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Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health pp 656–660Cite as

Ethnography

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Ethnography is a primary theory and methodology embraced by researchers in the health and social sciences to advance understanding of the actions and choices of people vis-à-vis health, health programs, healthcare access, and risk and decision-making processes involved in prevention, maintenance, and treatment. In the realm of immigrant health, ethnography has become the main vehicle by which researchers assess what health means to individuals and groups, how it is understood, and the kinds of barriers that contribute to persistent disparities and inequalities. One of the central tenets of ethnography is the importance of the particularities of everyday life in relation to larger contexts that influence health and healthcare access. Insisting that daily life often holds the key to crucial scientific breakthroughs, ethnographic approaches have been critical to comprehending the failure of public health programs to “prevent” risky behaviors in intervention programs that target HIV...

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Suggested Readings

  • Castañeda, H. (2009). Illegality as risk factor: A survey of unauthorized migrant patients in a Berlin clinic. Social Science & Medicine, 68, 1552–1560.

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  • Fadiman, A. (1998). The spirit catches you and you fall down. New York: Macmillan.

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  • Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325.

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  • Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books.

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  • Holmes, S. M. (2007). Oaxacans like to work bent over: The naturalization of social suffering among berry farm workers. International Migration, 45(3), 39–68.

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  • Horton, S. (2004). Different subjects: the health care system’s participation in the differential construction of the cultural citizenship of Cuban refugees and Mexican immigrants. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 18(4), 472–489.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University at Albany, The State University of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY, USA

    Jennifer Burrell & James Shuford

Authors
  1. Jennifer Burrell
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  2. James Shuford
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Case Western Reserve University, School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Sana Loue

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Martha Sajatovic

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Burrell, J., Shuford, J. (2012). Ethnography. In: Loue, S., Sajatovic, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_265

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_265

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-5655-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-5659-0

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