Anthropology in Action

This is the first special issue of 2007, a double issue featuring an international range of contributors who have come together to examine social health and well-being amongst migrants. Not only do the contents of the articles have great integrity—in both senses of the word—but so too does their applied theoretical persuasion: ethnographic humanism. Collectively, these articles argue for anthropology to work sensitively, politically and personally with informants, to view them as ‘agentive selves’ who—in these cases— skillfully negotiate new lives for themselves in urban Western contexts.

The articles in this volume reinforce the power of ethnographic humanism, of anthropology in action. The focus is on the relationship between macro political forces and their influence on the varied experiences of health in advanced industrial capitalist contexts. Our approach views migrants as capable agents negotiating new lives for themselves and confronting the challenges they face. We strongly advocate socially informed policy that offers at minimum recognition to migrants as full fledged members of the new society that they have voluntarily or involuntarily migrated to.

The constitution, the law of the land of the modern state, is fertile ground for the Eurocentric imagination of the Canadian polity as a result of the resiliency of Victorian-era sentiments. The ethno-racial hierarchy contained within this political imagery merges well with the public health mandate process of 'othering'. Othering situates the causes of disease and illness in foreign bodies rather than in the social structures of industrial capitalism. Chief among its morbid symptoms, othering produces a sense of alienation in those subjected to it. Sri Lankan Tamils are one of the newer migrant populations who have been subjected to, and have resisted this intrinsically violent othering process. This article examines the Canadian constitution as it relates to ethno-racial classification, and then explores how this scheme is reproduced in common experiences of the public health system and its effects on the health and well-being of Canadian Tamils.

During a period of about 15 years, Tamil refugees have resided in the small fishing villages along the arctic coast of northern Norway. Employing an ethnographic approach that emphasizes agency and experience in everyday life, this study describes how Tamils face a lack of crucial social and religious relationships and arenas that provide recognition and meaning to their daily lives. Not being able to give voice to their social experiences, the Tamils suffer from bodily aches and pains. As part of the Tamils' search for recognition, community and quest for well-being, they have relocated to places that provide a more complete Tamil community. To assess whether the Tamils' choice of leaving the fishing villages is a success or failure is a complex matter. Exploring the intricacies of this decision, this article discusses the links between the 'narrative of suffering' and the Tamils' decision to move.

Canada struggles to bolster immigration, especially in the Maritime Provinces that exist outside the current flow of migration to central or western Canada. Policy aimed at resolving this issue prioritizes practical and economic factors while ignoring the more subtle and personal facets of the decision to migrate. In this article, policy is coupled with human experience to inform new directions in research and implementation. The landscape of food and eating is the centre point of my analysis because shops and restaurants catering to Asian foods play important roles in constructing an environment favourable to immigration. Indeed, my research participants used food as a means of expressing notions of well-being and feelings of 'home' in a new setting. With a focus on the foodscapes in Halifax, Nova Scotia this article explores the role of food in how Vietnamese immigrants experience life in the Canadian Maritimes.

Migrating to another country is potentially fraught with both challenges and potential opportunities. This article examines ways in which mature Chilean, Chinese and Somali women who migrated to Canada deploy personal and communal resources to imbue shifting relations and novel spaces with new meanings. Through these activities, they create a place for themselves on Canadian soil while remaining linked to their homelands. I argue that the ability of immigrant and refugee women to reconstruct their lives—often under conditions of systemic inequalities—is evidence of their resilience, which consequently has a positive effect on health and well-being.

This article considers how immigrant retention relates to family obligations, drawing a complex portrait of a common family dilemma involving the care of aging kin. The ethnographic life-history approach offers an important perspective on how health and well-being are not simply structured by formal access to institutions of care, but by the socio-cultural, economic and geographic flexibility of families to accommodate their needs. Analysis draws on the interdependant migration histories of a family of six adult sisters originating in Tanzania. In the case of this family, the dilemma surrounding the care of aging parents is not so much caused by migration's disruption of traditional filial obligations. Instead, it is the effect of social pressures stirred in both sending and receiving countries, which frame opportunities for eventual social integration, relocation or sometimes reluctant repatriation. A reflexive approach argues for the active presence of ethnographers in policy debates.

This essay explores the differences between a practice called body modification and the behaviour known as self-injury (or self-harm, self-inflicted injury, self-mutilation, etc.), in which individuals purposefully harm themselves to get relief from strong emotion or in an attempt to gain control over themselves or their emotions. Although some consider both self-injury and body modification to be synonymous, I argue that self-injury is more like an addiction to many sufferers, making it like a mental illness or a disease. I use a narrative interview with a friend called 'Eva' to illustrate these differences from a self-harmer's point of view, and hope to show that while body modifiers are often proud of their transformations and view the process as a rite, self-harmers, in contrast, are often secretive and ashamed of their behaviour or addiction.

The Airmen and the Headhunters. By Judith M. Heimann. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, 2007, 289 pp, £17.99, hardback, ISBN 978-0-15-101434-7.

Shadows of War: Violence, Power and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. By Carolyn Nordstrom. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, 306pp, $55. ISBN: 0520242416.

Children's Places: Cross Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Karen Fog Olwig and Eva Gollov. London: Routledge, 2003, 255pp, £23.99 ISBN 0-415-29641-2.