title: Sensing the Airs: The Cultural Context for Breathing and Breathlessness in Uruguay.
abstract: The sensory experience of breathing, particularly the sensation of breathlessness in the case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a rich though understudied topic in medical anthropology. Fieldwork in Uruguay made it clear to me that to study the sensorial experience of breathlessness, I would also have to study the widely shared cultural conceptualizations and practices surrounding air, breath, and health. In this article, I illustrate ethnographically how the experience of breathing and breathlessness is closely tied to perceptions of air outside the body - in particular humidity, temperature change, wind, and contamination. In conceptualizing breath as the mechanism and air the medium for environmental embodiment, I bring together sensorial medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, and the anthropology of wind and climate. My findings, in light of similar findings across contexts, suggest that a body transformed by COPD is hyperperceptive and hypersensitive to changes in air.
authors.affiliation: a Division of Social and Behavioural Sciences, School of Public Health and Family Medicine , University of Cape Town , Cape Town , South Africa.
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wainwright
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D002980:Climate; D004417:Dyspnea / Q000208:ethnology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000208:ethnology*; D014583:Uruguay / Q000208:ethnology
keywords: COPD; Uruguay; air; breath; phenomenology; sensorial anthropology