Megan Wainwright m.j.wainwright@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy
Sensing the Airs: The Cultural Context for Breathing and Breathlessness in Uruguay
Wainwright, M.
Authors
Abstract
The sensory experience of breathing, particularly the sensation of breathlessness in the case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a rich though understudied topic in medical anthropology. Fieldwork in Uruguay made it clear to me that to study the sensorial experience of breathlessness, I would also have to study the widely shared cultural conceptualizations and practices surrounding air, breath, and health. In this article, I illustrate ethnographically how the experience of breathing and breathlessness is closely tied to perceptions of air outside the body – in particular humidity, temperature change, wind, and contamination. In conceptualizing breath as the mechanism and air the medium for environmental embodiment, I bring together sensorial medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, and the anthropology of wind and climate. My findings, in light of similar findings across contexts, suggest that a body transformed by COPD is hyperperceptive and hypersensitive to changes in air.
Citation
Wainwright, M. (2017). Sensing the Airs: The Cultural Context for Breathing and Breathlessness in Uruguay. Medical Anthropology, 36(4), 332-347. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2017.1287180
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Sep 28, 2016 |
Online Publication Date | Feb 7, 2017 |
Publication Date | May 19, 2017 |
Deposit Date | Feb 14, 2017 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 28, 2024 |
Journal | Medical Anthropology |
Print ISSN | 0145-9740 |
Electronic ISSN | 1545-5882 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 36 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 332-347 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2017.1287180 |
Files
Published Journal Article (Advance online version)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2017 Megan Wainwright. Published with license by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Published Journal Article (Final published version)
(1.6 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Copyright Statement
Final published version
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