Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ideologies of Communication in a Los Angeles Pediatric Pain Clinic

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Graduate student Mara Buchbinder, directed by Dr. Elinor Ochs, will investigate the cultural processes mediating the communication of pain through a case study analysis of a multidisciplinary pediatric pain clinic in Los Angeles. The specific objectives are to examine: 1) how adolescents communicate pain experience through verbal and non-verbal practices; 2) how clinicians socialize families into culturally organized ideologies of pain management and pain communication through repeated medical consultations; and 3) how such ideologies are implemented, enacted, rejected, or transformed by families in their everyday lives. While previous anthropological work has described changed attitudes, feelings, and practices as outcomes of particular pain treatment approaches, few ethnographic studies have considered the ongoing cultural and interactional processes through which such transformations take shape. The researcher will employ a longitudinal ethnographic design and a language socialization framework to track how adolescent chronic pain sufferers experience and communicate pain in clinical and family settings, before and after enrollment in the clinic. Four primary methods will be used: 1) participant observation in families'homes and in the clinic; 2) longitudinal audio/video recordings of focal activities in these settings; 3) in-depth interviews with adolescents, their parents, and clinic staff; and 4) adolescents' self-recorded video diaries. By documenting and analyzing verbal and non-verbal communicative practices longitudinally, the research will illuminate whether and how adolescents and their families adjust their disposition toward pain and practices of pain communication within shifting social and cultural frameworks. In so doing, the study will not only investigate the social organization of pain communication, but it will also theorize the cultural processes of reproduction and change through which new forms of communication and subjectivity emerge over time. The findings will be of potential interest to researchers developing psychosocial interventions for pediatric chronic pain sufferers and their families. This award also will support the education of a social scientist.