Prairie Voices: Process Anthropology in Family Medicine / Edition 1

by Howard F. Stein

Overview

This book is about anthropology as a jourbaney of mutual understanding of increasingly greater breadth and depth. It is about allowing oneself to be inspired by those whom one is studying, teaching, treating, or counseling; how that inspiration leads to a poem or story that is shared with them; and how that personal experience becomes the basis for a more grounded relationship, deeper self-knowledge, and ultimately the accomplishment of one's goals in applied anthropology. This approach does not negate other ways of knowing—participant observation, open-ended interviews, naturalistic observation, focus groups, or surveys—but complements and extends them and the kind of cultural data they elicit. It is about how another people's world (the North American Great Plains, in this case) comes alive to an observer, therapist, or consultant. Written by a prominent medical and psychoanalytic anthropologist, this work is a daring experiment in communication. It outlines an alternative for researchers and writers that can allow one individual to tune in to another individual across a cultural or epistemological boundary. It is a new step in the empathic process, one that affects and transforms the practitioner as deeply as the client. A must read for those in caring professions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897894296
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/30/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1140L (what's this?)

About the Author

HOWARD F. STEIN is Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. He is the author of seventeen books including Listening Deeply (1994), and The Human Cost of a Management Failure: Organizational Downsizing at General Hospital (Quorum, 1996) which he coauthored with Seth Allcorn and others.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
The Seasons of Living
Essay: Why Not Oklahoma?: A Plea in Behalf of Oklahomaness in Oklahoma Medicine
Prairie Days
Prairie Nights
Essay: Pupils
Wheat and Weeds
Scrub Oak and Cottonwood, or A Prairie's Aesthetic Social Classes
Essay: Farming in Chelm
A Place and a Time for Hope, or When to Persevere, When to Retreat
The Soul of a Prairie and the Mystery of Human Relationships
Essay: Bronc
The Sense of Place
Prairie Storms
Essay: Driving to Work
Prairie Solitariness: Leaves on the Ground, Tumbleweed in the Pasture
Prairie Seasons of Death
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Warren Lee Holleman, PhD (Baylor College of Medicine)
Description: This is a collection of poems and prose poems, stories and allegories, and reflective essays about life in the Midwest.
Purpose: The author, a family therapist and family medicine educator, attempts to convey to the reader the values, attitudes, symbols, and meanings of prairies and their people. This is a worthy objective, given the tendency of those in the healing professions to practice "generic" medicine, without regard to culture, context, or place. This book succeeds in capturing the essence of the health beliefs of the people of the prairie.
Audience: The book targets medical educators seeking guidance in teaching students to be sensitive to the cultural values of their patients. The book will also be useful to anyone practicing medicine in the Midwest, and particularly to those "foreigners" from New York or wherever who, like the author, must learn to understand and value prairie ways of viewing and doing things.
Features: The book's format is unique, a montage of creativity and rigorous analysis reflecting the author's poetic and scholarly sides, his own Jewish heritage, and his training in Freudian psychology and cultural anthropology. One missing component in the montage is the visual; although this is a book about voices, photographs and paintings of the prairie and its people would enhance the pleasure of browsing through this book.
Assessment: This book offers rich insights and enjoyable moments of reflection for those interested in understanding the influence of geography and culture on patients' attitudes about illness and health and healing. In this age in which diversity has been applied primarily to nonwhite and non-English-speaking people, the author demonstrates that the people of America's heartland are every bit as ethnically unique and deserving of cultural sensitivity training as, say, the Navajos of the American Southwest or the Montagnards of central Vietnam. My only criticisms of the book are its unattractive layout and its confusing use of an off-putting theoretical introduction to an otherwise intimate, personal narrative. Despite these shortcomings, medical school libraries and medical bookstores will want to purchase this book.

Doody's Review Service

3 Stars from Doody

This is a collection of poems and prose poems, stories and allegories, and reflective essays about life in the Midwest. The author, a family therapist and family medicine educator, attempts to convey to the reader the values, attitudes, symbols, and meanings of prairies and their people. This is a worthy objective, given the tendency of those in the healing professions to practice generic medicine, without regard to culture, context, or place. This book succeeds in capturing the essence of the health beliefs of the people of the prairie. The book targets medical educators seeking guidance in teaching students to be sensitive to the cultural values of their patients. The book will also be useful to anyone practicing medicine in the Midwest, and particularly to those foreigners from New York or wherever who, like the author, must learn to understand and value prairie ways of viewing and doing things. The book's format is unique, a montage of creativity and rigorous analysis reflecting the author's poetic and scholarly sides, his own Jewish heritage, and his training in Freudian psychology and cultural anthropology. One missing component in the montage is the visual; although this is a book about voices, photographs and paintings of the prairie and its people would enhance the pleasure of browsing through this book. This book offers rich insights and enjoyable moments of reflection for those interested in understanding the influence of geography and culture on patients' attitudes about illness and health and healing. In this age in which diversity has been applied primarily to nonwhite and non-English-speaking people, the author demonstrates that the people of America's heartland areevery bit as ethnically unique and deserving of cultural sensitivity training as, say, the Navajos of the American Southwest or the Montagnards of central Vietnam. My only criticisms of the book are its unattractive layout and its confusing use of an off-putting theoretical introduction to an otherwise intimate, personal narrative. Despite these shortcomings, medical school libraries and medical bookstores will want to purchase this book.

Warren Lee Holleman

Reprints from various scientific and popular journals 11 combinations of poems and anecdotes by medical anthropologist Stein that demonstrate how often and deeply the life of the North American prairie, and his experience of it, do not fit into the tidy theories and categories of science. He emphasizes that a sense of and reverence for place must underlie any anthropological or qualitative research. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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