Jennie Gamlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 132627 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jennie Gamlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jennie |
| FAMILY NAME | Gamlin |
| SIGNATURE | GAMLIN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1213-3380 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Facing a double burden of inequity
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted Indigenous populations worldwide, extending far beyond the biomedical outcomes of disease and mortality. This study explores the experiences of a Quechua-speaking Indigenous community on Amantaní Island, Peru, through a critical medical anthropology lens. Employing a participatory approach, we engaged with community members to explore the multifaceted impacts of COVID-19 on their health and wellbeing. Loc…
Identifying Indigenous strengths for health and wellbeing
The Spectacular Generic
The messy coloniality of gender and development in Indigenous Wixárika communities
Understanding the coloniality of gendered lives, family dynamics, social arrangements, and political structures in Indigenous communities begins with confronting and interrogating a history written largely by and for men in positions of power. The archives are limited in terms of what can be gleaned about gender equality and what existed before the proliferation of European patriarchy. Indigenous Wixárika people tread a delicate balance between a…
Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene
Introduction to the special issue 'Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene', guest edited by Jennie Gamlin, Laura Montesi, Sahra Gibbon, Paola Sesia, Jean Segata, and Ceres Victora
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism
By understanding a community's medical system, we are able to see its body ontology and how the people within it live in relation to the world, a historically constructed ideological position. Modernisation and development have restructured Indigenous communities and devalued traditional ontologies, including medical systems. This is a global pattern, where historical power relationships defined the coloniality of being and from this, organised h…
Coloniality and the political economy of gender
The manner in which urban locations are drawn into the global economy defines their spatial organisation, distribution and utilisation. The relationships that are generated by this process include economic exchanges, racialised dynamics between workers and owners, gendered divisions of labour and the use and abuse of natural resources and infrastructure. These encounters of globalisation are often unequal or awkward and mediated by varying forms …
Centring a critical medical anthropology of Covid-19 in global health discourse
The disciplines of biomedicine and global health have been at the epicentre of understanding and finding solutions to the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are thankful for the record-breaking speed of vaccine development, the meticulousness with which the virus is being tracked in order to identify and respond to new variants, developments in hospital care practices and treatments that have contributed to bringing down the case fatality rate and to …
“You see, we women, we can't talk, we can't have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
How women make decisions about care-seeking during pregnancy and childbirth, is a key determinant of maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes. Indigenous communities continue to display the highest levels of maternal and infant mortality in Mexico, a fact often accounted for by reference to inadequate access to quality services. A growing body of research has identified gender inequality as a major determinant of MCH, although this has rarely bee…
Critical Medical Anthropology
Critical Medical Anthropology presents inspiring work from scholars doing and engaging with ethnographic research in or from Latin America, addressing themes that are central to contemporary Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). This includes issues of inequality, embodiment of history, indigeneity, non-communicable diseases, gendered violence, migration, substance abuse, reproductive politics and judicialisation, as these relate to health
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities
Mexico's indigenous communities continue to experience higher levels of mortality and poorer access to health care services than non-indigenous regions, a pattern that is repeated across the globe. We conducted a two-year ethnographic study of pregnancies and childbirth in an indigenous Wixárika community to explore the structural causes of this excess mortality. In the process we also identified major differences between official infant mortalit…
Masculinities on the Continuum of Structural Violence
Through the theoretical lens of a "violence continuum" we explore how, in many of the most marginalized areas of Mexico, global and regional historical and contemporary structures have shaped and constrained men's ability to achieve the hegemonic masculinity of neoliberal Mexico. An analysis of statistics and local research studies on male homicide is used to understand how impoverishment and extreme inequality can undermine men's capacity to acc…
Blurring the Boundaries of Public Health
Unsafe sex is now the biggest risk factor for the death of young women globally and the second biggest for young men. Alongside this, pornography, which rarely shows safer sex, is one of the key channels for sex education globally. Higher quality research needs to explore the positive and negative impact of porn while the sex education world needs to engage with it to ensure that viewing porn can promote safe sex choices and consent, as well as p…
Huichol Migrant Laborers and Pesticides
Every year, around two thousand Huichol families migrate from their homelands in the highlands of northwestern Mexico to the coastal region of Nayarit State, where they are employed on small plantations to pick and thread tobacco leaves. During their four-month stay, they live, work, eat, and sleep in the open air next to the tobacco fields, exposing themselves to an unknown cocktail of pesticides all day, every day. In this article, I describe h…
Pregnancy and birth in an indigenous Huichol community
Mexico's indigenous regions are characterised by socio-economic marginalisation and poor health outcomes and the Maternal Mortality Rate in indigenous communities continues to be around six times higher than the national rate. Using as a case study the Huichol community of North-Western Mexico we will discuss how institutional health and welfare programmes which aim to address accepted risk factors for maternal health are undermined by a series o…
Is domestic work a worst form of child labour? The findings of a six-country study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work
In this paper, we report on a study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work (CDW) in six countries and the relevance of our findings to international legislation. Our results suggest that CDW is highly heterogeneous. While some young child domestic workers work long hours, suffer physical punishment and are at risk of psychosocial harm, others are able to attend school and benefit from good relationships with their employers and networ…
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers
This article discusses the manner in which social and historical factors impact upon indigenous conceptions of health and health-seeking behaviour, reinforcing their authoritative knowledge about birth and wellbeing. It explores how Mexican indigenous Huichol migrant labourers experience structural, everyday and symbolic violence while away working, and in their home communities. The study was based on semi-structured interviews and observations …
My eyes are red from looking and looking ”
This study used participatory methods to explore how indigenous children understand the effects of agricultural labour on their bodies. Twenty-eight children aged between 7 and 12 years who attend the government-run Florece centres for migrant working children participated in a body-mapping exercise during which they were asked to draw and talk about how their bodies looked and felt after a day's work. Observational data were gathered for validat…
Child labour in Latin America
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the theory, policy and practice of child labour in Latin America. Interventions to reduce child labour are more likely to be successful if they are locally‐driven, supported by legislation and based on theoretical understandings of childhood that reflect the realities and needs of the children, families and communities whose lives they aim to improve. Design/methodology/approach Sociological and ant…
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers
This article discusses the manner in which social and historical factors impact upon indigenous conceptions of health and health-seeking behaviour, reinforcing their authoritative knowledge about birth and wellbeing. It explores how Mexican indigenous Huichol migrant labourers experience structural, everyday and symbolic violence while away working, and in their home communities. The study was based on semi-structured interviews and observations …
Masculinities on the Continuum of Structural Violence
Through the theoretical lens of a "violence continuum" we explore how, in many of the most marginalized areas of Mexico, global and regional historical and contemporary structures have shaped and constrained men's ability to achieve the hegemonic masculinity of neoliberal Mexico. An analysis of statistics and local research studies on male homicide is used to understand how impoverishment and extreme inequality can undermine men's capacity to acc…
Huichol Migrant Laborers and Pesticides
Every year, around two thousand Huichol families migrate from their homelands in the highlands of northwestern Mexico to the coastal region of Nayarit State, where they are employed on small plantations to pick and thread tobacco leaves. During their four-month stay, they live, work, eat, and sleep in the open air next to the tobacco fields, exposing themselves to an unknown cocktail of pesticides all day, every day. In this article, I describe h…
Coloniality and the political economy of gender
The manner in which urban locations are drawn into the global economy defines their spatial organisation, distribution and utilisation. The relationships that are generated by this process include economic exchanges, racialised dynamics between workers and owners, gendered divisions of labour and the use and abuse of natural resources and infrastructure. These encounters of globalisation are often unequal or awkward and mediated by varying forms …
Is domestic work a worst form of child labour? The findings of a six-country study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work
In this paper, we report on a study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work (CDW) in six countries and the relevance of our findings to international legislation. Our results suggest that CDW is highly heterogeneous. While some young child domestic workers work long hours, suffer physical punishment and are at risk of psychosocial harm, others are able to attend school and benefit from good relationships with their employers and networ…
Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene
Introduction to the special issue 'Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene', guest edited by Jennie Gamlin, Laura Montesi, Sahra Gibbon, Paola Sesia, Jean Segata, and Ceres Victora
My eyes are red from looking and looking ”
This study used participatory methods to explore how indigenous children understand the effects of agricultural labour on their bodies. Twenty-eight children aged between 7 and 12 years who attend the government-run Florece centres for migrant working children participated in a body-mapping exercise during which they were asked to draw and talk about how their bodies looked and felt after a day's work. Observational data were gathered for validat…
Identifying Indigenous strengths for health and wellbeing
The messy coloniality of gender and development in Indigenous Wixárika communities
Understanding the coloniality of gendered lives, family dynamics, social arrangements, and political structures in Indigenous communities begins with confronting and interrogating a history written largely by and for men in positions of power. The archives are limited in terms of what can be gleaned about gender equality and what existed before the proliferation of European patriarchy. Indigenous Wixárika people tread a delicate balance between a…
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism
By understanding a community's medical system, we are able to see its body ontology and how the people within it live in relation to the world, a historically constructed ideological position. Modernisation and development have restructured Indigenous communities and devalued traditional ontologies, including medical systems. This is a global pattern, where historical power relationships defined the coloniality of being and from this, organised h…
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities
Mexico's indigenous communities continue to experience higher levels of mortality and poorer access to health care services than non-indigenous regions, a pattern that is repeated across the globe. We conducted a two-year ethnographic study of pregnancies and childbirth in an indigenous Wixárika community to explore the structural causes of this excess mortality. In the process we also identified major differences between official infant mortalit…
Child labour in Latin America
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the theory, policy and practice of child labour in Latin America. Interventions to reduce child labour are more likely to be successful if they are locally‐driven, supported by legislation and based on theoretical understandings of childhood that reflect the realities and needs of the children, families and communities whose lives they aim to improve. Design/methodology/approach Sociological and ant…
My eyes are red from looking and looking ”
This study used participatory methods to explore how indigenous children understand the effects of agricultural labour on their bodies. Twenty-eight children aged between 7 and 12 years who attend the government-run Florece centres for migrant working children participated in a body-mapping exercise during which they were asked to draw and talk about how their bodies looked and felt after a day's work. Observational data were gathered for validat…
Is domestic work a worst form of child labour? The findings of a six-country study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work
In this paper, we report on a study of the psychosocial effects of child domestic work (CDW) in six countries and the relevance of our findings to international legislation. Our results suggest that CDW is highly heterogeneous. While some young child domestic workers work long hours, suffer physical punishment and are at risk of psychosocial harm, others are able to attend school and benefit from good relationships with their employers and networ…
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers
This article discusses the manner in which social and historical factors impact upon indigenous conceptions of health and health-seeking behaviour, reinforcing their authoritative knowledge about birth and wellbeing. It explores how Mexican indigenous Huichol migrant labourers experience structural, everyday and symbolic violence while away working, and in their home communities. The study was based on semi-structured interviews and observations …
Pregnancy and birth in an indigenous Huichol community
Mexico's indigenous regions are characterised by socio-economic marginalisation and poor health outcomes and the Maternal Mortality Rate in indigenous communities continues to be around six times higher than the national rate. Using as a case study the Huichol community of North-Western Mexico we will discuss how institutional health and welfare programmes which aim to address accepted risk factors for maternal health are undermined by a series o…
Huichol Migrant Laborers and Pesticides
Every year, around two thousand Huichol families migrate from their homelands in the highlands of northwestern Mexico to the coastal region of Nayarit State, where they are employed on small plantations to pick and thread tobacco leaves. During their four-month stay, they live, work, eat, and sleep in the open air next to the tobacco fields, exposing themselves to an unknown cocktail of pesticides all day, every day. In this article, I describe h…
Masculinities on the Continuum of Structural Violence
Through the theoretical lens of a "violence continuum" we explore how, in many of the most marginalized areas of Mexico, global and regional historical and contemporary structures have shaped and constrained men's ability to achieve the hegemonic masculinity of neoliberal Mexico. An analysis of statistics and local research studies on male homicide is used to understand how impoverishment and extreme inequality can undermine men's capacity to acc…
Blurring the Boundaries of Public Health
Unsafe sex is now the biggest risk factor for the death of young women globally and the second biggest for young men. Alongside this, pornography, which rarely shows safer sex, is one of the key channels for sex education globally. Higher quality research needs to explore the positive and negative impact of porn while the sex education world needs to engage with it to ensure that viewing porn can promote safe sex choices and consent, as well as p…
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities
Mexico's indigenous communities continue to experience higher levels of mortality and poorer access to health care services than non-indigenous regions, a pattern that is repeated across the globe. We conducted a two-year ethnographic study of pregnancies and childbirth in an indigenous Wixárika community to explore the structural causes of this excess mortality. In the process we also identified major differences between official infant mortalit…
Critical Medical Anthropology
Critical Medical Anthropology presents inspiring work from scholars doing and engaging with ethnographic research in or from Latin America, addressing themes that are central to contemporary Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). This includes issues of inequality, embodiment of history, indigeneity, non-communicable diseases, gendered violence, migration, substance abuse, reproductive politics and judicialisation, as these relate to health
“You see, we women, we can't talk, we can't have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
How women make decisions about care-seeking during pregnancy and childbirth, is a key determinant of maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes. Indigenous communities continue to display the highest levels of maternal and infant mortality in Mexico, a fact often accounted for by reference to inadequate access to quality services. A growing body of research has identified gender inequality as a major determinant of MCH, although this has rarely bee…
Centring a critical medical anthropology of Covid-19 in global health discourse
The disciplines of biomedicine and global health have been at the epicentre of understanding and finding solutions to the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are thankful for the record-breaking speed of vaccine development, the meticulousness with which the virus is being tracked in order to identify and respond to new variants, developments in hospital care practices and treatments that have contributed to bringing down the case fatality rate and to …
Coloniality and the political economy of gender
The manner in which urban locations are drawn into the global economy defines their spatial organisation, distribution and utilisation. The relationships that are generated by this process include economic exchanges, racialised dynamics between workers and owners, gendered divisions of labour and the use and abuse of natural resources and infrastructure. These encounters of globalisation are often unequal or awkward and mediated by varying forms …
The messy coloniality of gender and development in Indigenous Wixárika communities
Understanding the coloniality of gendered lives, family dynamics, social arrangements, and political structures in Indigenous communities begins with confronting and interrogating a history written largely by and for men in positions of power. The archives are limited in terms of what can be gleaned about gender equality and what existed before the proliferation of European patriarchy. Indigenous Wixárika people tread a delicate balance between a…
Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene
Introduction to the special issue 'Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene', guest edited by Jennie Gamlin, Laura Montesi, Sahra Gibbon, Paola Sesia, Jean Segata, and Ceres Victora
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism
By understanding a community's medical system, we are able to see its body ontology and how the people within it live in relation to the world, a historically constructed ideological position. Modernisation and development have restructured Indigenous communities and devalued traditional ontologies, including medical systems. This is a global pattern, where historical power relationships defined the coloniality of being and from this, organised h…
The Spectacular Generic
Facing a double burden of inequity
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted Indigenous populations worldwide, extending far beyond the biomedical outcomes of disease and mortality. This study explores the experiences of a Quechua-speaking Indigenous community on Amantaní Island, Peru, through a critical medical anthropology lens. Employing a participatory approach, we engaged with community members to explore the multifaceted impacts of COVID-19 on their health and wellbeing. Loc…
Identifying Indigenous strengths for health and wellbeing
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Indigenous (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)