Education & Health Research Hub Spring Speaker Series
The Structure of Pain and the Materiality of Suffering
Friday, March 11, 2022 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EST
Via Zoom: https://gmu.zoom.us/j/91994700418?pwd=OTJVRGxCYVNFa0tNMG9EMmRzQjJmZz09
The Structure of Pain and the Materiality of Suffering: Impacts of Knowledge, Policy, and Beliefs on Prescription Opioid Use in Morocco
Speaker: Cortney Hughes Rinker, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, George Mason University
The population in Morocco has started to grow older at a faster rate than in the past. Life expectancy has increased and the fertility rate has fallen. An aging population is often accompanied by a shift in disease burden from infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), usually incurable and accompanied by incapacitating symptoms. Human Rights Watch has even issued a statement on the urgent need for the wide-spread and rapid expansion of palliative care in Morocco. In this talk, I plan to workshop the beginnings of an article that sketches some of my findings from my ethnographic research conducted thus far in Morocco on pain management, with attention to the use of opioids to control pain during chronic and terminal illnesses. I draw on the approaches of Jason De León (2013) and Reinhard Bernbeck (2018) to the study of suffering, which prioritize the material aspects of suffering, the “things” attached to it or make its conditions possible, in my analysis of the structure of pain—or how the state, the politicization of care, and bureaucracy on multiple levels inform the ways that people experience illness and their bodies, and ultimately suffer with physical and emotional pain. Using data collected in Rabat (the capital city) and Marrakech (a major tourist destination), I dive into the materiality of pain and suffering: the notepads that physicians must write their prescriptions for opioids upon, their office cabinets they keep the copies of prescriptions in, the special licenses they must obtain to write prescriptions, and the documents patients must provide to pharmacies to get opioids prescribed to them. In analyzing these seemingly mundane or routine “things,” I situate pain and suffering and the use of pain medication within the socio-political context and the colonial history of Morocco and within diverse religious and cultural beliefs about death, mortality, the self, and sin.
Join us for this and future events in the Education & Health Research Hub Spring 2022 Speaker Series.
All events will be held via Zoom at https://gmu.zoom.us/j/91994700418?pwd=OTJVRGxCYVNFa0tNMG9EMmRzQjJmZz09
