Doctoral Dissertation Research: Navigations of Chronic Illness and Autonomy among Miskitu Lobster Divers in Atlantic Nicaragua

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Doctoral student Clinton D. Humphrey, supervised by Dr. Paul V. Kroskrity, will undertake research on how social, political, and economic contexts affect people's understanding of their own physical and psychological experience. The project is important because it will contribute to a growing body of research in the social sciences that examines how socio-cultural processes may configure the ways in which individuals attend to, perceive, and conceptualize bodily sensations in times of illness. The research will be conducted for 14 months with Miskitu lobster divers on the Autonomous Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. The Miskitu divers' livelihoods depend on deep diving but it too frequently results in chronic and debilitating decompression illness, also known as the bends. The researcher will use a unique video analysis technique to delineate how discourse, patterns of embodied interaction, and cultural resources shape Miskitu encounters with this illness. His video recordings of lobster divers will allow him to conduct microanalyses of discourse, gesture, gaze, and bodily movement, to determine how these divers attune their senses and navigate their working bodies in the unique undersea environment as they simultaneously attend to signs of danger and sickness. Follow-up interviews and participant observation with targeted research participants will explore local explanations of illnesses. Collectively, these data will guide an investigation of how Miskitu lobster divers perceive, endure, and endeavor to make sense of the ailments they feel in their bodies in different social and environmental contexts.This study advances research on sensory experience with a distinctive micro-analytical emphasis on discourse, embodied-communicative interaction, and political-economic processes. The researcher will share research findings with local programs designed to assist these commercial divers and their families. Supporting this research also supports the education of a graduate student.