Accepted Panels

My paper seeks to ethnographically unpack and analyse Arthur Kleinman’s exemplary work, Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Illness Condition. It argues that cultural symbols and idioms uncovered during interactions with patients is crucial in deciphering the experience of illness that is beyond the biomedical logic of disease and causality. The paper looks at questions of positionality and the conception of the separation of home and field considering Kleinman’s dual role as both an ethnographer and a psychiatrist. How can the spatial-temporal dynamics of the field aid in conceptually understanding the category of ‘everyday’ in the lives of patients and physicians? How can the ethnographer’s sensory experiences help in extracting illness experiences of the patients? In this backdrop, memory also plays a pertinent role as it structures and shapes patient narratives.