Life History and Real Life: Fetal Origins of Disease, Ethnography, and History

Abstract

The relentless procession of illness, disability, death, and grief manifest at Numbulwar in recent years has compelled me to ask how this has happened to people whom I once saw as so vital. When and where did this plague of ill health begin? In a study where health and departures from health are major themes, it seems particularly important, but also difficult, to identify relevant but not obvious factors (Farmer 2004). Ethnographers primarily concerned with the here and now of participant observation nevertheless find it necessary to include less visible, less immediate information in their portrayals of the human condition; they routinely incorporate historical material in their accounts. In the field of Indigenous Australia, the injustices of colonization have been highlighted by anthropologists and others addressing issues of health inequality (e.g., Carson et al. 2007; Reid and Lupton 1991:xii; Saggers and Grey 1991). History, though, is just as multifaceted as ethnography. On what basis can we identify components of the past that are most germane for a current portrayal? And how are we to understand the extra-personal processes and structures that interpenetrate people’s real life experience, in this case experiences of ill health and death? Just how does the destruction of a way of life create a legacy of premature morbidity and mortality? This is where models come in. In this chapter, as is also customary in much of anthropology, I move across disciplines for these, in line with the general orientation of this work, to the biological and medical sciences.