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Flesh, Blood, Souls, and Households: Cultural Validity in Mortality Inquiry
Author(s) -
Nations Marilyn K.,
Amaral Mara Lucia
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.1991.5.3.02a00020
Subject(s) - ethnography , meaning (existential) , context (archaeology) , soundness , psychology , sociology , demography , geography , anthropology , archaeology , psychotherapist , linguistics , philosophy
In the developing world the deaths of impoverished infants and young children are frequently unrecorded in vital event registries. The authors argue that cultural validity or contextual soundness grounds the meaning of mortality inquiries as much as statistical standards. Ethnographic findings from northeast Brazil are incorporated into an alternative method to survey death; this technique is compared with two standard approaches (household surveys and vital registries) and found to increase accuracy and enrich the meaning of mortality rates. Generating quality ethnographic data permits health workers to develop culturally attuned methods to calculate these rates. Techniques tailored to context, together with standardized approaches, can best portray the magnitude of human suffering and loss.