Datum
08. April – 11. April 2025
Panel at ASA UK conference in Birmingham
Ethical frameworks, health-seeking and care-pathways in superdiverse environments
Panel for the ASA UK conference in Birmingham
8–11th April 2025
We’re aiming to bring together ethnographic insights from the field of anthropology of ethics with applied anthropology in the context of health.
Short Abstract
This panel explores ethnographically how ethics shapes health-seeking behaviours and how health services may design care pathways that accommodate diverse moral worldviews. Ethical frameworks and lived experience ‑especially in situations of precarity- shape how people navigate health services.
Long Abstract
Ethical frameworks, health-seeking and care-pathways in superdiverse environments.
To provide adequate services, health providers and civil society organisations need for their care pathways to be adapted to the reality of health-seeking practices. In turn, in superdiverse environments, advice and health-seeking differs between social groups (according to gender, income, race and ethnicity, migration status and so on). In circumstances of extreme precarity – cost of living crisis, in-poverty employment, racism and discrimination, etc.- uncertainty and lived experience play a major role (MacGregor et al 2020).
People do not behave in a predicted linear fashion solely according to their socio-demographic characteristics, but rather experience precarious life and deal with emergent and unexpected challenges and priorities of an uncertain environment (Al-Mohammad and Peluso 2012). In turn people practice moral navigation, adapting and reassessing their values, priorities and health decisions as their therapeutic itinerary unfolds, rather than following fixed pathways (White and Jha 2021).
People’s ethical frameworks – how they behave as ethical agents, morally bound to others (their peers, their families, etc.)- shape how people seek health advice and their decisions when engaging with health providers and public services (Ripoll et al 2022).
This panel is seeking ethnographic papers that contribute to the following questions:
- How do people’s moral and ethical demands shape their health-seeking practices?
- Do people face moral conundrums when deciding to make particular decisions in health care or in and how do they
- What role does uncertainty and emergence play in this moral navigation of health services?
- How do health service providers take into account people’s moral lives when assessing people’s navigation of health services?
- Can care pathways be adapted to the different moral worldviews of the people they wish to support through the health system?
This panel will aim to bring together ethnographic insights from the field of anthropology of ethics with applied anthropology in the context of health.
To propose a paper, please do so through the ASA website. https://theasa.org/conferences/asa2025/programme#15931
References
Al-Mohammad, H., & Peluso, D. (2012). Ethics and the “rough ground” of the everyday: the overlappings of life in postinvasion Iraq. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2(2), 42–58.
MacGregor, H., Ripoll, S., & Leach, M. (2020). Disease outbreaks: navigating uncertainties in preparedness and response. Taylor and Francis.
Ripoll, S., Ouvrier, A., Hrynick, T., & Schmidt-Sane, M. (2022). Vaccine Equity in Multicultural Urban Settings. A comparative analysis of local government and community action, contextualised political economies, and moral frameworks in Marseille and London
White, S. C., & Jha, S. (2021). Moral navigation and child fostering in Chiawa, Zambia. Africa, 91(2), 249–269.