Everyday Indicators? Anthropological insight into better metrics for chronic pain

Abstract (English)

This paper brings a decade of ethnographic research on chronic pain in Canada into conversation with anthropological theory on incommensurability to challenge conventional (biomedical) fixations on pain measurement. Briefly, my ethnographic research with primary care providers shows that they struggle deeply with the private, subjective nature of pain, and that their inability to test for it or measure its intensity beyond patient self-reporting makes caring for people with chronic pain extremely challenging. Furthermore, my collaborative ethnographic research with people with chronic pain who are socioeconomically marginalized richly documents how managing chronic pain is inextricably connected to their daily struggles of living with poverty, violence and trauma, gendered care work responsibilities, and an overarching minimization of women’s healthcare concerns. In this paper I bring these two findings into conversation with anthropological theory on incommensurability to suggest that “everyday indicators,” developed by and grounded in the lives and concerns of people with chronic pain, may offer better metrics for assessing and responding to chronic pain than those currently used in healthcare context – fixated as they are on aiming to quantify and standardize an experience that is fundamentally subjective and context-specific. In so doing, this paper takes up the panel’s call for ethnographic research that aims to understand pain outside of biological approaches.