the Humanities. The project more from a discussion of theory and methodology into discussions about manifestations of the “medical body,” as well as the “emotional body” as well as how these particular bodies are located within postmodern, American culture. Concurrent with exploring the body as it is found in various medical cultures is a conversation about how these different understandings of the body might help to fill in certain voids that exist in the medical fields, both biomedicine and Complementary/Alternative medicine. For example, CAM modalities offer biomedicine a means of looking at the body holistically— emotion and viscerality; as biomedicine offers CAM a means to comprehend emotional releases in a context formulated by Rita Charon, M.D., that is narrative medicine. Interviews with CAM practitioners and a review of the practice of narrative medicine help to elucidate what can be accomplished by establishing a conversation between the two fields. Thus the conversation may begin with a discussion of tensions, but hopefully will conclude itself with some understanding of what one can offer to the other. Therefore the problem will no longer remain one of “versus,” but will become a relationship of permeability and conversation. Patients utilize both methods of medicine for different purposes, and much of this is market-driven as patients operate as consumers in this postmodern culture. These patients—and their buying power—may act as a conduit to inspire future transformations in medical fields.
Sabra J. Webber (Advisor)
Joseph Donnermeyer (Committee Member)
Nancy Jesser (Committee Member)
114 p.
Comparative

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Vargo, S. L. (2005). The Embodied Storyteller: Emerging Amidst Tensions of Body, Culture, and Medicine [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060509

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Vargo, Sarah. The Embodied Storyteller: Emerging Amidst Tensions of Body, Culture, and Medicine. 2005. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060509.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Vargo, Sarah. "The Embodied Storyteller: Emerging Amidst Tensions of Body, Culture, and Medicine." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060509

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1392060509
175
© 2005, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.