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The analysis presented in this paper is part of a larger study, the aim of which is to describe the GPs’ everyday taken-for-granted working life. The study is based on multi-sited anthropological fieldwork in Danish general practices. This paper analyses consultations where children are vaccinated and the analysis shows the way these consultations differ from other consultations in relation to flow and communication. Neither parents nor doctors question the value of the vaccination, but the manner in which they talk about it and handle it in the flow of the consultation points to them experiencing it as being problematic. Taking inspiration from Mary Douglas’ theory on cultural classification the injection is interpreted as ‘matter out of place’. The analysis identifies the infliction of pain and the discomfort this brings to the doctor and the parent as problematic as well as a breach of the doctor–patient relationship. The aim of vaccination is to prevent potential diseases in the future, but its function in the consultation, besides being fulfilment of national guidelines, is not immediately apparent. It has no real function in the consultation and this makes it problematic in the present, causing the ambiguity that both doctors and parents express. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global HIV epidemic confronts pregnant women with hard reproductive choices. This paper offers a theoretically innovative and ethnographically sensitive exploration of the social processes through which 20 HIV positive women living in Northern Vietnam decide whether to continue or terminate their pregnancies. Arguing that human agency must be seen as an outcome of intersubjective engagements in shared social worlds, this paper explores how these women came to the decisions that they had to make and shows that women's choices were configured through everyday social relations, shaped through intimate engagements with husbands, parents, siblings, and in-laws. Based on the findings, it is recommended that pregnancy counseling is offered not only to the woman herself, but also, if she desires, involves members of her extended family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative ethnography of the therapeutic practices at two different spa locations: Caldas da Imperatriz, SC, Brazil, and Termas da Sulfurea in Cabeco de Vide, Portugal. The comparison reveals the existence of contrasting 'explanatory models' held by the spa-goers as well as by the official medical systems. In the Portuguese context this model is highly medicalized; in the Brazilian case, spa treatments are viewed as 'alternative' or 'complementary' therapy and are also related to religious philosophies. Each model corresponds to a different idiom expressing certain experiences and world views, one focusing on 'pains' (dores) and the other on 'energy' (energia), the former leading to the rationale of 'curing', the latter to the notion of 'energizing'. In this paper the author intends to analyze and contrast the categories found in these models, which originate from different conceptions of health, illness and healing for Brazilian and Portuguese spa-goers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author explores notions of illness and health among a particular group of spirit mediums in Havana: the Sociedad de Estudios Psicologicos Amor y Caridad Universal. For its members and leaders, the development of mediumship is not just therapeutic but prophylactic. And traumas (of spirits and persons) must not simply be acknowledged but metabolised through the execution of good mediumship. More importantly, people's existences are chemically and psychologically entangled with those of their protective spirits, making of their 'selves' systems, rather than bounded essences. The author argues that such concepts of personhood offer alternative modes of understanding the self in relation to forms of otherness, including dysfunction and pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]