Abstract

FAINZANG, Sylvie. Patient information between public space and anthropology: ethnography’s contribution to the debate. Etnográfica [online]. 2010, vol.14, n.1, pp.97-114. ISSN 0873-6561.

At some stage of public debate, anthropology must examine important social questions; but in order to properly fulfil its task, it must problematize such questions in ways that differ from those used in the public sphere. In this article we use research carried out on information and lies in the doctor-patient relationship to explore the role that the public debate on patient information played in the development of this research, while emphasizing the distinctive process of anthropological inquiry. We will look at how the research project developed both as an echo of and in disparity with the questions circulating on this matter in the public sphere. We will show that the role of the anthropologist, in order to develop an ethnographic approach, is to take distance from the public debate by transforming the research object through the gradual construction of the problem to be studied. We will also show what ethnography has contributed to the debate and how its observations have reoriented it, approaching it in more sociological and more critical terms.

Keywords : doctor-patient relationship; social inequalities; informed consent; cancer announcement; lie; autonomy.

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