Abstract
Examining the mechanisms of medical knowledge transfer, this article addresses the ways nonvisual senses are employed within medical training, asking about the role of sound, touch, and movement in transmitting knowledge of the body. Based on a 10-month ethnography in a medical massage training course for blind students, the article examines the ways sensory medical knowledge is transferred in this setting. I discuss the multisensory characteristics of medical knowledge transfer, and the dual process inherent in this sensory pedagogy, in which senses such as touch and hearing undergo medicalization and scientification, while medicine enters the realm of the sensorial. Contributing to emerging research of nonvisual senses in medical training, this case study allows rethinking larger processes of medical knowing, challenging the dominancy of vision as the means of scientific knowledge transmission, and exposing the multisensorial elements of medical perception, and learning in general.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 138-154 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Medical Anthropology Quarterly |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgments. This article is based on research made possible by fellowships received from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including the Dean’s Fellowship for Excellence in the Faculty of Social Science, The Shaine Centre for Research in Social Sciences, The Levi Eshkol Economic and Political Research in Israel, and Lafer Center for Women and Gender Studies. It was also funded by a NA‘AMAT Movement of Working Women & Volunteers’ research grant, and the United States—Israel Educational Foundation’s Fulbright Doctoral Student Grant. I am grateful to Tamar El Or, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Marcy Brink-Danan, Georgina Kleege, Catherine Kudlick, Hodel Ophir, Ben Belek, Nadeem Karabi, and Limor Meoded-Danon for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, to Janet Christensen and Colin Ong-Dean for their skilled and thoughtful editorial help, and to MAQ’s editors and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and the constructive, detailed scrutiny the paper received. I am also grateful to the participants, instructors, and administrators of the medical massage course I observed, who not only expanded my medical horizons but also taught me practical lessons about the complicated relations between senses and knowledge.
Funding Information:
This article is based on research made possible by fellowships received from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including the Dean's Fellowship for Excellence in the Faculty of Social Science, The Shaine Centre for Research in Social Sciences, The Levi Eshkol Economic and Political Research in Israel, and Lafer Center for Women and Gender Studies. It was also funded by a NA?AMAT Movement of Working Women & Volunteers? research grant, and the United States?Israel Educational Foundation's Fulbright Doctoral Student Grant. I am grateful to Tamar El Or, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Marcy Brink-Danan, Georgina Kleege, Catherine Kudlick, Hodel Ophir, Ben Belek, Nadeem Karabi, and Limor Meoded-Danon for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, to Janet Christensen and Colin Ong-Dean for their skilled and thoughtful editorial help, and to MAQ's editors and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and the constructive, detailed scrutiny the paper received. I am also grateful to the participants, instructors, and administrators of the medical massage course I observed, who not only expanded my medical horizons but also taught me practical lessons about the complicated relations between senses and knowledge.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the American Anthropological Association
Keywords
- blindness
- embodied knowledge
- medical training
- senses
- tactility