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Dissertation Information for Beverly A. Davenport

NAME:
- Beverly A. Davenport

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Medical Anthropology

SCHOOL:
- University of California, San Francisco (USA) (2005)

ADVISORS:
- Judith Barker

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Driving driven: Urban transit operators, hypertension, and stress(ed) management

Abstract: The question of how the social gets in the body has recently become more salient. I address an aspect of that question through an ethnographic study of San Francisco Municipal Railway transit operators. Grounded in medical anthropology, I use material from social epidemiology, occupational health, and psychology to argue that the key to understanding the high rates of hypertension within this population--an internationally observed phenomenon--is their everyday experience of threats to their social selves. My analysis explores the interconnected meanings of work, work-related stress and hypertension and uses practice theory to situate these meanings in the larger political-economic and social context of blue collar service work in the United States.

This research investigated how urban transit operators with hypertension managed their blood pressure while coping with the difficult circumstances of their work lives. The study looked at how bus drivers learned from their doctors to take care of themselves and how they translated medical advice in their daily routines. In contrast to other research results, I found that this largely black study population was aware of the dangers of hypertension and actively attempted to manage it through both lifestyle modifications and regular use of prescribed medications. I found that their motivation for self care could be found in their social ties and influences, including the relationships they had with their physicians. Though health knowledge mattered, it was the "reasons of the heart" that impelled and sustained their healthy choices.

This work highlights the power of the stress discourse to obfuscate the primary cause of hypertension in the lives of these men and women. My data show that despite the transit operators' awareness of occupational sources of stress in their lives, they did not use this to explain their own hypertension. Instead, they relied on individual biological explanations. Further, they did not push their union to demand changes in the structure of their work. The discourse conflated work stress with "the stress of life," making it seem natural and inevitable--something that individuals must manage--rather than something that individuals acting in social groups could change.

MPACT Scores for Beverly A. Davenport

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2010-02-24 15:30:25

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