Acceso usuarios
Abstract The article discusses patient objectification from the viewpoint of the objectifying, rather than the objectified party. Resisting a dichotomy between physician-objectifying and ethnographer-humanising, the author portrays objectification not as an essential by-product of professional tendencies, epistemological bases, practical necessities and processes of socialisation but as highly dependent upon context. A further look is given to the settings within which the discursive dynamics of �objectivity� and �experience� come about through artefacts, space, symbols, bodily appearances and so on. The author portrays her relationship with Omer, a brain cancer patient whom she has followed over a period of 18 months and then focuses on her observations of his brain surgery. The fluctuations in the author�s relationship with Omer (as a subject and as a body, alternately) are brought within their immediate contextual elements.
