Doctoral Dissertation Research: Education and Gendered Dilemmas in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

纽约大学博士生Barbara A.Andersen将在Rayna Rapp博士的指导下，调查非西方情况下西方专业标准在当地的实施和文化调解。研究的重点将是护理教育。这项研究将作为人种学研究在巴布亚新几内亚东部高地省的戈罗卡省进行。研究人员将采用多种社会科学方法，包括参与者观察、生活史访谈和对教育和临床环境中的话语实践进行分析。研究人员的重点研究问题是：1)护士如何学习接触生物医学的普遍类别和改变性别关系的当地背景？2)将护理归类为“女性工作”如何影响护士的科学和伦理框架？3)护理的性别划分是否影响临床环境中与患者的互动，如果是，如何影响？这项研究的发现将通过在巴布亚新几内亚和其他地方引入性别和文化变化的理论来促进文化人类学和相关学科的知识，以解决有关科学和医学培训在社会转型过程中的作用的问题。通过将卫生的政治经济学与专业实践联系起来，这项研究将加强对卫生保健系统如何与其所服务的人群的道德和文化价值观相互作用的了解。在发展中世界的许多地区，护士是管理妇女健康问题的第一线工作者，因此，这项研究的结果将与性别角色迅速变化的其他国家相关。该项目支持对一名社会科学家的培训。

New York University doctoral student Barbara A. Andersen, supervised by Dr. Rayna Rapp, will investigate the local implementation and cultural mediation of western professional standards in non-western situations. The focus of the resarch will be nursing education. The research will be carried out as an ethnographic study in the provincial town of Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. The researcher will employ of mix of social science methodologies, including participant-observation, life history interviews and analysis of discourse practices in educational and clinical settings. The investigator's focal research questions are: 1) How do nurses learn to engage with the universal categories of biomedicine and the local context of changing gender relations? 2) How does the classification of nursing as "women's work" affect nurses' scientific and ethical frameworks? 3) Does the gendering of nursing affect interactions with patients in clinical settings, and if so, how?Findings from this research will advance knowledge in cultural anthropology and allied disciplines by bringing theories of gender and cultural change, in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, to bear on questions about the role of scientific and medical training in processes of social transformation. By linking the political economy of health to professional practices, this research will enhance knowledge of how health care systems interact with the moral and cultural values of the populations they serve. Nurses are front-line workers managing women's health concerns in many parts of the developing world, so the results of this research will be relevant to other countries in which gender roles are changing rapidly. This project supports the training of a social scientist.