Papers by Emma Louise Backe
SSM-Mental Health, 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic showed the significant impact of epidemics on mental health and illustrated... more The COVID-19 pandemic showed the significant impact of epidemics on mental health and illustrated gaps in public health and epidemic response systems’ ability to respond to mental health and psychosocial needs. This study sought to identify the most and least helpful mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) strategies and elements for intervention in epidemics. An online survey with open ended questions was circulated via professional networks and listservs and completed by 11 MHPSS experts with experience in epidemics in July-August 2023. Data were analyzed using a thematic coding approach. Three case studies of MHPSS interventions from Liberia, South Africa, and Uganda are provided. The most helpful MHPSS strategies were seen as community-based, integrated with other response systems, inclusive of vulnerable populations, drawing on lived experience and peer support, and timely and rapid. Unhelpful strategies rely on unnuanced sensitization messages, are siloed, and lack community consultation. Case studies illustrate the complexities of delivery in context and highlight the importance of lived experience, community engagement, and local adaptation for success. MHPSS services can be employed nimbly and help respond to misinformation and disinformation but work best when integrated with other services. Capacity, particularly among community health workers, for these services must be elevated as a priority in emergency preparedness. While remote interventions are important, they cannot always reach those in most need and social connection matters. These considerations can guide recognition of mental health as an interconnected public health in epidemic response going forward.
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2024
This article explores the disparate and idiosyncratic implementation of the protection order (PO)... more This article explores the disparate and idiosyncratic implementation of the protection order (PO) process at magistrates’ courts in South Africa’s Western Cape, and the impact of this discordance upon survivors of domestic violence seeking assistance from the justice system. Drawing upon qualitative research undertaken by the authors from 1999 to 2022, we highlight crucial differences in PO papers, processes and actors across magistrates’ courts. Contrary to claims that the law is unified and standardized—offering the “maximum level of protection” for all survivors across the country—we illustrate that protection order applicants instead have widely differing experiences, dependent on the procedures, street-level bureaucrats and local legal cultures of their court. These differences have an inequitable and arbitrary effect which often deprives domestic violence survivors of access to justice while blaming those very same applicants for failing to “follow the process”.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Violence Against Women, 2021
The intersecting issues of intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol abuse in South Africa are ... more The intersecting issues of intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol abuse in South Africa are often characterized as “disasters.” Ethnographic research among women in Soweto demonstrates the different manifestations of IPV, perceptions of abuse, and coping mechanisms to manage harmful domestic relationships. Findings suggest a consistent relationship between excessive drinking patterns and IPV—most significantly, physical and emotional abuse—while indicating that domestic violence measures should include questions about stress. The authors also argue against pathologizing the relationship between IPV and alcohol abuse, to instead center the structured, sedimented ways that violence within the home has become a “normalized” disaster.
Feminist Anthropology, 2020
In ethnographic analyses of gender‐based violence (GBV), anthropologists working on the front‐lin... more In ethnographic analyses of gender‐based violence (GBV), anthropologists working on the front‐lines of advocacy and service delivery have increasingly adopted dual roles as activists and researchers. While these positionings have allowed for alternative fields of vision in the ethnographic process, less attention has been dedicated to what these roles do ethnographically, and the kinds of skills and core competencies advocacy roles teach us as feminist anthropologists. If front‐line work has become a tacit best practice of ethnographies in contexts of GBV, then we must ask what kinds of training and preparation is necessary for contemporary anthropologists who want to pursue research among survivors or care providers responding to conditions of violence. I propose that we need to develop capacity‐building strategies that more transparently address these implicit best practices as part of our feminist ethics of care. This investment in capacitating care would acknowledge the moral compulsion to research the experiences and needs of survivor populations, while also considering how we equip ourselves to respond to the specialized needs of survivors, and the forms of care work with survivors necessitates.
Violence and Gender, 2018
Abstract The growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networking sit... more Abstract The growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networking sites (SNS) has generated new opportunities for violence, particularly aimed at women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities. The types of abuse that can occur on and through ICT and SNS represent the phenomenon of cyberviolence, including, but not limited to, cyberbullying, online harassment, cyber dating abuse, revenge porn, and cyberstalking. The authors undertook a literature review with the following aims: (1) evaluate how cyberviolence has been broadly conceived and studied in the scientific literature, and (2) assess the state of primary research in the cyberviolence field, identify gaps, and provide directions for future research. A search of peer-reviewed literature on cyberviolence published between 2006 and 2016 was conducted in May and June of 2016 through Academic Search Complete, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. These were read, prioritized, and analyzed against inclusion criteria. Where applic...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2018
A Crisis of Care: The Politics and Therapeutics of a Rape Crisis Hotline Medical Anthropology Qua... more A Crisis of Care: The Politics and Therapeutics of a Rape Crisis Hotline Medical Anthropology Quarterly [rh]A Crisis of Care [ab]This article explores the politics and contingencies of care provided to survivors of sexual assault on a rape crisis hotline in the U.S.'s mid-Atlantic region. The support provided to survivors on the hotline represents a crisis of care, one fomented by the victim services sector's failure to address the limitations of a crisis-oriented paradigm or survivors' chronic trauma. The tension between the survivor-centered model of the hotline and the mental health needs of clients represents a friction of utility-a misalignment between the care hotline advocates provide and the support survivors seek. The anonymous care and internal contradictions of the hotline also results in high rates of vicarious trauma for advocates. Given the polysemic dimensions of care exhibited on the hotline, the service represents a form of negative care, one that accounts for gaps in survivors' care yet still fails to empower proactive means of recovery. [sexual violence, trauma, care] Before the ringing begins, I can see my phone screen light up with a call from the rape crisis hotline, directed to my personal cell phone for my shift that evening. I close my eyes to take a deep breath This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. before reaching for the phone and accepting the call: -Rape crisis center: This is a hotline advocate speaking. How can I support you this evening?‖ In our hotline contact log, there is a section to document the type of call we received and our affective responses to the exchange, ranging from great, good, and neutral to bad. The question invites a moment of self-reflection-both on our efficacy as advocates in the survivor-centered crisis intervention model of the hotline, and on our emotional well-being as volunteers working on the front-lines of sexual violence response. In almost two years of serving as a hotline advocate, my affective composure and sense of success often verge toward ambiguity, though hardly neutrality. Initially, I came to work with survivors of sexual violence out of care-caring about the individuals who have had to endure the physical, psychic, and social wounds of sexual violence and its attendant traumas, and a desire to provide care and attend to the suffering-medically, politically, and representationally-of survivors. As an ethnographer and a hotline advocate at a rape crisis center in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, my fieldwork coalesced around the politics and praxes of care under conditions of crisis, the alignment and incongruity of the needs survivors of sexual violence seek through the hotline, and the kinds of care advocates are permitted to provide. Medical anthropologists, attending to the -hidden sites of violence‖ and the terrain of the suffering body (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2003, 23), have increasingly turned their attention to the regimes of care and recognitions afforded to survivors of sexual violence.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2022
The Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group affirms that the state of mental health in Acade... more The Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group affirms that the state of mental health in Academic Anthropology needs serious attention and transformation. We respond to structural inequities in academia that exacerbate mental distress among graduate students and other anthropologists who experience oppression, by putting forward a policy statement with recommendations to create more equitable learning and working environments. [mental health, policy, system transformation, structural inequities, workplace]
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 2021
All material supplied via Jukuri is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights... more All material supplied via Jukuri is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. Duplication or sale, in electronic or print form, of any part of the repository collections is prohibited. Making electronic or print copies of the material is permitted only for your own personal use or for educational purposes. For other purposes, this article may be used in accordance with the publisher's terms. There may be differences between this version and the publisher's version. You are advised to cite the publisher's version. This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2022
The Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group affirms that the state of mental health in Acade... more The Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group affirms that the state of mental health in Academic Anthropology needs serious attention and transformation. We respond to structural inequities in academia that exacerbate mental distress among graduate students and other anthropologists who experience oppression, by putting forward a policy statement with recommendations to create more equitable learning and working environments. [mental health, policy, system transformation,
structural inequities, workplace]
With the inception of the "freak show" in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, deformity, ph... more With the inception of the "freak show" in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, deformity, physical abnormality and unusual facial features were sensationalized into entertainment spectacle, covertly managed, constructed and displayed for the macabre amusement of sideshow visitors and audience members. Due to the historical manipulation and fabrication of freaks' bodies by sideshow and Odditorium managers to heighten or diminish their "freakish" qualities, the freak show can be conceptualized as an aesthetic space. By framing these social events as an aesthetic space, it is possible to analyze and deconstruct these bodies in the same way a work of art is appraised and valued. A freak is made, rather than born, and the physical elements that constitute freakishness are entirely dependent on the cultural norms and values of the time. Thus the cultural category of a freak is both historically and socially contingent. Through this aesthetic lens, I examine the visual culture of freak shows in order to interrogate the methods of representation employed by sideshow managers. These methods neither disrupted nor subverted the culturally coded conceptions of normality or deformity but, rather, reinforced them. Managers utilized exoticism or aggrandizement, falsified life-story pamphlets and visual chicanery to deliberately separate the audience from the freaks as objects of amusement and maintain social hierarchy. As the nineteenth century wore on, however, freak shows lost their cultural currency, which can be seen as the result of developing anthropological theory and medicine where spectators began to pathologize the deformed body.
Ramah McKay’s Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique (2018) is concerned with t... more Ramah McKay’s Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique (2018) is concerned with the tensions embedded in Mozambique’s health system across governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations, transnational clinicians, local volunteers, and patients with chronic illness. McKay’s ethnography traces the competing visions of care for patients in Mozambique within a health system marked by institutional multiplicity, complicated political legacies, and economic uncertainty. Medicine in the Meantime explores the in-between spaces elicited by the co-existence of public health frameworks and humanitarian medical models, helping critical medical anthropology elucidate the complicated support networks contemporary citizens and patients must navigate.
Violence Against Women
The intersecting issues of intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol abuse in South Africa are ... more The intersecting issues of intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol abuse in South Africa are often characterized as “disasters.” Ethnographic research among women in Soweto demonstrates the different manifestations of IPV, perceptions of abuse, and coping mechanisms to manage harmful domestic relationships. Findings suggest a consistent relationship between excessive drinking patterns and IPV—most significantly, physical and emotional abuse—while indicating that domestic violence measures should include questions about stress. The authors also argue against pathologizing the relationship between IPV and alcohol abuse, to instead center the structured, sedimented ways that violence within the home has become a “normalized” disaster.
Anthropological Quarterly
Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry , 2021
Idioms of distress have been employed in psychological anthropology and global mental health to s... more Idioms of distress have been employed in psychological anthropology and global mental health to solicit localized understandings of suffering. The idiom “thinking too much” is employed in cultural settings worldwide to express feelings of emotional and cognitive disquiet with psychological, physical, and social consequences on people’s well-being and daily functioning. This systematic review investigates how, where, and among whom the idiom “thinking too much” within varied Sub-Saharan African contexts was investigated. We reviewed eight databases and identified 60 articles, chapters, and books discussing “thinking too much” across Sub-Saharan Africa. Across 18 Sub-Saharan African countries, literature on “thinking too much” focused on particular sub-populations, including clinical populations, including people living with HIV or non-communicable diseases, and women experiencing perinatal or postnatal depression; health workers and caregivers; and non-clinical populations, including refugees and conflict-affected communities, as well as community samples with and without depression. “Thinking too much” reflected a broad range of personal, familial, and professional concerns that lead someone to be consumed with “too many thoughts.” This research demonstrates that “thinking too much” is a useful idiom for understanding rumination and psychiatric distress while providing unique insights within cultural contexts that should not be overlooked when applied in clinical settings.
Feminist Anthropology, 2020
In ethnographic analyses of gender‐based violence (GBV), anthropologists working on the front‐lin... more In ethnographic analyses of gender‐based violence (GBV), anthropologists working on the front‐lines of advocacy and service delivery have increasingly adopted dual roles as activists and researchers. While these positionings have allowed for alternative fields of vision in the ethnographic process, less attention has been dedicated to what these roles do ethnographically, and the kinds of skills and core competencies advocacy roles teach us as feminist anthropologists. If front‐line work has become a tacit best practice of ethnographies in contexts of GBV, then we must ask what kinds of training and preparation is necessary for contemporary anthropologists who want to pursue research among survivors or care providers responding to conditions of violence. I propose that we need to develop capacity‐building strategies that more transparently address these implicit best practices as part of our feminist ethics of care. This investment in capacitating care would acknowledge the moral compulsion to research the experiences and needs of survivor populations, while also considering how we equip ourselves to respond to the specialized needs of survivors, and the forms of care work with survivors necessitates.
Violence and Gender, 2018
The growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networking sites (SNS) ... more The growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networking sites (SNS) has generated new opportunities for violence, particularly aimed at women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities. The types of abuse that can occur on and through ICT and SNS represent the phenomenon of cyberviolence, including, but not limited to, cyberbullying, online harassment, cyber dating abuse, revenge porn, and cyberstalking. The authors undertook a literature review with the following aims: (1) evaluate how cyberviolence has been broadly conceived and studied in the scientific literature, and (2) assess the state of primary research in the cyberviolence field, identify gaps, and provide directions for future research. A search of peer-reviewed literature on cyberviolence published between 2006 and 2016 was conducted in May and June of 2016 through Academic Search Complete, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. These were read, prioritized, and analyzed against inclusion criteria. Where applicable, gray literature was also incorporated to supplement any gaps in the scientific literature. The results indicate a lack of consistent, standard definitions or methodologies used to conceptualize and measure cyberviolence. Most of the literature focuses on cyberbullying among heterosexual adolescents in high-income countries. Demographic data on perpetrators are limited, prevalence estimates are inconsistent, and almost no primary research has been conducted in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Cyberviolence is not only associated with negative psychological, social, and reproductive health outcomes but also it is linked with offline violence, disproportionately affecting women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities. There is an urgent need to develop a uniform set of tools to examine cyberviolence internationally. Future research should explore the gendered dimensions of cyberviolence and the continuum between online and offline violence, including in LMIC.
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Papers by Emma Louise Backe
structural inequities, workplace]
structural inequities, workplace]