Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Spirit Possession, Disease Classification, and Emergent Infectious Disease in Benin, West Africa

研究生詹姆斯·L·肯内尔将在卡罗琳·F·萨金特博士的指导下，研究疾病分类系统如何在当地生物医学、全球卫生和宗教领域运行，以及它们如何塑造治疗行为和选择。这项研究将集中于关于一组特定的皮肤传染病的知识和寻求治疗的行为的变化。其目标是阐明个人疾病经历与更广泛的社会过程的联系方式。这项研究将在贝宁西南部的Aja人中进行。研究人员将采用混合方法，包括：参与者观察、自由列出和堆积分类、焦点小组、直接观察、半结构化访谈、文本和内容分析、疾病叙述和生活史，以及非正式访谈。将特别关注与疾病类别相关的伏都神萨克帕塔。研究重点是宗教和医学知识的相互关联系统，以及个人和社区如何试图理解关于健康、痛苦和他们所生活的世界的变化。这项研究将试图了解这一特定人群如何利用当地的宗教和保健实践，如医疗仪式治疗和灵魂附体，创造关于传染病的新含义，并根据当地的政治和生物医学动态和全球卫生倡议制定针对疾病的创新应对措施。全球卫生倡议包括疫苗接种和健康教育计划、国家宗教治疗师组织、政府对沃顿宗教的制度化、以及外部宗教影响，如传教和沃顿宗教的国际联系。这项研究具有重要意义，因为它将有助于医学人类学关于医学知识生产和变化的理论。它还将支持社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student James L Kennell, supervised by Dr. Carolyn F. Sargent, will undertake research on how disease classification systems operate within local biomedical, global health, and religious domains, and how they shape therapeutic behaviors and choices. This research will focus on variations in knowledge and therapy-seeking behavior concerning a particular set of infectious diseases that manifest on the skin. The goal is to illuminate the ways in which individual illness experience articulates with broader social processes. The research will be conducted among the Aja people of southwest Benin. The researcher will use a mixed-methods approach, including: participant observation, free listing and pile sorts, focus groups, direct observation, semi-structured interviews, text and content analysis, illness narratives and life histories, and informal interviews. Particular attention will be given to the Vodoun deity Sakpata, who is linked to the disease category of interest.The study focuses on interlocking systems of religious and medical knowledge and how individuals and communities attempt to make sense of change regarding health, suffering, and the world in which they live. The study will seek to understand how this particular population utilizes local religious and health care practices, such as medico-ritual healing and spirit possession, to create new meanings concerning infectious disease, and to formulate innovative responses to illness with respect to local political and biomedical dynamics and global health initiatives. Global health initiatives include vaccination and health education programs, the state organization of religious healers, the institutionalization of vodoun religion by the government, and external religious influences such as missionization and the international connections of vodoun religion. The research is important because it will contribute to medical anthropological theory regarding medical knowledge production and change. It also will support the education of a social scientist.