Emotional Health Work of Women With Female Genital Cutting Prior to Reproductive Health Care Encounters

We used institutional ethnography to explore the social relations that shaped the reproductive health care experiences of women with female genital cutting. Interviews with eight women revealed that they engaged in discourse that opposed the practices of cutting female genitals as a human-rights violation. This discourse worked to protect those affected by the practices, but also stigmatized female genital cutting, making participants anticipate experiencing stigmatization during health care. Women’s engagement in this discourse shaped their emotional health work to prepare for such encounters. This work included navigating feelings of worry, shame, and courage to understand what to expect during their own appointment; learning from family/friends’ experiences; and seeking a clinic with the reputation of best care for women with female genital cutting. It is important to strive for more inclusive health care in which women do not have to engage in emotional health work to prepare for their clinical encounters.

Shifting Positionalities in a Time of COVID-19: The Transnational Public Health Doctor and Ethnographer

Ethnographic research is characterised by in-person engagement with individuals and groups within a social setting, usually over an extended timeframe. These elements provide valuable insights which cannot be gained through other forms of research. In addition, such levels of involvement in “the field” create complex, shifting researcher-participant relationships which themselves shape the course of the project and its findings. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many research projects, but impacts on ethnographic research, with its emphasis on physical presence in the field and interpersonal relationships, reveals much about these key elements of our praxis.I discuss how the pandemic influenced the progress of an ethnographic research project, based in Malawi, including consideration of how, as lead for the project, my clinical/“public health” positionalities interacted with relationships in the village and the arrival of COVID-19 in Malawi. This account reveals shifting intersubjectivities of researchers and participants as the pandemic brought changes in the nature of the engagement, from ethnographic explorations into the roles of smoke in everyday life, through fieldwork suspension, and contextualised COVID-19 response. These experiences demonstrate how a basis of reflexive ethnographic engagement with communities can underpin thoughtful responses to upcoming challenges, with implications for future “global health” work, both within and beyond the pandemic context.

Introduction to special issue on institutional influences on retirement, health and well-being

Countries make differing policy choices. They can serve as a scientific laboratory for drawing lessons on the policy paths to follow or to avoid and the consequences of those institutional choices on individuals at older ages. In this special issue we bring together six articles that evaluate the influence of institutions on retirement decisions, health and well-being of older adults using common data that have emerged with the international network of health and retirement studies to study key life outcomes such as health, work, and lifecycle transitions at older ages.