Homes, Homeliness, and Otherness in Medical Anthropology “at Home”

Resumé

Since the 1990s, “medical anthropology at home” has been used to describe ethnographic research on health, illness, and care conducted in the anthropologist’s own society. While the notion has mainly been debated as a methodological issue within anthropology, it is perceived in this article as an analytical concern with broader relevance for discussions in qualitative health research. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Denmark, the article analyzes two empirical cases: one from research among people diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and one from research in the acute healthcare system. Focusing on concrete fieldwork situations, the article explores how experiences of being “at home”, “not at home”, and “not not at home” are negotiated, shift, and intertwine in fieldwork situations that initially appear familiar. The article draws on Hartmut Rosa’s phenomenologically inspired conceptualization of “home” (2019) and Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology of the alien (2011) as analytical resources for examining how familiarity, resonance, and otherness shape ethnographic knowledge production. Through this combination of empirical analysis and conceptual reflection, the article argues that “at home” can be understood as a situational, changeable, and relational condition that shapes what can be noticed, articulated, and known in ethnographic and qualitative studies of health, illness, and care. By proposing a relational perspective that acknowledges that distinctions between “home” and “not home”, “familiar” and “unfamiliar” are not always clear-cut, the article invites readers to reflect on researcher involvement and the epistemic conditions of knowledge production in familiar health research settings.