Hospital Domestics

Care Work in a Kenyan Hospital

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12497178
AutoresH Brown (0000-0003-2210-9624, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen15
Número1
Páginas18-30
Fecha de publicación2011-12-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSpace and Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1206-3312 • E-ISSN: 1552-8308
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1206331211426056
OpenAlexW2126009116
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas27
Referencias citadas31

In Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, it is common for caregivers to live alongside patients who are admitted to hospital. Ethnographic material from the wards of a district hospital in western Kenya shows that in this context proper care for patients required the mobilization of the extended family and the care and attention of hospital staff. Caring practices created biomedical and domestic ward spaces, with patients the objects of two divergent models of care, which the author calls “familial” and “biomedical,” aligned to these spaces. Caregivers and hospital staff emphasized the boundary between these models of care to comment on and (re)produce concepts of responsibility and obligation to others and to legitimate restrictions that they placed on the care they gave. The author argues that it is helpful to think about this hospital as an institutional space produced through a composite of mobile spatial practices, including both biomedical and domestic practice

Context (archaeology · Ethnography · Geography · Health care · Hospital care · Obligation · Political science · Sociology · Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues · Anthropology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Medicine · Migration, Identity, and Health · Nursing