Embodied Protests: Emotions and Women's Health in Bolivia

Interpretations of Culture in the New Millennium

by Maria Tapias

Embodied Protests examines how Bolivia's hesitant courtship with globalization manifested in the visceral and emotional diseases that afflicted many Bolivian women. Drawing on case studies conducted among market- and working-class women in the provincial town of Punata, Maria Tapias examines how headaches and debilidad , so-called normal bouts of infant diarrhea, and the malaise oppressing whole communities were symptomatic of profound social suffering. She approaches the narratives of distress caused by poverty, domestic violence, and the failure of social networks as constituting the knowledge that shaped their understandings of well-being. At the crux of Tapias's definitive analysis is the idea that individual health perceptions, actions, and practices cannot be separated from local cultural narratives or from global and economic forces. Evocative and compassionate, Embodied Protests gives voice to the human costs of the ongoing neoliberal experiment.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2015

Reviews

[Saul Chan Htoo Sang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maria Tapias, an anthropology professor at Grinnell College (whom we were able to meet and discuss about the book), in Embodied Protests examine how global factors, especially the neoliberal economic reforms in Bolivia affected the Bolivian women's emotions (which in turn affects their health). Equipped with mindfulness and ethical exploration, Tapias researched for this book for 2 years in Bolivia. As a small part of the research, Tapias questioned the western medicine culture, not in the sense of its effectiveness, but in the sense of its condescending approach towards Bolivian beliefs. More importantly, however, Tapias argue that the neoliberal economic reform, which brought the sense of individuality and capitalistic thinking into the Bolivian communities, created "failed sociality" because the communal economic expectation (which is to share what you have with other people) changes, which then leads to distrust and stress among Bolivian communities, which women especially felt, since there is already a power-dynamics which discriminates women.

Recommended to anyone who wants to learn about how national economic changes can affect the well-being of the communities. Especially relatable for Myanmar, because, arguably, economic reforms in Myanmar created the Rakhine-Rohingya crisis.