KREW JAKO CIAŁO „OBCE” I „INDYWIDUALNE”. KREW I BIOTOŻSAMOŚĆ NA PRZYKŁADZIE ŚWIADKÓW JEHOWY W NIEMCZECH

Małgorzata Rajtar

Published: 2014-12-31

Vol. 58 (2014)

BLOOD AS AN ‘ALIEN’ AND ‘INDIVIDUAL’ BODY: BLOOD AND BIOIDENTITY AND JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES IN GERMANY

Małgorzata Rajtar

Abstract

Drawing on an ethnographic research with Witness patients and physicians in Berlin between 2010 and 2012, in this article I propose to look at an overtly visible and apparently familiar but at the same time understudied religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and particularly embodied medical experiences of ordinary Witnesses. Abiding by the biblical directive to “abstain from blood” that applies to consumption, storage, and transfusion of blood in its entirety and its major components have caused clashes with many physicians. Following recent scholarship on blood and blood transfusions as an index of relationality as well as scholarship on bioidentity, blood and/or organ transplantations allows me to address an intersecting area of medical anthropology, the anthropology of Christianity, and the new anthropology of kinship. I argue that hand in hand with the biblical directive, goes not only the mistrust in medicine’s ability to identify “clean” blood, the understanding of blood as an “alien” body but also a fear of contamination by blood that carries traits of a donor that may influence patient’s Christian identity

Keywords:

blood, Identity, medicine, Jehovah’s, Germany

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Rajtar, M. (2014). BLOOD AS AN ‘ALIEN’ AND ‘INDIVIDUAL’ BODY: BLOOD AND BIOIDENTITY AND JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES IN GERMANY. Etnografia Polska, 58, 101–116. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ep/article/view/84

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