View article

This investigation sheds light on questions of health and well-being among Tamil refugees who have escaped the civil war in Sri Lanka and resettled in Northern Norway. In the small fishing villages along the arctic coast, the Tamils have found a safe place to stay; they work in the fishing industry and have re-established many aspects of a Tamil community. Many Tamils tend to visit the local health care center with what the physicians refer to as "diffuse aches and pains", which the medical professionals find difficult to diagnose and treat. As biomedical approaches seem insufficient in explaining these pains, this study employs perspectives that understand health as embedded in social relations and cultural values. To explore the complex nexus between health and social life, it is proposed an interpretation based on perspectives of embodiment and focus on issues of practical life and somatization. In response to relevant questions regarding change and agency, I suggest turning the analysis towards phenomenological concepts of "self as orienting capacity" (Csordas 1994) and "being-in-the-world" (Merleau-Ponty 1962 [1945]), as well as a semiotic approach to signs (Peirce 1932) as "expressions of the moment". These perspectives emphasize how individuals, on an existential level, perceive, position, and figure themselves in everyday life experiences and in their wider social and cultural environments. In light of these concerns, the ethnography introduces Tamil persons and families situated in day-to-day situations and contextualized in existential worlds, through rich descriptive vignettes. Within studies on refugee populations there is a …