L Manderson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3513 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Manderson |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Manderson |
| SIGNATURE | MANDERSON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7883-1790 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 221 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 945 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 221 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Re-worlding reproduction as a call to action
Inspired by decolonial theorist Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's notion of 'reworlding' and his use of the concept to reconsider Western epistemes and ways of 'being in the world', we argue for the importance of 're-worlding reproduction' in future work on health systems and reproductive health. Current approaches to reproductive health have failed to bring the thriving and wellbeing they once promised to the 'marginalised majority' in the world. Re-worl…
Transforming infectious disease control through social innovation, community engagement and intersectional gender research
Community engagement and approaches that aim to change unequal power relations are essential for inclusive, relevant and sustainable health interventions. A people-centred approach to research and programme implementation can amplify the voices of disadvantaged and often forgotten people and move towards genuine partnership with the communities, ensuring that research and action meaningfully reflect the priorities and realities of those most affe…
The Divine in the Clinic: Assisted Reproduction and Religious Practice in Ghana and South Africa
Drawing on studies with 40 informants in Ghana and 74 informants in South Africa, we explore spiritual interventions among staff and patients that accompany their use of assisted reproduction. These practices and expressions of faith reinforce staff and patients as moral subjects who have done everything possible to assist in the vagaries of assisted reproduction—another form of care to enable, complement, and enhance high-tech intervention. We c…
Overlapping caregiving demands and their association with poor subjective health and wellbeing and food insecurity among older rural South Africans
As care needs in rural sub-Saharan African communities grow, informal caregiving by older adults is a key and growing familial resource. However, such caregiving may generate unique challenges and consequences for the carers. We examined how caregiving is associated with health, food insecurity and subjective wellbeing among older adults in rural Mpumalanga province, South Africa. We used the first two waves of data from the HAALSI cohort study, …
On neglect, trace and memory
Strengthening community ties in South Africa: Tackling food insecurity and structural challenges through community-led initiatives
Structural violence and exclusionary policies exacerbate socio-economic inequalities. • Community-based action mitigates food insecurity and resource scarcity in South Africa. • Case studies from Gauteng and Eastern Cape provinces highlight grassroots survival strategies. • Social networks play a key role in addressing immediate needs in deprived communities. • Informal support mechanisms shape survival in marginalized communities. In this articl…
Distribution of Informal Caregiving for Older Adults Living With or At Risk of Cognitive Decline Within and Beyond Family in Rural South Africa
Objectives Aging populations will increasingly need care, much of this provided informally particularly in rural areas and in low and middle-income countries. In rural South Africa, formal support is severely limited, and adult children are frequently unavailable due to morbidity, early mortality, employment, and migration. We describe how care is shared within and between households. Methods We conducted quantitative interviews with 1,012 househ…
Variation in Health Status Reports: Triangulating Mixed Methods Data to Assess the Health and Wellbeing of Primary Caregivers to Older Rural South Africans
Caregivers’ health status is important, given its importance for their own wellbeing and capacity to provide quality care. While single item self-rated health questions in surveys are an efficient measure, responses limit understanding of what people mean when they rate their health in a particular way, and do not address reporting heterogeneity. We draw on data collected in a mixed-method study on the informal caregiving of older people in rural…
Landscapes of care for dementia in rural South Africa
Food insecurity, intimate partner violence, and barriers to sexual and reproductive health care among women in Lorentzville, South Africa
We underscore the need for comprehensive policy interventions that expand healthcare access for migrant populations and address the economic vulnerabilities that propel women into transactional sex. Our findings contribute to the literature on gender, migration, and survival strategies, demonstrating the importance of intersectional approaches in addressing food insecurity, violence, and reproductive justice
Enabling Dwelling: Caregiving and Familiar Object Interactions amidst Cognitive Decline in Rural South Africa
As people experience cognitive decline, they make and remake their identities in practice, including through interactions with everyday objects. Facilitating object interactions thus becomes an act of care. We present ethnographic data detailing how two women with cognitive decline, who were receiving informal home-based care in a rural area of South Africa, shaped and expressed their identities by dwelling - using objects to enact practices thro…
Sculpting stories: Methods to unsettle knowledge production in disasters
Purpose This study examines the application of arts-based research (ABR) methods in producing knowledge about the lived experiences of disasters, particularly focusing on the effects of flooding in an informal settlement in South Africa. It emphasizes the use of playdough sculpting as a tool for storytelling, aiming to address and reduce power imbalances between local participants and external researchers. Design/methodology/approach The study em…
Speaking of Hunger: Food Shortages, Poverty and Community Assistance in Urban South Africa
How people speak of hunger extends beyond statements about food adequacy; people's remarks may reflect experiences of poverty and feelings of vulnerability, and may be used to request help. In this article, we build on the idea of idioms of distress to conceptualize hunger talk as expressing more than an empty belly. We draw on ethnographic data gathered in two settings in South Africa: one a peri-urban area under traditional jurisdiction in the …
Sitting in Wait: Everyday Caregiving Practices for People with Dementia in Rural South Africa
Practice theories offer potential to reveal, understand, and attribute value to the everyday thoughts and actions of dementia caregivers. Drawing on ethnographic data from research in rural South Africa, on everyday dementia care practices, we highlight the profound importance of mundane practices - especially "sitting in wait" - for optimizing wellbeing of people with dementia who are cared for at home. We draw attention to the structural driver…
Conceptualisations of "good care" within informal caregiving networks for older people in rural South Africa
Good care in social policy statements is commonly implied as familial and person-centred, provided by family members and focused on upholding the autonomy, dignity and respect of the care recipient. Policy consideration of the relational nature of caregiving, the sociomaterial determinants of good care, the practical knowledge of caregivers and responsibilities of the state, is limited. Drawing on the ethics of care theory and a care ecology fram…
Embraced: On hands and nerves
In 2001, I experienced severe radial neuropathy, leading to permanent dysfunctions in the fingers of my left hand. In this personal account of nerve damage, medical and surgical treatment, and adaptation, I first describe the sequence of neuropathies, then turn to how through serendipity, the brace enabled other connections-nervelines-with individuals and places. The brace is a metonym of a severed nerve with its associated loss of movement and c…
Applied anthropology, injustice, and the ethics of intervention
Fifty years ago, anthropologists, including applied researchers, were caught up in a dilemma of ethics and practice, in the face of criticisms of ethnographic embroilment in colonial, military, and neocolonial projects. But the epistemological crises that this provoked, together with anthropological engagement in political movements, sharpened our commitment to work with others to counter systemic, structural, and enacted violence. Today, continu…
Action and the urgency of anthropological voice
Risk, lifestyle and non-communicable diseases of poverty
Common discourse in public health and preventive medicine frames non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, as diseases of ‘lifestyle’; the choice of terminology implies that their prevention, control and management are amenable to individual action. In drawing attention to global increases in the incidence and prevalence of non-communicable disease, however, we increasingly observe that these are non-communicable…
Social innovation in health: Strengthening Community Systems for Universal Health Coverage in rural areas
The study has illustrated how three creative social innovation approaches improved access and quality of health services for vulnerable rural populations and increased agency among the intervention communities. The processes facilitated empowerment, which in turn supported the sustained strengthening of the community system and the achievement of community goals in the domain of health and beyond
The Challenges of Data Sharing
Funders promote data sharing to increase transparency and enable new analyses with existing data, re-analysis, and new publications. Although evidence of these instrumental impacts of data sharing is lacking, there is a compelling case to share anthropological data as intrinsically valuable public cultural goods and to inform practice, including during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the potential values of sharing da…
The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Containing Covid-19 and the social costs on human rights in African countries
Multiple social interventions were introduced to contain the COVID-19 pandemic across Africa, limiting social engagement, school and workplace attendance, and travel. In anticipation of negative economic consequences and social impact, many governments introduced cash transfers, social pensions, food aid, and utility and tax waivers. However, people living precariously and/or under conditions of structural vulnerability were often unable to acces…
Reproductive travel to, from and within sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review
The double-edged role of accessed status on health and well-being among middle- and older-age adults in rural South Africa: The Haalsi study
Supporting social capital theory, we find that having higher accessed status is associated with better health and well-being for older adults in a setting with limited formal support resources. However, the explanatory power of both theories appears to depending on other key factors, such as gender and network size, highlighting the importance of contextualizing theories in practice
Just One Thing after Another: Recursive Cascades and Chronic Conditions
Chronic conditions and their resultant difficulties in daily living frequently occur with other health problems, sometimes due to interactions or complications at a biological level, or as a result of common pathogens or risk factors. On other occasions, they develop independently. Drawing on research conducted with Australian women that began in the mid-2000s and is still ongoing, we highlight how chronic structural factors shape the risk factor…
An epidemic in the field? Rapid assessment procedures and health research
The Social Dynamics of the Interview: Age, Class, and Gender
Researchers have paid only limited attention to how social structural factors influence the course and content of interviews. Speech, comportment, and values inherent to gender and other social, structural, and contextual factors, such as age, socioeconomic positioning, and ethnicity, all influence the direction, flow, and content of interviews, informing how we might interpret the information collected in the process. Drawing on interviews condu…
Boundary breaches: The Body, Sex and Sexuality After Stoma Surgery
Covid-19, Risk, Fear, and Fall-out
We, like others worldwide, have spent much of the last week tracking the exponential spread and toll of COVID-19, and the consequent retraction of social engagement, shifting from the joking “Are w
On Secrecy, Disclosure, the Public, and the Private in Anthropology: An Introduction to Supplement 12
Anthropology and cognate disciplines have long addressed the complex and troubled relations of public and private life, supplying insight into such matters as identity, politics, and civic life. In the multiple, interconnected settings of an intricately globalized and mediatized twenty-first century, how secrets are made, maintained, and broken remains vitally important to social science and its publics. The special issue we introduce here brings…
Chronic Living in a Communicable World
By April 2020, COVID-19 lockdowns had restricted the movements of over half the world's population. As health authorities advise people living with chronic conditions to self-isolate because they are at particular risk of serious complications and death, the epidemiological split between communicable and noncommunicable disease is tenuous. We argue that much more is at stake for people living with (multiple) medical conditions than being "at risk…
Relatedness and care in Southern Africa and beyond
Kinship fulfils many functions; caregiving is one. The willingness to care flows, in part, from the quality of affective relationships inherent in most networks of kin, whether affinal, consanguina
Researcher Saturation: The Impact of Data Triangulation and Intensive-Research Practices on the Researcher and Qualitative Research Process
Theoretically and methodologically sound qualitative research demands an extended period of fieldwork and the use of multiple methods to achieve data saturation and develop the grounded theory. Little is known about the experiences of researchers who conduct such studies. The authors explore these matters by drawing on their experiences of conducting a 3-year qualitative study with women about their gynecological cancer journey. Their fieldwork c…
For the Sake of Our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia
How Covid-19 Reveals Structures of Vulnerability
As coronavirus infection spread across Europe and north America to much poorer parts of the world, calls for personal protection – hand washing, physical distancing, and masks – highlighted the str
Part and Parcel of Being a Woman: Female Urinary Incontinence and Constructions of Control
This article draws on extensive interviews with middle-aged Australian women experiencing urinary incontinence. Our discussion derives from the difficulties women face in seeking advice on the management of incontinence, as a consequence of their perception that the condition is an inevitability, a "normal" part of being female. Women do not, on the whole, support a single cause for incontinence but, rather, explain its incidence in terms of pers…
Anthropologies of Cancer in Transnational Worlds
Cancer is a transnational condition involving the unprecedented fl ow of health information, technologies and people across national borders.Such movement raises questions about the nature of therapeutic citizenship, how and where structurally vulnerable populations obtain care, and the political geography of blame associated with this disease.This volume brings together cutting-edge anthropological research carried out across North and South Ame…
Patients without Borders: Understanding Medical Travel
The rapidly growing medical travel industry has implications for the health systems of both sending and receiving countries. This article outlines the political economy of the industry and the potential opportunities and disadvantages it poses for access, equity, and the right to health. Although the trade carries economic benefits for countries receiving foreign medical patients, it comes at a cost to the provision of public health, through dist…
Mental Ill Health, Recovery and the Family Assemblage
About you: Empathy, objectivity and authority
Focus groups in tropical diseases research
Focus groups are a method designed to gather information primarily about beliefs, values and understanding. Participants in focus groups are specifically selected to explore the range of these beliefs in a study population. Group dynamics facilitate the collection of relatively detailed information on prevalent attitudes and ideas, conflicts and contradictions. Focus groups are guided by relatively strict rules of structure and procedure. This pa…
Proxemics, Covid-19, and the Ethics of Care in South Africa
In South Africa, lockdown and its excesses have opened up questions on the limits of an ethics of care, whose ethics are privileged, how care is delivered, and what care means. We show how an ethics of proxemics and its operationalization as distance highlight everyday inequalities and limit the provision of care. Constraints on physical distancing in line with public health measures intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus echo the contro…
Hot-cold food and medical theories: Overview and introduction
Like roulette: Australian women's explanations of gynecological cancers
Storytelling, marginality, and community in Australia: How immigrants position their difference in health care settings
Stories of conflict with hospital services, medical mismanagement, and negative outcomes of procedures and treatment circulate within immigrant communities. While the interpretations of medical events are often based on misperceptions and misunderstandings, the stories have instructional value in that they explain an unfamiliar system to new immigrants and provide starting points for advocacy for improved services. Our analysis of gossip and stor…
Public sex performances in patpong and explorations of the edges of imagination 1
This paper draws on observations of sex acts, including dances, pornographic tricks and intercourse, performed in four bars in the central area of sex tourism in Bangkok, Patpong. Following a discussion of the nature of dramatic pornography, and discursive and interpretive issues which arise from the nature of the inquiry, the paper describes and analyses the acts, which are treated as a commentary on Thai understandings of (western) male sexuali…
Constructing Hope: Dis/continuity and the Narrative Construction of Recovery in the Rehabilitation Unit
Hope and recovery are focal narratives within rehabilitation discourse, which is characterized by its goal of returning physical functioning to individuals in a way reminiscent of their pre-impairment ways of life. Rehabilitation is concerned with coming to terms with often devastating bodily disruption and learning strategies to minimize it. Rehabilitation provides individuals with skills and tools designed to enable them to return to their form…
Gender, normality and the post-surgical body
Body image and social identity are affected by the sudden and radical changes that occur with surgery for cancer. People who had major surgery from cancer and other serious medical conditions, resulting in profound physical changes to the body, provided personal accounts of their adjustment after surgery. I am concerned in this paper specifically with notions of ‘coping’, normality and relativity that individuals employ to adjust to embodied chan…
Women's Work and Women's Roles. Economics and Everyday Life in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
Early observers of Southeast Asian societies frequently commented upon the varied and disparate nature of women's work, and upon the authority and power which resulted from women's active participation in the economy. Undoubtedly women in some situations enjoyed far fewer restriction than did their comerpart in the homelands of their colonial rulers. The authors of this monograph have examined the roles of women, past and present, in a variety of…
Overpopulation in Java: Problems and Reactions
The Shaping of the Kaum Ibu (Women's Section) of the United Malays National Organization
Overpopulation in Java: Problems and Reactions
Traditional food classifications and humoral medical theory in Peninsular Malaysia
This paper explores the extent of knowledge of traditional food classifications and associated dietary prescriptions in contemporary Malaysia, drawing on fieldwork undertaken by the author in 1978–79, which included structured interviews with 278 women in five states. Humoral medical theory reached Malaysia through Unanic, Ayurvedic and Chinese medical traditions. Today, prime evidence of this theory remains in the classification of foods as hot …
Vietnamese behavioral and dietary precautions during pregnancy
Behavioral and dietary prescriptions and proscriptions observed by 40 ethnic Vietnamese and Vietnamese‐Chinese women during pregnancy are explored within the context of traditional Vietnamese medicine and its humoral classification of physiological states and foodstuffs. The medical, nutritional and psychosocial effects of the continued observance of these customs in Australia are discussed. The restrictions appear to be important cultural elemen…
Vietnamese behavioral and dietary precautions during confinement
In interviews with 40 Vietnamese women, details were collected regarding postpartum behavioral and dietary precautions. Following traditional medical theory, a post‐parturient woman is considered cold; accordingly, behavior and diet are prescribed to restore lost heat and to protect the woman from further cold and wind. All but one respondent observed a traditional confinement following delivery of the last‐born child in Vietnam. In Australia, ho…
Asaa women's caucus: Women in Asia workshop
Roasting, smoking and dieting in response to birth: Malay confinement in cross-cultural perspective
Traditional food beliefs and critical life events in Peninsular Malaysia
Women, Politics, and Change. The Kaum Ibu Umno, Malaysia, 1945-1972
The Reproductive Role of the Human Breast [and Comments and Reply]
Like that of many other mammals, our rate of reproduction is related to the carrying capacity of our habitat, and throughout our history low lifetime fertility has been advantageous. The most important determinant of lifetime fertility is the interbirth interval, and the major variable in this interval is the duration of postpartum anovulation due to breast-feeding. The need for a long birth interval is accentuated by our immaturity at birth and …
Southeast Asia. Women, Changing Social Structure and Cultural Continuity
Turkish Migration and Workforce Participation in Sydney, Australia
Turkish Migration and Workforce Participation in Sydney, Australia
The structure of labor markets and the nature of the participation in them of various social groups such as migrants has increasingly become an area of concern for planners in social welfare and migration policy as well as for those concerned with the broader theoretical questions of the nature and changes in the patterns of class relations and stratification. This article presents a detailed qualitative analysis of individual patterns of workfor…
Patterns of Child Care amongst Women in the Sydney Turkish Community
These are modern times: Infant feeding practice in Peninsular Malaysia
Wives and Midwives. Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia
In this widely-praised study, Carol Laderman provides a vivid picture of the daily life of rural Malays as she focuses on their dietary practices and the ritual and medical aspects of childbirth procedures. Apprenticed to a village midwife and a local shaman, she was able to observe a traditional culture adapting to modern practices
Women's Work and Women's Roles. Economics and Everyday Life in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
Early observers of Southeast Asian societies frequently commented upon the varied and disparate nature of women's work, and upon the authority and power which resulted from women's active participation in the economy. Undoubtedly women in some situations enjoyed far fewer restriction than did their comerpart in the homelands of their colonial rulers. The authors of this monograph have examined the roles of women, past and present, in a variety of…
Workforce participation and childrearing amongst Turkish women in Sydney, Australia
Edward Shorter And The Disembodiment Of Women's History
Social Structure and Food Deficiency
Gender, substance and subsistence. Introduction
Manderson Lenore. Gender, substance and subsistence. Introduction. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 84, 1987-1. pp. 49-50
Health Services and the Legitimation of the Colonial State: British Malaya 1786–1941
This article is concerned with the establishment and extension of health care and medical services in British colonial Malaya. Initially, medical care was provided for the colonial elite and those in their direct employment. With the expansion of colonial control beyond trade centers into the hinterland and with the growth of agriculture and mining. Western medicine was extended both to labor involved in these export industries and to others whos…
Hot-cold food and medical theories: Overview and introduction
Shared Wealth and Symbol: Food, Culture and Society in Oceania and Southeast Asia
List of tables and figures Notes on contributors Introduction: the anthropology of food in Oceania and Southeast Asia Lenore Manderson Part I. The Context of Diet: 1. Men, women, work, and group nutrition in a New guinea Mountain Ok society David Hyndman 1. 'Land of milk and honey': the changing meaning of food to an Australian Aboriginal community Janice Reid 3. Dietary change among Cook Islanders in New Zealand Thomas K. Fitzgerald 4. Taro and …
Sociology (130 works) · Medicine (123 works) · Political science (108 works) · Psychology (83 works) · Nursing (55 works) · Geography (54 works) · Environmental health (46 works) · Economic growth (41 works) · Law (40 works) · Economics (39 works)