I conducted a four-month ethnographic fieldwork study to document the stories of thirteen post-kidney-transplant minority patients and three nephrologists at Boston Medical Center. My research explores how patients’ interactions with health professionals, medical regimens, dialysis treatments, and adaptation to living with transplanted kidneys constantly shape their identities and perceptual worlds. Patients’ narratives highlighted the emotional struggles they encountered along the path of End-Stage Renal Disease, which unfolded as distinct experiences influenced by their varied backgrounds. The majority of my patient-participants lived on the verge of poverty, and in some cases, their insurance status caused delays in their being registered on the transplant waiting list, making them endure a long wait. Some patients were afraid of wearing short sleeves because they thought the scars on their arms from dialysis treatment would lead others to think they were gangsters. Instantiations of various theories emerged from the saturated data and narrative analysis, from Bourdieu’s concept of habitus with regard to the process of how patients alter their consciousness through interactions with medicine to Foucault’s ideas of power relations and technologies of the self that address the issues of agency and power that influence the formation of patients’ identities. The intersection of these theoretical frameworks led me to develop the critical medical anthropological-oriented concept of biological citizenship. This paper examines 1) the ways in which “race” interacts with the theoretical concept of biological citizenship and 2) the ways in which socioeconomic status and race tailor a kidney transplant patient’s illness experience, and related discourse.

This thesis examines health promotion discourse in Ottawa during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore what it means to be a responsible citizen. Using press releases/special statements and tweets from January 2020 to November 2022 from city officials and city departments in Ottawa, this thesis employed critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore potential changes in health promotion discourse and meaning-making, asking how citizenship was remade in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings support claims that health is increasingly neoliberalized, with a greater emphasis placed on individual health as a condition of responsible citizenship. This increased neoliberalization ultimately shifts our attention away from state responsibilities vis-à-vis citizens, and in this case, the neglected role of local governments in managing health crises.

A biological citizenship can be important to gain human rights. This is evident for the disability movement in Nepal, which recently have gained a lot of ground in their struggle for their rights. The NGO Nepal Hemophilia Society (NHS) is a part of this movement and has also profited from this progress. However hemophilia is disease that mostly transmitted to males, which means that the female members of NHS is not affected medically by the disease but socially to a high degree. This thesis aims to explore how the female members handle this situation and find an agency in their vulnerable position.

In the early 2000s, the idea of an “autism epidemic” spurred State action to expand research into autism’s causes and corresponding efforts at prevention, an effort overseen by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC). However, the language of autism prevention in the IACC’s Strategic Plan changed dramatically between 2009 and 2017, from the wholesale prevention of autism to prevention of its “most disabling aspects.” Through an analysis of IACC meeting transcripts during this timeframe, I trace the process by which this language was changed, with particular attention to the often-conflicting ways in which autistic self-advocates and non-autistic parent advocates framed autism itself. These conflicting conceptions of autism led to conflicting biological citizenship claims regarding the value of prevention, to which the IACC responded by attempting to appease both sides through language without substantially changing its aims. This process highlights the importance of framing in biological citizenship claims, as well as the persistence of the biopower State in asserting the need to regulate the existence of disability in the population.

No description available.