Sammendrag
In this article, I examine how understandings of gender and culture are articulated by employees in the field of Sami mental health care. These articulations can reflect both positive and negative discourses about gender and culture in Sami communities. The article is based on qualitative material where I have interviewed people who work with mental health care in Sami areas. I am inspired by Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity, where gender is created and recreated through performative actions. I combine this with perspectives on myths and realities (Kuokkanen 2007; Nystad 2003) related to understandings of gender in Sami communities. I argue that employees in mental health care must reflect on how they themselves can potentially contribute to reinforcing negative stereotypes in encounters with Sami patients, by unreflectively reproducing them, which can give the Sami patients poorer health service.
Vis fullstendig beskrivelse