Locating Abnormality with a Touch: Problem-Attentiveness in Home Medical Massage Sessions

• In Event: 378 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 14. Microsociology

Abstract

This paper focuses on a method of communication by a massager during a routine home medical- care massage session. The massagers communicate their haptic feelings with the patient by describing the state of the treated body part or noticing some problem with it. Drawing video-recorded data of 12 home medical massage-session, this paper demonstrates that there is a tendency for the massagers to detect the ‘abnormality’ while engaging in the massage therapy. In routine sessions, the patients are assumed to have some kind of troubles (i.e., abnormality) with/without their knowledge. The massager’s orientation to finding such trouble is displayed in the following two ways: (a) reporting the abnormality in the treated body part, and (b) reporting ‘no problem’. The paper also discusses by communicating the finding of the problem, massagers display their attentiveness to the abnormality, which can be a potential problem for a patient and also reveals the method of communication as legitimization of their encounters.

Author

• Satomi Kuroshima, Meiji Gakuin University