My understanding des histoires vicues et en explore la valeurpsyrhologiquedans ledomaine of the w... more My understanding des histoires vicues et en explore la valeurpsyrhologiquedans ledomaine of the wor Id Was de LZ santl mentale (bien-itre) des i nf or med by Iraniennes qui habitent L e Vancouver Mltropolitain. La question cl6
The long history of Islam in the United States is not well understood. The first Muslims to come ... more The long history of Islam in the United States is not well understood. The first Muslims to come to this country were African slaves followed by Muslims from the Ottoman Empire. As time went by, other Muslims from different parts of the world followed suit. Today, Muslims form part of the sociocultural and religious diversity of US society. A unique feature of this community is its diversity, a function of different schools of thought as well as different migration trajectories in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, class, and countries of origin. Its diversity has generated a rich body of knowledge on health care that can enrich the American biomedical model. Yet, this knowledge has been subjugated and remains unrecognized owing to structural exclusion of Muslims exacerbated by 9/11. The aim of this article is to highlight health beliefs and practices of American Muslims with the view to recognizing their contribution to American society, leading to greater acceptance of this communit...
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2018
In this age of research accountability, community-based ethnography is positioned to move from th... more In this age of research accountability, community-based ethnography is positioned to move from the periphery of the discipline of anthropology to the center. With increased recognition of its importance, this subdiscipline has gained greater depth and breadth giving rise to critical questions such as: How do we collaborate with interlocutors to acquire an understanding of their everyday struggles for justice? What forms should such collaboration take given the intricate and entangled connections between the local and the global? How do we take into account the politics of community organizations? How do we negotiate the power dynamics in the field? In terms of a response, community-based ethnographers have put forward praxis-oriented and innovative methodologies complemented with case studies. Following a historical overview, this entry foregrounds three thematic challenges that community-based ethnography addresses. First, it engages with critiques about possibilities and problems in working with and representing the "other" who has traditionally been part of the colonized world; second, it endeavors to illustrate that its commitment to social change and activism is not devoid of praxis; third, it seeks to gain increasing recognition in the global arena intricately connected with the local. The entry concludes by delineating a paradigmatic shift between action-based and theory-oriented anthropology, outlining community-based ethnography's efforts to solidify advocacy as a legitimate approach to social analysis. Historical overview Community-based ethnography has been an integral part of the discipline of anthropology since its inception in the early part of the twentieth century. Its early contributions have been problematic as it largely, and at times inadvertently, served the imperialistic project of studying the colonized world for the purpose of governance. Over the years, its focus has shifted toward exploring sociopolitical issues identified through immersion in the lives of the subject populations. While community-based ethnography has experienced tension with theory-based academics, this tension is negotiated and resolved at a time when the need for activist and advocacy work is great as a result of endemic violence, global capitalism, and displacement of populations, among other developments. At no time in history has social inequality and social injustice assumed so much importance on a scale that is vast and global. Through methods such as participant observation and active listening, community-based ethnographers seek to work collaboratively with subjects and organizations across the board, locally and globally.
In the wake of displacement, people are tasked with reconstructing a sense of home in a new and u... more In the wake of displacement, people are tasked with reconstructing a sense of home in a new and unfamiliar location. In this article, we consider how the experience of displacement complicates our understanding of what it means to be at home by exposing the significant labour that goes into its imagination and re-imagination. We examine practices of homemaking after displacement through two interrelated themes: (a) narratives of home, where we discuss how displaced persons nurture a sense of home through memory and storytelling; and (b) textures of home, where we emphasize how a sense of home is sustained or re-imagined through material objects. Within this discussion, we maintain that there is a continuity between the violence of displacement and the violence of relocation, as the task of re-imagining home is often compounded by structural factors including socioeconomic marginalization and racialization in the country of settlement. We conceptualize displacement as an injustice an...
It is only in the last decade that issues of violence and social suffering have received substant... more It is only in the last decade that issues of violence and social suffering have received substantive attention from anthropologists. The fact that both traumatic and everyday forms of suffering have become endemic to our world may be one motivating factor behind this attention. But there is also the issue of disciplinary rejuvenation. In anthropology, important questions have surfaced in the wake of critical reflection on how we research and write about the people whom we study at close range. Given the discipline’s conventional interest in peoples of the Third World (read: the colonized), anthropologists witnessed acts of violence and cultural genocide inflicted on local populations. Yet we remained mute and chose to focus on the “cultures” of disappearing worlds.2 Such a depoliticized stance gave us a comfort zone that we still enjoy as we continue to write for institutions that support and reward us for our work. We rarely research or write for the people whom we study, even if t...
How do Canadian Muslims engage with the exclusive and ambiguous terrain of palliative care? An et... more How do Canadian Muslims engage with the exclusive and ambiguous terrain of palliative care? An ethnographic response to this question requires addressing a systemic paradox, namely, patient-centered and compassionate care is contingent upon diagnoses of terminal illness. Drawing upon long-standing research among Muslims in metropolis Vancouver, this study uses the construct of entangled emplacement to show the multiple ways in which research participants engage with this paradox. Allied closely to the unconventional ethnographic methods of mindful walking, memory work, and imagining home, the construct of entangled emplacement captures the research participants' expansive understanding of palliative care; this includes the process of displacement and reimagining a diasporic "home", tangled elements of which come into play at the time of death. In the light of neoliberal restructuring of the Canadian health system, I explore the implications of research findings for deep-level conversations across socio-cultural and medicalized boundaries, and tangled pathways of what has come to be known as "palliative care".
Much has been written on the traumatic effects of suffering and structural violence, as well as t... more Much has been written on the traumatic effects of suffering and structural violence, as well as the adverse impact of social policies on marginalized communities. Anthropological contribution to this literature concerns the act of witnessing as opposed to mere observation. Witnessing, I argue in this paper, makes it necessary for us to listen to the language of silence as expressed through the performative act: "the body remembers." I explore three avenues to illustrate how silence, the marker of human agency, may be recognized as language: (a) retrieval of voice of the sufferer, a first step towards healing; (b) testimonial speaking where one voice represents a polyphony of other voices; and (c) deployment of body as a mode of communication. To elucidate, these points I draw upon the migratory tale of an aging Iranian woman.
Enhancing Quality of Life of the Developmentally Disabled
Practicing Anthropology, 1992
Rehabilitation professionals and front-line staff are presented with daily evidence of the value ... more Rehabilitation professionals and front-line staff are presented with daily evidence of the value of enhancing the quality of life (QOL) of people with developmental disabilities; they are also presented with evidence of the fact that community service programs do not invariably do so. A considerable amount of energy has been exerted toward determining what constitutes QOL and how it may be assessed and fostered in different settings. In the process, the need for rehabilitation professionals to be knowledgeable of, and able to access, community resources has received increasing recognition. This paper draws upon ethnographic research to assess the QOL of noninstitutionalized developmentally disabled persons and to propose a means of enhancing not only the quality of their lives but also that of their neighbors.
Exploring the Disjuncture Between the Politics of Trauma and Everyday Realities of Women in Afghanistan
Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 2010
... It is at this level that we should address the issue of trauma and social ... This entails wh... more ... It is at this level that we should address the issue of trauma and social ... This entails what Zarowsky (2004) referred to as sociopolitical care: A reflexive anthropology/scholarship of ... that attends to individual experience as well as structural or overt inequality and violence must go ...
The Narrative Representation of Mental Health: Iranian Women in Canada
Abstract The literature on mental health suffers from a lack of emphasis on the broader understan... more Abstract The literature on mental health suffers from a lack of emphasis on the broader understanding of this topic, which is primarily framed as illness/depression. This lack has its roots in the Western dualistic epistemology that has forestalled alternative ways of being. I argue that mental health (inclusive of well-being) constitutes an integral part of life that is brought into sharper relief in the narrative accounts of disrupted lives. Illustrative examples are drawn from the settlement narratives of two Iranian women in Metropolis Vancouver. These narratives show how newcomers draw upon competing discourse and practices to reconfigure the meaning of their lives. The importance of the narrative genre is highlighted for a more nuanced understanding of the construction of lives subject to the impact of the dominant host culture.
Synopsis-The notion of the ethnographic field site as a bounded and discrete unit has come under ... more Synopsis-The notion of the ethnographic field site as a bounded and discrete unit has come under increased scrutiny with some reaching the realization that anthropologists and their subjects of research form part of an interdependent word. A key concern identified is that demarcation of experiential knowledge of field from theoretical discourse of the academia has obscured and problematized the issue of multiple and translocal identities. Deconstruction of the process (fieldwork) and product (written account) of anthropological enterprise has, nevertheless, sustained the assumption that it is the anthropologists who are the quintessence of mobility, a status that makes them the omnipotent "seers." On the other hand, the people in the field, (the natives), are immobilized in settings where they are studied. This form of reification affects researched, Third World women the most, as their active engagement in the construction of multiple identities remains unnoticed. This paper engages in the debate over the reconstruction of the field, based on my indigenous research experiences among Ismaili Muslims in Western Canada and Bhora Muslims in Lamu (Kenya). These experiences are discussed in relation to multiple identities of a Bohra Muslim woman.
My understanding des histoires vicues et en explore la valeurpsyrhologiquedans ledomaine of the w... more My understanding des histoires vicues et en explore la valeurpsyrhologiquedans ledomaine of the wor Id Was de LZ santl mentale (bien-itre) des i nf or med by Iraniennes qui habitent L e Vancouver Mltropolitain. La question cl6
The long history of Islam in the United States is not well understood. The first Muslims to come ... more The long history of Islam in the United States is not well understood. The first Muslims to come to this country were African slaves followed by Muslims from the Ottoman Empire. As time went by, other Muslims from different parts of the world followed suit. Today, Muslims form part of the sociocultural and religious diversity of US society. A unique feature of this community is its diversity, a function of different schools of thought as well as different migration trajectories in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, class, and countries of origin. Its diversity has generated a rich body of knowledge on health care that can enrich the American biomedical model. Yet, this knowledge has been subjugated and remains unrecognized owing to structural exclusion of Muslims exacerbated by 9/11. The aim of this article is to highlight health beliefs and practices of American Muslims with the view to recognizing their contribution to American society, leading to greater acceptance of this communit...
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2018
In this age of research accountability, community-based ethnography is positioned to move from th... more In this age of research accountability, community-based ethnography is positioned to move from the periphery of the discipline of anthropology to the center. With increased recognition of its importance, this subdiscipline has gained greater depth and breadth giving rise to critical questions such as: How do we collaborate with interlocutors to acquire an understanding of their everyday struggles for justice? What forms should such collaboration take given the intricate and entangled connections between the local and the global? How do we take into account the politics of community organizations? How do we negotiate the power dynamics in the field? In terms of a response, community-based ethnographers have put forward praxis-oriented and innovative methodologies complemented with case studies. Following a historical overview, this entry foregrounds three thematic challenges that community-based ethnography addresses. First, it engages with critiques about possibilities and problems in working with and representing the "other" who has traditionally been part of the colonized world; second, it endeavors to illustrate that its commitment to social change and activism is not devoid of praxis; third, it seeks to gain increasing recognition in the global arena intricately connected with the local. The entry concludes by delineating a paradigmatic shift between action-based and theory-oriented anthropology, outlining community-based ethnography's efforts to solidify advocacy as a legitimate approach to social analysis. Historical overview Community-based ethnography has been an integral part of the discipline of anthropology since its inception in the early part of the twentieth century. Its early contributions have been problematic as it largely, and at times inadvertently, served the imperialistic project of studying the colonized world for the purpose of governance. Over the years, its focus has shifted toward exploring sociopolitical issues identified through immersion in the lives of the subject populations. While community-based ethnography has experienced tension with theory-based academics, this tension is negotiated and resolved at a time when the need for activist and advocacy work is great as a result of endemic violence, global capitalism, and displacement of populations, among other developments. At no time in history has social inequality and social injustice assumed so much importance on a scale that is vast and global. Through methods such as participant observation and active listening, community-based ethnographers seek to work collaboratively with subjects and organizations across the board, locally and globally.
In the wake of displacement, people are tasked with reconstructing a sense of home in a new and u... more In the wake of displacement, people are tasked with reconstructing a sense of home in a new and unfamiliar location. In this article, we consider how the experience of displacement complicates our understanding of what it means to be at home by exposing the significant labour that goes into its imagination and re-imagination. We examine practices of homemaking after displacement through two interrelated themes: (a) narratives of home, where we discuss how displaced persons nurture a sense of home through memory and storytelling; and (b) textures of home, where we emphasize how a sense of home is sustained or re-imagined through material objects. Within this discussion, we maintain that there is a continuity between the violence of displacement and the violence of relocation, as the task of re-imagining home is often compounded by structural factors including socioeconomic marginalization and racialization in the country of settlement. We conceptualize displacement as an injustice an...
It is only in the last decade that issues of violence and social suffering have received substant... more It is only in the last decade that issues of violence and social suffering have received substantive attention from anthropologists. The fact that both traumatic and everyday forms of suffering have become endemic to our world may be one motivating factor behind this attention. But there is also the issue of disciplinary rejuvenation. In anthropology, important questions have surfaced in the wake of critical reflection on how we research and write about the people whom we study at close range. Given the discipline’s conventional interest in peoples of the Third World (read: the colonized), anthropologists witnessed acts of violence and cultural genocide inflicted on local populations. Yet we remained mute and chose to focus on the “cultures” of disappearing worlds.2 Such a depoliticized stance gave us a comfort zone that we still enjoy as we continue to write for institutions that support and reward us for our work. We rarely research or write for the people whom we study, even if t...
How do Canadian Muslims engage with the exclusive and ambiguous terrain of palliative care? An et... more How do Canadian Muslims engage with the exclusive and ambiguous terrain of palliative care? An ethnographic response to this question requires addressing a systemic paradox, namely, patient-centered and compassionate care is contingent upon diagnoses of terminal illness. Drawing upon long-standing research among Muslims in metropolis Vancouver, this study uses the construct of entangled emplacement to show the multiple ways in which research participants engage with this paradox. Allied closely to the unconventional ethnographic methods of mindful walking, memory work, and imagining home, the construct of entangled emplacement captures the research participants' expansive understanding of palliative care; this includes the process of displacement and reimagining a diasporic "home", tangled elements of which come into play at the time of death. In the light of neoliberal restructuring of the Canadian health system, I explore the implications of research findings for deep-level conversations across socio-cultural and medicalized boundaries, and tangled pathways of what has come to be known as "palliative care".
Much has been written on the traumatic effects of suffering and structural violence, as well as t... more Much has been written on the traumatic effects of suffering and structural violence, as well as the adverse impact of social policies on marginalized communities. Anthropological contribution to this literature concerns the act of witnessing as opposed to mere observation. Witnessing, I argue in this paper, makes it necessary for us to listen to the language of silence as expressed through the performative act: "the body remembers." I explore three avenues to illustrate how silence, the marker of human agency, may be recognized as language: (a) retrieval of voice of the sufferer, a first step towards healing; (b) testimonial speaking where one voice represents a polyphony of other voices; and (c) deployment of body as a mode of communication. To elucidate, these points I draw upon the migratory tale of an aging Iranian woman.
Enhancing Quality of Life of the Developmentally Disabled
Practicing Anthropology, 1992
Rehabilitation professionals and front-line staff are presented with daily evidence of the value ... more Rehabilitation professionals and front-line staff are presented with daily evidence of the value of enhancing the quality of life (QOL) of people with developmental disabilities; they are also presented with evidence of the fact that community service programs do not invariably do so. A considerable amount of energy has been exerted toward determining what constitutes QOL and how it may be assessed and fostered in different settings. In the process, the need for rehabilitation professionals to be knowledgeable of, and able to access, community resources has received increasing recognition. This paper draws upon ethnographic research to assess the QOL of noninstitutionalized developmentally disabled persons and to propose a means of enhancing not only the quality of their lives but also that of their neighbors.
Exploring the Disjuncture Between the Politics of Trauma and Everyday Realities of Women in Afghanistan
Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 2010
... It is at this level that we should address the issue of trauma and social ... This entails wh... more ... It is at this level that we should address the issue of trauma and social ... This entails what Zarowsky (2004) referred to as sociopolitical care: A reflexive anthropology/scholarship of ... that attends to individual experience as well as structural or overt inequality and violence must go ...
The Narrative Representation of Mental Health: Iranian Women in Canada
Abstract The literature on mental health suffers from a lack of emphasis on the broader understan... more Abstract The literature on mental health suffers from a lack of emphasis on the broader understanding of this topic, which is primarily framed as illness/depression. This lack has its roots in the Western dualistic epistemology that has forestalled alternative ways of being. I argue that mental health (inclusive of well-being) constitutes an integral part of life that is brought into sharper relief in the narrative accounts of disrupted lives. Illustrative examples are drawn from the settlement narratives of two Iranian women in Metropolis Vancouver. These narratives show how newcomers draw upon competing discourse and practices to reconfigure the meaning of their lives. The importance of the narrative genre is highlighted for a more nuanced understanding of the construction of lives subject to the impact of the dominant host culture.
Synopsis-The notion of the ethnographic field site as a bounded and discrete unit has come under ... more Synopsis-The notion of the ethnographic field site as a bounded and discrete unit has come under increased scrutiny with some reaching the realization that anthropologists and their subjects of research form part of an interdependent word. A key concern identified is that demarcation of experiential knowledge of field from theoretical discourse of the academia has obscured and problematized the issue of multiple and translocal identities. Deconstruction of the process (fieldwork) and product (written account) of anthropological enterprise has, nevertheless, sustained the assumption that it is the anthropologists who are the quintessence of mobility, a status that makes them the omnipotent "seers." On the other hand, the people in the field, (the natives), are immobilized in settings where they are studied. This form of reification affects researched, Third World women the most, as their active engagement in the construction of multiple identities remains unnoticed. This paper engages in the debate over the reconstruction of the field, based on my indigenous research experiences among Ismaili Muslims in Western Canada and Bhora Muslims in Lamu (Kenya). These experiences are discussed in relation to multiple identities of a Bohra Muslim woman.
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