‘Culture’ is a key concept in the social sciences. It also figures prominently in health science discourses. Yet, it is an imprecise and politically charged term. Due to a variety of factors, health care professionals may tend to use notions of culture that can be easily applied. Dangers are posed when using simplified culture concepts, however, because they act as ‘interpretive lenses’ - lenses that may generate cultural stereotypes, lead health professionals to miss key interactions and processes in the provision of care, and simplify the cultural complexities surrounding the position(s) of both the health care providers and their clients. Two cases of eldercare are analysed to demonstrate the multi-layered intricacies of the concept of culture. The overall point is that ‘culture’ is a highly complex and dynamic term; the way in which it is conceptualized and used has enormous consequences for health care.
Adachi, K. (1991). The enemy that never was: A history of the Japanese Canadians. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart .
2.
Ahmad, W.I.U. (1993). Making black people sick:‘Race’, ideology and health research. In W.I.U. Ahmad (Ed.), ‘Race’ and health in contemporary Britain, pp. 11-33. Buckingham: Open University Press .
3.
Anderson, J.M. (1987). Migration and health: Perspectives on immigrant women . Sociology of Health and Illness, 9(4), 410-438 .
4.
Anderson, J.M. and Kirkham, S.R. (1998). Constructing nation: The gendering and racializing of the Canadian health care system. In V. Strong-Boag , S. Grace , A. Eisenberg and J. Anderson (Eds.), Painting the maple: Essays on race, gender, and the construction of Canada, pp. 242-261. Vancouver: UBC Press .
5.
Anderson, J.M. and Reimer Kirkham, S. (1999). Discourses on health: A critical perspective. In H. Coward and P. Ratanakul (Eds.), A cross-cultural dialogue on health care ethics, pp. 47-67. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University .
6.
Anderson, J.M. , Blue, C. and Lau, A. (1991). ’s Womenperspectives on chronic illness: Ethnicity, ideology and restructuring of life . Social Science and Medicine, 33, 101-113 .
7.
Anderson, J. , Perry, J. , Blue, C. , Browne, A. , Henderson, A. , Khan, K.B. , Kirkham, S.R. , Lynam, J. , Semeniuk, P. and Smye, V. (2003). ‘Rewriting’ cultural safety within the postcolonial and postnational feminist project: Toward new epistemologies of healing . Advances in Nursing Science, 26(3), 196-214 .
8.
Anderson, K.J. (1991). Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial discourse in Canada, 1875-1980. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press .
9.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge .
10.
Bhabha, H. (1995). Cultural diversity and cultural differences. In B. Ashcroft , G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (Eds.), The post-colonial studies reader, pp. 206-209. London: Routledge .
11.
Bolaria, B.S. and Dickinson, H.D. , Eds. (1994). Health, illness, and health care in Canada, 2nd edn.Toronto: Harcourt Brace .
12.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
13.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power.Trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press .
14.
Browner, C.H. (1998). Varieties of reasoning in medical anthropology . Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12(3), 356-362 .
15.
Choy, W. (1995). The jade peony. Vancouver: UBC Press .
16.
Clifford, J. (1986). Introduction: Partial truths. In J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography, pp. 1-26. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
17.
Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. , Eds. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
18.
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J.L. (1991). Of revelation and revolution: Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
19.
Dorazio-Migliore, M.L. (1999). Eldercare in context: Narrative, gender, and ethnicity. Unpublished dissertation, University of British Columbia.
20.
Dougherty, M. and Tripp-Reimer, T. (1990). Nursing and anthropology. In T.M. Johnson and C.F. Sargent (Eds.), Medical anthropology: A handbook of theory and method, ch. 10. New York: Greenwood Press .
21.
Early, E. (1982). The logic of ‘well-being’: Therapeutic narratives in Cairo, Egypt . Social Science and Medicine, 16, 1491-1497 .
22.
Early, E. (1988). The Baladi curative system of Cairo, Egypt . Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 12(1), 65-85 .
23.
Freund, A. and Quilici, L. (1995). Exploring myths in women’s narratives: Italian and German immigrant women in Vancouver, 1947-1961 . BC Studies, 105-6(Spring/Summer), 159-182 .
24.
Gaines, A.D. and Hahn, R.A., Eds. (1982). Physicians of western medicine: Five cultural studies . Special Issue of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 6(3).
25.
Garro, L.C. (1994). Narrative representations of chronic illness experience: Cultural models of illness, mind, and body in stories concerning the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) . Social Science and Medicine, 38(6), 775-788 .
26.
Good, B.J. (1994). Medicine, rationality, and experience: An anthropological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
27.
Grace, S. , Strong-Boag, V. , Anderson, J. and Eisenberg, A. (1998). Constructing Canada: An introduction. In V. Strong-Boag , S. Grace , A. Eisenberg and J. Anderson (Eds.), Painting the maple: Essays on race, gender, and the construction of Canada, pp. 3-18. Vancouver: UBC Press .
28.
Hale, S.M. (1995). Controversies in sociology: A Canadian introduction, 2nd edn.Toronto: Copp-Clark Ltd.
29.
Iacovetta, F. (1992). Such hardworking people: Italian immigrants in postwar Toronto. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press .
30.
Kapferer, B. (2000). Star wars: About anthropology, culture and globalisation . Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11(2), 174-198 .
31.
Kleinman, A. (1980). Patients and healers in the context of culture: An exploration of the borderland between anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
32.
Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing and the human condition. New York: Basic Books .
33.
Kleinman, A. (1995). Writing at the margin: Discourse between anthropology and medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
34.
Kleinman, A. , Das, V. and Lock, M. (1996). Social suffering . Daedalus, 125(1), xi-xx .
35.
Kondo, D.K. (1990). Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
36.
Kunz, J.L. , Milan, A. and Schetagne, S. (2000). Unequal access: A Canadian profile of racial differences in education, employment and income. Canadian Race Relations Foundation. Toronto: Canadian Council on Social Development .
37.
Kuper, A. (1999). Culture: The anthropologists’ account. Cambridge: Harvard University Press .
38.
Leininger, M. (1970). Nursing and anthropology: Two worlds to blend. New York: Wiley .
39.
Leininger, M. (1978). Transcultural nursing: Concepts, theories and practices. New York: Wiley .
40.
Leininger, M. (1984). Care: The essence of nursing and health. Thorofare, NJ: Slack . (Reprinted by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1988.)
41.
Leininger, M. (1985). Qualitative research methods in nursing. New York: Grune & Stratton .
42.
Leininger, M. (1988). Leininger’s theory of nursing: Cultural care diversity and universality . Nursing Science Quarterly, 1(4), 152-160 .
43.
Levkoff, S. and Hinton, W.L., Eds. (1999). Aging, ethnicity, and dementia: Family caregiving . Special Issue of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 23(4).
44.
Lock, M. (1980). East Asian medicine in urban Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
45.
Lock, M. (1990). On being ethnic: The politics of identity breaking and making in Canada, or . Nerva on Sunday. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 14, 237-254 .
46.
Lock, M. (1993). Encounters with aging: Mythologies of menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
47.
Lock, M. (2001). The tempering of medical anthropology: Troubling natural categories . Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 15, 478-492 .
48.
Lock, M. and Gordon, D. (1988). Biomedicine examined. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers .
49.
Lock, M. and Kaufert, P.A. (1998). Introduction. In M. Lock and P.A. Kaufert (Eds.), Pragmatic women and body politics, pp. 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
50.
Lock, M. and Scheper-Hughes, N. (1990). A critical-interpretive approach in medical anthropology: Rituals and routines of discipline and dissent. In T. Johnson and C. Sargent (Eds.), Medical anthropology: A handbook of theory and method, pp. 47-72. New York: Greenwood Press .
51.
Lynam, M.J. , Henderson, A. , Browne, A. , Smye, V. , Semeniuk, P. , Blue, C. , Singh, S. and Anderson, J. (2003). Health care restructuring with a view to equity and efficiency: Reflections on unintended consequences . Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership, 16(1), 112-140 .
52.
MacDonald, R.A.J. (1996). Making Vancouver 1863-1913. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press .
53.
Mattingly, C. (1999). Healing dramas and clinical plots. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
54.
Migliore, S. (1989). Punctuality, pain, and present-time orientation among Sicilian-Canadians . Social Science and Medicine, 28(8), 851-859 .
55.
Migliore, S. (1997). Mal’uocchiu: Ambiguity, evil eye, and the language of distress. Toronto: University of Toronto Press .
56.
Migliore, S. (2001). From illness narratives to social commentary: A Pirandellian approach to ‘nerves’ . Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 15(1), 100-125 .
57.
Migliore, S. and DiPierro, E. , Eds. (1999). Italian lives, Cape Breton memories. Sydney, Nova Scotia: UCCB Press .
58.
Ng, R. (1993). Sexism, racism, Canadian nationalism. In H. Bannerji (Ed.), Returning the gaze: Essays on racism, feminism and politics, pp. 182-196. Toronto: Sister Vision .
59.
Nichter, M. (1992). Introduction. In M. Nichter (Ed.), Anthropological approaches to the study of ethnomedicine, pp. ix-xxii. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon & Breach Science Publishers .
60.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1984). Illness and culture in contemporary Japan: An anthropological view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
61.
Oiwa, K. , Ed. (1994). Stone voices: Wartime writings of Japanese Canadian Issei. Montreal: Vehicule Press .
62.
Omatsu, M. (1992). Bittersweet passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian experience. Toronto: Between the Lines .
63.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992). Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
64.
Statistics Canada . (1962). Census Canada, 1961. Population - ethnic groups. Bulletin 1.2-5. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationery .
65.
Statistics Canada. (2004). Available at http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/defdemo43.htm
66.
Stephenson, P.H. (2001). Expanding notions of culture and ethics in health and medicine to include marginalized groups: A critical perspective . Anthropologica, XLIII, 3-17 .
67.
Storch, J.L. , Rodney, P. and Starzomski, R. (2004). Toward a moral horizon: Nursing ethics for leadership and practice. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada .
68.
Strong-Boag, V. , Grace, S. , Eisenberg, A. and Anderson, J. , Eds. (1998). Painting the maple: Essays on race, gender and the construction of Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press .
69.
Suzuki, D. and Oiwa, K. (1996). The Japan we never knew: A journey of discovery. Toronto: Stoddart Books .
70.
Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
71.
Ward, W.P. (1982). The Japanese in Canada. Saint John, NB: Canadian Historical Association .
72.
Ward, W.P. (1990). White Canada forever: Popular attitudes and public policy toward Orientals in British Columbia, 2nd edn.Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press .
73.
Young, A. (1982). The anthropologies of illness and sickness . Annual Review of Anthropology, 11, 257-285 .
