Blurring Boundaries
Tantchou, Josiane
Blurring Boundaries - 2010.
66
Anthropological research on surgical practice is rare. Joan Cassel (1986, 1987) studied the surgeon’s personality in relation with the specificities of surgery as a specialty. Marie-Christine Pouchelle (2003) analyzed the “touch” in the hospital, with a special emphasis on its surgical aspects. Pearl Katz (1981) proposed a typology of the operating theater according to the criteria of sterile and non sterile. Hirschauer (1991) analyzed the process of surgery as an encounter of two disciplined bodies: the patient’s body and the surgeon’s body. We follow Katz (1981) analysis and propose a reflection on how, in the context of a health system crisis, the operating theater and its equipment are appropriated. We show that, in this context, restrictions that make the operating theater a confined space are blown apart, the boundaries of the sterile and non sterile vanish, the surgical practice is stripped of its thickness, and the surgical area is trivialized. Far from proposing a final analysis, this article refocuses the debate on the African health systems failures by approaching the surgical theater as part of a technological system, the hospital, which can be appropriated in various ways depending on the socioeconomic context.
Blurring Boundaries - 2010.
66
Anthropological research on surgical practice is rare. Joan Cassel (1986, 1987) studied the surgeon’s personality in relation with the specificities of surgery as a specialty. Marie-Christine Pouchelle (2003) analyzed the “touch” in the hospital, with a special emphasis on its surgical aspects. Pearl Katz (1981) proposed a typology of the operating theater according to the criteria of sterile and non sterile. Hirschauer (1991) analyzed the process of surgery as an encounter of two disciplined bodies: the patient’s body and the surgeon’s body. We follow Katz (1981) analysis and propose a reflection on how, in the context of a health system crisis, the operating theater and its equipment are appropriated. We show that, in this context, restrictions that make the operating theater a confined space are blown apart, the boundaries of the sterile and non sterile vanish, the surgical practice is stripped of its thickness, and the surgical area is trivialized. Far from proposing a final analysis, this article refocuses the debate on the African health systems failures by approaching the surgical theater as part of a technological system, the hospital, which can be appropriated in various ways depending on the socioeconomic context.
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