A calculus of new refugee culture : identity, Afghans, and the medical dialect of suffering

• Main Author: Khan, Yasir
• Other Authors: Young, Allan (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2002
• Subjects: Group identity > Afghanistan.; Refugees > Afghanistan.; Refugees > Mental health > Afghanistan.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=29511

In recent decades the ongoing rise of refugee populations around the world has provided a unique opportunity to study the impact of forced migrations on the identities of individuals and collectivities. The simultaneous emergence of the novel social phenomenon of 'refugee societies' has captured anthropological interest in the way in which 'refugee identity' is currently imagined and represented. A useful entry point for exploring representations of 'refugee' identity within a new culture of refugees is found in the recurrent notion of suffering. 'Suffering' is conceptualized here as an ideological grammar that characterizes a variety of language games contained in a broader 'language of suffering'. Focus is directed towards the 'medical dialect of suffering' and its role in articulating the identities of refugees and representing their experiences of suffering. Medical discourse, practices, and technologies can drive the transformation of the categorical 'refugee' identity into a 'medicalized' and 'traumatized' identity: revealing how medicine not only reflects cultural meanings of suffering, but can also project new cultural meanings of suffering. The relevant case of Afghan refugees illustrates how cultural identities can be conceptualized as shifting, strategic, and multiplicitous---realities that can be a blend of both coherency and contradiction.