It also proposes a different approach to doctor-patient communication, usually conducted from an ethnocentric perspective which does not take into account cultural, social and economic diversity. It reviews many topics that are somehow classical in doctor-patient communication analysis, but from a different point of view: issues such as the sequential organization of primary care encounters, diagnostic formulations, asymmetry and accommodation, etc., are now examined from a locally grounded ethnographic perspective. This change is not only theoretical but also political, as it helps understand patient practices of resistance, identity-making and solidarity in contexts of inequality.
Juan Eduardo Bonnin is Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Professor of Discourse Studies at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM). His latest book is Discurso político y discurso religioso en América Latina (Buenos Aires, Santiago Arcos, 2013).