TY - JOUR
T1 - Idioms of resilience among cancer patients in urban South Africa
T2 - An anthropological heuristic for the study of culture and resilience
AU - Wooyoung Kim, Andrew
AU - Kaiser, Bonnie
AU - Bosire, Edna
AU - Shahbazian, Katelyn
AU - Mendenhall, Emily
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: AWK is supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a Graduate Student Dissertation Research Award from the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University. BNK was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health (F32MH113288). This research was funded by grants awarded to EM from the School of Foreign Service Summer Academic Grant and Provost’s Pilot Research Project Grant at Georgetown University. Other funding came from the Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Funding Information:
This research study benefited from the mutual commitment and collaboration of nearly 10 research staff, multiple projects, and three universities. We are indebted to all who collaborated on this project, helping each other in social, emotional, and material ways that were beneficial not only to understanding the project but also to making sure our interlocutors were safe, fed, and carried safely from their homes to the DPHRU research station. The research project would have been impossible without the interest of our participants, who shared their life stories preceding cancer diagnosis and, right in the thick of treatment, gave life to this project; without their generous offering of time, our project would have failed. In particular, thank you to our team members who conducted interviews for this project, including Phindile Mathe, Brooke Bocast, Nontlantla Mkwanazi, Victor Shandukani, and Thandi Ma Sbong. Also, thank you to Maureen Joffe and Herbert Cubasch, who lead the South African Breast Cancer Study, for your immense support in coordinating this project. Finally, this project would never have succeeded without the support of Shane Norris and his team at the Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand who were very much involved in the conception and completion of this study. Special thanks go to Prisha Pillay and Sonja Louw for navigating the complicated financial logistics. Finally, we are grateful for the critiques not only from four anonymous reviewers but also from D?rte Bemme and Laurence Kirmayer?their extensive comments and thoughtful editing were immensely appreciated.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - Despite the large body of research on idioms of distress in anthropology and transcultural psychiatry, few scholars have examined the concepts that people use to describe social and psychological resilience. The experience of social and psychological resilience is embedded in and shaped by social, political, and economic contexts—much like the factors that shape idioms of distress. As resilience literature more broadly has adopted a socio-ecological rather than trait-based approach, anthropology has much to contribute. This article investigates what idioms of resilience and cultural scripts emerge among low-income patients with cancer residing in Soweto, a peri-urban neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. We conducted 80 life history interviews to better understand what social and psychological factors led some people to thrive more than others despite extraordinary adversity. We describe one idiom of resilience, acceptance (ukwamukela in isiZulu), and three broader themes of resilience that emerged from life history narrative interviews (social support, religious support, and receiving medical care). We also present two examples from study participants that weave these concepts together. Our findings suggest that rarely is one form of resilience experienced in isolation. A focus on idioms of resilience can help chart the complex dimensions of acceptance and the dynamic social, religious, political, and temporal factors that mediate both suffering and resilience within individuals and communities.
AB - Despite the large body of research on idioms of distress in anthropology and transcultural psychiatry, few scholars have examined the concepts that people use to describe social and psychological resilience. The experience of social and psychological resilience is embedded in and shaped by social, political, and economic contexts—much like the factors that shape idioms of distress. As resilience literature more broadly has adopted a socio-ecological rather than trait-based approach, anthropology has much to contribute. This article investigates what idioms of resilience and cultural scripts emerge among low-income patients with cancer residing in Soweto, a peri-urban neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. We conducted 80 life history interviews to better understand what social and psychological factors led some people to thrive more than others despite extraordinary adversity. We describe one idiom of resilience, acceptance (ukwamukela in isiZulu), and three broader themes of resilience that emerged from life history narrative interviews (social support, religious support, and receiving medical care). We also present two examples from study participants that weave these concepts together. Our findings suggest that rarely is one form of resilience experienced in isolation. A focus on idioms of resilience can help chart the complex dimensions of acceptance and the dynamic social, religious, political, and temporal factors that mediate both suffering and resilience within individuals and communities.
KW - South Africa
KW - acceptance
KW - cancer
KW - idioms of distress
KW - idioms of resilience
KW - resilience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059690712&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1363461519858798
DO - 10.1177/1363461519858798
M3 - Article
C2 - 31299876
AN - SCOPUS:85059690712
SN - 1363-4615
VL - 56
SP - 720
EP - 747
JO - Transcultural Psychiatry
JF - Transcultural Psychiatry
IS - 4
ER -
