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Title:	Healing in the Hospital: the Caring Sensorium and the Containment of Yanomami Bodies
Authors:	Martin, Johanna Gonçalves
Affilliation:	University of Cambridge. Department of Archaeology and Anthropology. Cambridge, U.K
Abstract:	This paper addresses the question of care in a hospital environment. Focusing on Yanomami people at a hospital in Venezuela, I show how Yanomami practices of re-making the body and restoring health are challenged by the material practices and sensorial qualities of the hospital. Being ill for the Yanomami is an uncontrolled bodily transformation, resulting from improper interactions with other beings. I examine the relation between different components of the Yanomami body, and focus especially on the reconstitution of the body envelope or skin as a fundamental aspect of healing. This reconstitution is accomplished through body techniques that notably involve the senses and which foreground the importance of containment. I argue that the hospital operates as another containing layer among a multiplicity of forms and practices of boundary-making in the healing of bodies. But for the Yanomami, this hospital-container is inappropriate for healing, in the sense that prescribed food is lacking, scents are disturbing, temperatures are either too cold or too hot, relatives and shamans are too far away. I show the significance of recursive practices and the materiality of containment in the processual making of Amazonian bodies, and end with a reflection on the articulation of different projects of healing in the hospital
Keywords:	Yanomami
DeCS:	Venezuela Saúde de Populações Indígenas Índios Sul-Americanos Antropologia da Saúde
Issue Date:	2015
Publisher:	Sociedade para a Antropologia das Terras Baixas da América do Sul
Citation:	GONÇALVES Martin, Johanna. Healing in the Hospital: the Caring Sensorium and the Containment of Yanomami Bodies. Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, v. 13, n. 2, artigo 9, p. 120-136, 2015
Copyright:	open access
Appears in Collections:	ASMT - Artigos de Periódicos

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