In India\, pain medicine is an emergent specialisation shaping new practices around pa in\, its medical and social constitutions. Across Indian cities\, through e fforts of individual physicians\, an attempt is being made to establish and stabilise this field of practice as a distinct medical form. Each centre r eveals a unique iteration of pain\, tied to local worlds. At the Institute of Pain Management in Kolkata\, one of the most important sites in this eme rgent field\, medical work proceeds in a milieu of state supported health c are\, extractive industrial labour\, chronic suffering\, and dwindling indu stry. Through long term ethnographic research at this centre\, studying its diagnostic\, therapeutic and epistemic efforts\, this paper explores how p ain is recognised\, communicated and addressed. It attempts to understand p ain’s sociality\, i.e.\, how the challenges pain poses to language and soci al connection are overcome\, and to record the unique ways by which biomedi cal work proceeds amidst acute resource poverty and precarity. By dwelling on everyday encounters between members of the medical regime and persons li ving in chronic pain at this centre\, this talk will demonstrate the ethica l stakes in everyday practices around pain management\, how pain is excavat ed from phenomenological experiences into a biomedical object\, revealing a rigorous empathetic practice.
About the Speaker
Dr Shagufta K Bhangu is a Lecturer in the Department of Glo bal Health and Social Medicine. She joined King’s in 2020 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Wellcome-funded project\, ‘Grid Oncology : Remak ing Cancer Care in India’. She continues to be a member of this project tea m. She is also a part of the Culture\, Medicine and Power (CMP) research gr oup\, the Anti-Racism and Decolonising Steering Committee and the Politics of Cancer Network.
Dr. Bhangu’s research explores the emergence of ne w medical fields and imaginaries in South Asia. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork\, her doctoral research explored the medicalisation of pain\, medical epistemics and practices in a milieu of dwindling state-s upported healthcare\, industrial labour and chronic illness in Kolkata\, In dia. Her current project continues her ethnographic focus on medical care a nd patient worlds in a cancer hospital in Assam. In this frontier space\, s he is studying imaginations and practices of care\, community\, blame and r esponsibility\, and nationhood.
LOCATION:Case Room - Liu Institute for Global Issues GEO:49.260872;-123.113952 URL;VALUE=URI:https://sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/pain-medicine-and-labour/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://sppga.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/08/pain-medicine-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20231105T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR