Based on ethnographic research conducted in neurology clinics across three sites in Kenya and Canada, we examine cross-cultural differences in how people describe their everyday sensory experiences in relation to their health conditions. We focus on sensations of heat, cold, burning, and freezing experienced by patients living with neurological symptoms. We examine how these sensory experiences influence patients’ communication of neurological conditions – such as tremors, paralysis, seizures, sensory sensitivities, and pain – to their neurologists. We analyze cultural and linguistic differences in patients’ accounts of somatic experiences linked to brain injuries and in medical providers’ responses. By paying close attention to clinical encounters and conversations between patients and clinicians, we observe socio-cultural variations that reflect local beliefs about the body, mind, and biomedicine in Canada and Kenya. Specific sensory experiences associated with neurological conditions are described, along with their context. Finally, we explore the historical and social forces shaping these perceptions of illness and disability in anthropological discussions of sensory ethnography and localized spaces of action, considering the differences and similarities between two former British colonies.
Opande et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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