L J Weaver
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 27835 |
|---|---|
| NOME | L J Weaver |
| PRENOMES | L J |
| SOBRENOME | Weaver |
| ASSINATURA | WEAVER L J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Oregon |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8104-0511 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 140 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2009 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Study Protocol
This protocol paper describes the methods of a multi‐year study examining individual, community, and structural‐level influences on health among people experiencing homelessness in a mid‐sized Oregon city. We draw on biocultural theory and method to examine three distinct social ecologies of homelessness in the study setting: unsheltered homelessness, temporarily sheltered homelessness, and permanent supportive or transitional housing. Our mixed‐…
When penalties are framed as protections
Research has long identified street-level bureaucrats (SLBs)—often police—as key intermediaries shaping the governance of homelessness. Rising rates of unsheltered homelessness in the US implicate new public and private actors in these processes. This article broadens the focus of existing research using 42 interviews with SLBs in a mid-size US city to analyze how they interpret tent and vehicle encampments, and how they make decisions about disp…
Clarification of policy on retractions
Co-opting the ‘public’ in public health
In the name of public health protection, individuals and communities perceived to be diseased have long been coercively regulated through surveillance, sequestration, or various forms of criminal punishment. In the U.S., people experiencing homelessness (PEH) have been increasingly targeted by social control measures such as containment, banishment, or arrest, often under the guise of public health protection. This study explores how city employe…
A Glossary of Distress Expressions Among Kannada-Speaking Urban Hindu Women
Will increasing access to mental health treatment close India's mental health gap
India's National Mental Health Survey (NMHS) reports a treatment gap for common mental disorders of over 85 percent, which they attribute to lack of awareness and access to psychiatric services in India. Interventions aiming to close that treatment gap through task-sharing have gained significant traction in India, but have met with mixed success, particularly in long-term perspective. We critically examined the fundamental assumptions embedded i…
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
“Tension” and distress in South Asia
This systematic literature review summarizes academic knowledge on “tension” among South Asian and diaspora populations. “Tension” (sometimes transliterated as tenshun) is a term used across South Asia to talk about stress and distress, but the existing literature is dispersed and has never been analyzed synthetically. Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched 8 academic databases and solicited additional contributions from professional listservs.…
Culture-bound syndromes, idioms of distress, and cultural concepts of distress
The Hair in the Garland
Context Matters for Food Security
Anthropologists have long emphasized the social significance of foods and the contexts in which they are consumed. Expanding on this idea, we define the context of consumption as the non-eating behaviors that surround eating, such as the manner of food preparation, food sharing, and dietary patterns. In this study, we used cultural consensus analysis to assess whether there exist consistently shared, normative ideas about preferable context of fo…
Syndemics theory must take local context seriously
Conceptual and methodological challenges in idioms of distress research
Research premised on the construct of idioms of distress has proliferated in the last 40 years. The aim of this work is to foreground the experiential and socially adaptive functions of cultural expressions of distress around the world. Researchers who work in this field often begin from very different starting points in terms of their prior knowledge of the research context, their interest in theoretical or applied implications of their work, an…
The Laboratory of Scientific Racism
Anthropology, especially biological anthropology, owes its origins to the scientific study of human racial differences. That dark history is well-acknowledged and, when it is taught, usually begins with the racism of early figures, such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach or, more recently, Earnest Hooton, and exonerates itself through a turn toward antiracist scholars such as Frank Livingstone and Franz Boas. Rarely, if ever, is this origin story cri…
The Social Meaning of Food Consumption Behaviors in Rural Brazil
Food insecurity (FI) is often assessed through experienced-based measures, which address the number and extent of coping strategies people employ. Coping indices are limited because, methodologically, they presuppose that people engage coping strategies uniformly. Ethnographic work suggests that subgroups experience FI quite differently, meaning that coping strategies might also vary within a population. Thus, whether people actually agree on FI …
Unpacking the "black box" of global food insecurity and mental health
Comorbid Suffering
Cycles of chronic illness are unpredictable, especially when multiple conditions are involved, and that instability can transform "normal" everyday life for individuals and their families. This article employs a theory of "comorbid suffering" to interpret how multiple concurrent diagnoses produce webs of remarkable suffering. We collected 50 life stories from breast cancer survivors enrolled in the South Africa Breast Cancer Study. We present thr…
Sugar and Tension
Women in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they get a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? In Sugar and Tension , Lesley Jo Weaver uses women’s experiences with diabetes in New Delhi as a lens to explore how gendered roles and expectations are taking shape in contemporary India. Weaver argues that although women’s domestic care of others may be at odds with the self-care mandates of biomedi…
Culture-bound syndromes, idioms of distress, and cultural concepts of distress
This issue of Transcultural Psychiatry showcases some recent work on idioms of distress – the latest in a long line of anthropological research concerned with cross-cultural concepts and experiences of distress. Mark Nichter’s (1981) seminal paper introducing idioms of distress has become a cynosure for psychological anthropology and transcultural psychiatry. A growing body of work has since accumulated; however, the last time a collection of suc…
“I Want Variety!”
It has long been observed that people all over the world prefer to increase the variety of their diets whenever that option is available. We know very little, however, about why people might seek greater dietary variety. This basic question has implications for how we conceive of and measure food insecurity because food insecurity assessments usually include the measurement of access to dietary variety. In this paper, we use qualitative data from…
Do People Agree on What Foods are Prestigious? Evidence of a Single, Shared Cultural Model of Food in Urban Ethiopia and Rural Brazil
To what extent do people agree on the meaning of foods, and does this vary by socioeconomic status, demographics, or household type? Addressing this question is critical for testing hypotheses about the relationship between food insecurity, food meaning, and mental well-being because it speaks directly to the social implications of food behaviors. In this study, we test for a shared cultural model of food meaning in two diverse settings: urban Et…
Diabetes
Anthropological research on diabetes has paralleled the emergence of the disease in biomedicine. Most anthropological research on diabetes has attended to social inequalities among vulnerable populations with type 2 diabetes in North and Central America, with a small but increasing number of publications on diabetes emergence and experiences in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Most research on diabetes has taken a critical approach, examining ex…
Zika virus in American Samoa
These findings reinforce the need for a multi-pronged approach to ZIKV. This study highlights the need for information on culturally specific barriers and recognition of additional challenges associated with dual burden in marginal populations where social inequalities exacerbate health issues
Shame, Blame, and Status Incongruity
Tension Among Women in North India
Applying Syndemics and Chronicity
Medical anthropologists working with global health agendas must develop transdisciplinary frameworks to communicate their work. This article explores two similar but underutilized theoretical frameworks in medical anthropology, and discusses how they facilitate new insights about the relationships between epidemiological patterns and individual-level illness experiences. Two cases from our fieldwork in New Delhi and Chicago are presented to illus…
Developing and Testing Locally Derived Mental Health Scales
Cross-cultural studies of mental health and illness generally adhere to one of two agendas: the comparison of mental health between sites using standard measurement tools, or the identification of locally specific ways of discussing mental illness. Here, we illustrate a methodological approach to measuring mental health that unites these two agendas. Using examples from our work in India and Haiti, we show how researchers can use mixed methods to…
Social Pathways in the Comorbidity between Type 2 Diabetes and Mental Health Concerns in a Pilot Study of Urban Middle- and Upper-Class Indian Women
This report describes preliminary findings about the connections between type 2 diabetes, mental health, and normative social roles among women living in Delhi, India. We conducted freelist interviews with 62 diabetic and nondiabetic women about women's roles, perceptions of diabetes, and “tension,” a common Hindi-language idiom used to express stress. Using the freelist results, we produced and then administered a questionnaire to a pilot sample…
The signs of stress
Transactions in Suffering
The biomedical definition of comorbidity belies the complexity of its lived experience. This article draws on case studies of women with diabetes and various comorbidities in New Delhi, India, to explore intergenerational transactions surrounding suffering in contexts of comorbidity. The analysis synthesizes sociological theories of chronic disease work, psychological theories of caregiver burnout, and anthropological approaches to suffering and …
Comorbid Suffering
Cycles of chronic illness are unpredictable, especially when multiple conditions are involved, and that instability can transform "normal" everyday life for individuals and their families. This article employs a theory of "comorbid suffering" to interpret how multiple concurrent diagnoses produce webs of remarkable suffering. We collected 50 life stories from breast cancer survivors enrolled in the South Africa Breast Cancer Study. We present thr…
Syndemics theory must take local context seriously
Unpacking the "black box" of global food insecurity and mental health
Conceptual and methodological challenges in idioms of distress research
Research premised on the construct of idioms of distress has proliferated in the last 40 years. The aim of this work is to foreground the experiential and socially adaptive functions of cultural expressions of distress around the world. Researchers who work in this field often begin from very different starting points in terms of their prior knowledge of the research context, their interest in theoretical or applied implications of their work, an…
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
Special Section on Comorbidity
Exploring the Role of Culture in the Link Between Mental Health and Food Insecurity
Food insecurity has traditionally been characterized as a driver of health disparities because of its potential impacts on nutritional status. Food, however, has important social and cultural valences that make it much more than a nutritional vehicle. Recent research that is sensitive to the social meanings of food has drawn attention to the complex and far-reaching mental and social health effects of food insecurity. In this article, we outline …
The Laboratory of Scientific Racism
Anthropology, especially biological anthropology, owes its origins to the scientific study of human racial differences. That dark history is well-acknowledged and, when it is taught, usually begins with the racism of early figures, such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach or, more recently, Earnest Hooton, and exonerates itself through a turn toward antiracist scholars such as Frank Livingstone and Franz Boas. Rarely, if ever, is this origin story cri…
Type 2 Diabetes and Anxiety Symptoms Among Women in New Delhi, India
Objectives. We explored the relationship between mental health and type 2 diabetes among women in New Delhi, India, in 2011. Methods. We recruited a convenience sample of 184 diabetic women from 10 public and private clinics. They completed a finger-stick blood test and a questionnaire assessing demographic characteristics, depression and anxiety symptoms, and diabetes-related disabilities restricting their performance of daily tasks. A subsample…
Moving Beyond Hunger and Nutrition
Social Pathways in the Comorbidity between Type 2 Diabetes and Mental Health Concerns in a Pilot Study of Urban Middle- and Upper-Class Indian Women
This report describes preliminary findings about the connections between type 2 diabetes, mental health, and normative social roles among women living in Delhi, India. We conducted freelist interviews with 62 diabetic and nondiabetic women about women's roles, perceptions of diabetes, and “tension,” a common Hindi-language idiom used to express stress. Using the freelist results, we produced and then administered a questionnaire to a pilot sample…
Reorienting women's health in low- and middle-income countries
Women's health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has historically focused on sexual and reproductive health. However, understanding how women acquire, experience, and treat non-reproductive health conditions, such as non-communicable diseases, has become a fundamental public health concern. Special attention to the social determinants of LMIC women's health can provide socially and culturally relevant knowledge for implementation of pol…
Exploring the Role of Culture in the Link Between Mental Health and Food Insecurity
Food insecurity has traditionally been characterized as a driver of health disparities because of its potential impacts on nutritional status. Food, however, has important social and cultural valences that make it much more than a nutritional vehicle. Recent research that is sensitive to the social meanings of food has drawn attention to the complex and far-reaching mental and social health effects of food insecurity. In this article, we outline …
Applying Syndemics and Chronicity
Medical anthropologists working with global health agendas must develop transdisciplinary frameworks to communicate their work. This article explores two similar but underutilized theoretical frameworks in medical anthropology, and discusses how they facilitate new insights about the relationships between epidemiological patterns and individual-level illness experiences. Two cases from our fieldwork in New Delhi and Chicago are presented to illus…
Type 2 Diabetes and Anxiety Symptoms Among Women in New Delhi, India
Objectives. We explored the relationship between mental health and type 2 diabetes among women in New Delhi, India, in 2011. Methods. We recruited a convenience sample of 184 diabetic women from 10 public and private clinics. They completed a finger-stick blood test and a questionnaire assessing demographic characteristics, depression and anxiety symptoms, and diabetes-related disabilities restricting their performance of daily tasks. A subsample…
The signs of stress
Developing and Testing Locally Derived Mental Health Scales
Cross-cultural studies of mental health and illness generally adhere to one of two agendas: the comparison of mental health between sites using standard measurement tools, or the identification of locally specific ways of discussing mental illness. Here, we illustrate a methodological approach to measuring mental health that unites these two agendas. Using examples from our work in India and Haiti, we show how researchers can use mixed methods to…
Affliction
Reviewed by: Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty by Veena Das Lesley Jo Weaver Veena Das, Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. 272 pp. Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty takes head-on the ambitious project of understanding, as author Veena Das says, “what is going on” (xi) with health, disease, and poverty in the low-income neighborhoods in Delhi where she has worked since 1999. This is no small task,…
Fieldwork Then and Now
Special Section on Comorbidity
Transactions in Suffering
The biomedical definition of comorbidity belies the complexity of its lived experience. This article draws on case studies of women with diabetes and various comorbidities in New Delhi, India, to explore intergenerational transactions surrounding suffering in contexts of comorbidity. The analysis synthesizes sociological theories of chronic disease work, psychological theories of caregiver burnout, and anthropological approaches to suffering and …
Shame, Blame, and Status Incongruity
Tension Among Women in North India
AAA Leadership Fellows
How Can Service-Learning Serve in Medical Anthropology
Diabetes
Anthropological research on diabetes has paralleled the emergence of the disease in biomedicine. Most anthropological research on diabetes has attended to social inequalities among vulnerable populations with type 2 diabetes in North and Central America, with a small but increasing number of publications on diabetes emergence and experiences in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Most research on diabetes has taken a critical approach, examining ex…
Zika virus in American Samoa
These findings reinforce the need for a multi-pronged approach to ZIKV. This study highlights the need for information on culturally specific barriers and recognition of additional challenges associated with dual burden in marginal populations where social inequalities exacerbate health issues
Sugar and Tension
Women in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they get a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? In Sugar and Tension , Lesley Jo Weaver uses women’s experiences with diabetes in New Delhi as a lens to explore how gendered roles and expectations are taking shape in contemporary India. Weaver argues that although women’s domestic care of others may be at odds with the self-care mandates of biomedi…
Culture-bound syndromes, idioms of distress, and cultural concepts of distress
This issue of Transcultural Psychiatry showcases some recent work on idioms of distress – the latest in a long line of anthropological research concerned with cross-cultural concepts and experiences of distress. Mark Nichter’s (1981) seminal paper introducing idioms of distress has become a cynosure for psychological anthropology and transcultural psychiatry. A growing body of work has since accumulated; however, the last time a collection of suc…
“I Want Variety!”
It has long been observed that people all over the world prefer to increase the variety of their diets whenever that option is available. We know very little, however, about why people might seek greater dietary variety. This basic question has implications for how we conceive of and measure food insecurity because food insecurity assessments usually include the measurement of access to dietary variety. In this paper, we use qualitative data from…
Do People Agree on What Foods are Prestigious? Evidence of a Single, Shared Cultural Model of Food in Urban Ethiopia and Rural Brazil
To what extent do people agree on the meaning of foods, and does this vary by socioeconomic status, demographics, or household type? Addressing this question is critical for testing hypotheses about the relationship between food insecurity, food meaning, and mental well-being because it speaks directly to the social implications of food behaviors. In this study, we test for a shared cultural model of food meaning in two diverse settings: urban Et…
Comorbid Suffering
Cycles of chronic illness are unpredictable, especially when multiple conditions are involved, and that instability can transform "normal" everyday life for individuals and their families. This article employs a theory of "comorbid suffering" to interpret how multiple concurrent diagnoses produce webs of remarkable suffering. We collected 50 life stories from breast cancer survivors enrolled in the South Africa Breast Cancer Study. We present thr…
The Social Meaning of Food Consumption Behaviors in Rural Brazil
Food insecurity (FI) is often assessed through experienced-based measures, which address the number and extent of coping strategies people employ. Coping indices are limited because, methodologically, they presuppose that people engage coping strategies uniformly. Ethnographic work suggests that subgroups experience FI quite differently, meaning that coping strategies might also vary within a population. Thus, whether people actually agree on FI …
Unpacking the "black box" of global food insecurity and mental health
Sociology (24 obras) · Psychology (23 obras) · Medicine (18 obras) · Psychiatry (16 obras) · Mental health (13 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Clinical Psychology (12 obras) · Distress (11 obras) · Anthropology (8 obras) · Political science (8 obras)