Pain Management

Anthropology has long engaged in explorations of pain as part of the human condition. Sociocultural values and norms shape expressions and understandings of pain, as well as pain management practices globally. Here, we focus on physical pain to highlight the intersections of race, gender, class, and position in the global neoliberal economy as major themes in shaping attitudes toward pain and accessibility of pain management. Pain is always intersubjective, producing social relations and invoking (sometimes-tenuous) bonds of care, while also revealing power dynamics, inequalities, and struggles for recognition on interpersonal and global scales. We present ethnographic approaches to studying pain, gender and pain, pain and birth, opioids and pain, cancer and end-of-life care, and chronic pain and aging to critically consider the role of social and material life, language, agency, and structural inequalities in the quest to express, recognize, and care for pain.