Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
[Anthropology, ethnography, and narrative: intersecting paths in understanding the processes of health and sickness]
Gabriela M C Costa1, Dulce M R Gualda
1Programa de Pós-graduação Mestrado em Saúde Pública, Departamento de Enfermagem, Universidade Estadual da Paraíba, João Pessoa, PB, Brasil, 58038480.
Abstract:
The article discusses anthropology, ethnographic method, and narrative as possible ways of coming to know subjects' experiences and the feelings they attribute to them. From an anthropological perspective, the sociocultural universe is taken as a point of reference in understanding the meaning of the processes of health and sickness, using a dense ethnographic description from an interpretivist analytical approach. In this context, narratives afford possible paths to understanding how subjective human experiences are shared and how behavior is organized, with a special focus on meaning, the process by which stories are produced, relations between narrator and other subjects, processes of knowledge, and the manifold ways in which experience can be captured.
Related Concept Videos
Concepts of Health and Illness
Dimensions of Health and Illness
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention II
The agent-host-environment model states that disease results from...
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention I
The health belief model (HBM) attempts to predict health-related behavior in specific belief patterns. According to the HBM, a person's...
Classification of Illness
An illness is a response to a disease in which the person's level of functioning is changed compared with a previous level. The general classification of illness includes acute and chronic.
Acute illness is severe and...
Factors Affecting Illness
For instance, risk factors are connected to illness, disability,...
