 Desperately seeking "normal": the promise and perils of living with kidney transplantationMegan Crowley-Matoka Social Science & Medicine, 2005, vol. 61, issue 4, 821-831 Abstract: Organ transplantation offers a dramatic example of the promises for health held out by biomedicine--and thus, a productive vantage point from which to interrogate those promises. Drawing on ethnographic research on kidney transplantation in Guadalajara, Mexico, this article examines the version of "health" offered to patients through transplantation. The paper explores patients' transplant trajectories as they move from learning to desire a transplant to actually receiving one and living with it over the long term, all within particular structuring sociocultural and political economic conditions. The article analyzes how transplanted patients are forced to come to terms with the contingent states of "health" and "normality" wrought by transplantation as they carve out an existence in the persistently liminal spaces between the roles of "sick" and "healthy," dependent patient and fully contributing family member. Keywords: Transplantation; Mexico; Liminality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:4:p:821-831 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.