Colombia has one of the highest rates of landmine injuries in the world. At the same time, Colombia is becoming a world leader in "integrated" rehabilitation medicine for the war wounded. Under the supervision of Dr. Emily Martin, graduate student, Emily Cohen, will investigate the following question: what is its social and cultural impact of "integrated" rehabilitation on the everyday lives of patients, non-patients, and medical professionals.
Research will be conducted with individuals associated with rehabilitation units that treat soldiers and civilians injured by landmines in Bogota, Medellin, and Cali, Colombia. Ms. Cohen will use a mixed-methods social science research strategy. She will video tape everyday conversations and activities, ask individuals to draw their idea of the disabled and rehabilitated body, video tape public performances where amputees and rehabilitation medicine take center stage, and participate in casual social gatherings at refugee homes and record informal talk such as jokes, songs, and storytelling. These data will reveal how people popularly express understandings of the human body, the self, disability, kinship, and gender. Finally, she will track relevant popular media and do archival research.
As one of the first ethnographic studies of rehabilitative medicine, the research will contribute to new social science theory regarding the social and cultural consequences of long-term war social trauma. It also may lead to better strategies for rehabilitative medicine as well as alternative understandings of what practitioners' work means to themselves, their patients, and the larger national and international community. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.
