The Sasaks of Lombok, in the mid 1990s, had among the poorest health statistics in all of Indonesia. I conducted 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork from 1993-1995, living in a rural hamlet among people who eeked out a living on the southern slopes of the active volcano, Gunung Rinjani. My concerns are in understanding how Sasak people coped with the fragility of their lives through reliance on a complex ethnomedical tradition in a pluralistic medical setting, and in showing how they did so with a courage, agency, and resourcefulness that are deserving of our deep respect.
The ethnography Remembering to Live (2001, 2004) explores how Sasak peasants cope with the fragility of their lives in rural Lombok. This research was funded by an NSF dissertation research award, with supplementary funding from the Southeast Asian Council and the Association for Women in Science.
While in the field, 3 mothers died during childbirth and I was a helpless witness to 2 of them. Maternal mortality is rarely documented with first hand ethnographic accounts, so this was the first publication of my Lombok research (in Medical Anthropology, 1999). An updated piece on maternal mortality in Indonesia, written specifically for a medical and policy audience and with excerpts from the original Medical Anthropology article, is forthcoming in a collection by David Schwartz on Maternal Mortality.
A follow-up piece on midwives and their roles mediating life and death in this Islamic society was published in an edited volume in 2005.
While in the field, 3 mothers died during childbirth and I was a helpless witness to 2 of them. Maternal mortality is rarely documented with first hand ethnographic accounts, so this was the first publication of my Lombok research (in Medical Anthropology, 1999). An updated piece on maternal mortality in Indonesia, written specifically for a medical and policy audience and with excerpts from the original Medical Anthropology article, is forthcoming in a collection by David Schwartz on Maternal Mortality.
A follow-up piece on midwives and their roles mediating life and death in this Islamic society was published in an edited volume in 2005.
I have published two articles examining the Sasak healing practices in light of what we know of processes of memory from neuroscience and psychology. In the first piece, published in the anthropological journal Ethos (2009), I show that Sasak reliance on memorized formulae for healing necessitates moderate levels of anxiety in the face of illness, and argue that the presented biocultural analysis leads to a richer understanding of Sasak healing practice than cultural analysis alone.
The second manuscript compares the memory systems of Sasak healers with those of American physicians, drawing on neuroscience to explain how these different cultural worlds with different ideologies about what constitutes medical knowledge make use of neural flexibility to augment some memory systems as opposed to others.
The heart of anthropological research, unlike most other scientific research, is that we are deeply involved in the lives of the people with whom we work. We simultaneously participate and observe, so that we can understand people -- individuals -- in the complex and dynamic contexts of their everyday lives and personal histories in which things matter, and matter deeply (borrowing here ideas from both Arthur Kleinman and Unni Wikan).
This ethnographic methodology allows us insight into people's worlds in ways surveys or observations along could not, but also, in living in other people's worlds, sometimes we make mistakes. When we do, we can use those embarrassing instances too for insight into other people's worlds. One such instance is the topic of my chapter in Being There, in which I relive how a poorly thought through question threatened to unravel my entire fieldwork.
This ethnographic methodology allows us insight into people's worlds in ways surveys or observations along could not, but also, in living in other people's worlds, sometimes we make mistakes. When we do, we can use those embarrassing instances too for insight into other people's worlds. One such instance is the topic of my chapter in Being There, in which I relive how a poorly thought through question threatened to unravel my entire fieldwork.
