Abstract

CRUZ MARTIN, Ana Gabriela et al. Dilemmas, Dissonances, and Ethical Conflicts of Field Work in Medical Anthropology in Institutional Contexts of Health Care. rev.latinoam.bioet. [online]. 2022, vol.22, n.1, pp.131-148.  Epub June 21, 2022. ISSN 1657-4702.  https://doi.org/10.18359/rlbi.5905.

Ethnographic fieldwork, which implies the encounter with otherness, is used by medical anthropology to approach the understanding of social problems related to health, illness, care and death. The objective of the work was to carry out an ethical reflection on various conflictive situations experienced by three anthropologists during their research in Mexico, by means of the analysis of their field diaries. To this end, a group and interdisciplinar y analysis was carried out from an ethical perspective. The conflicts found were classified as: 1. Ethical dilemmas (such as sincerity vs. concealment of information); 2. Ethical dissonances (such as fairness in informants' access to medical services, access and identity of the anthropologist in the field, limits of the intervention, reciprocity, and the emotions of the researcher); and 3. Others (ethical conflicts such as the observation of medical paternalism and the disciplinary differences between anthropological and medical work). This analysis allowed us to understand, through an ethical-methodological alert, the epistemological, methodological and, mainly, the ethical positions of the researchers who, surreptitiously, guide the construction of the anthropological task. Likewise, the investigation allowed us to glimpse the responsibility of the actions or inactions of the researcher vis a vis of the people observed within a context of health care.

Keywords : Ethical Analysis; Medical Anthropology; Mexico; Field Work.

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