One outpatient clinic, multiple fibromyalgias: ethnographic study in a multidisciplinary reference center for the treatment of the syndrome.

• Grant number: 24/07950-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Christiano Key Tambascia
• Grantee: Ana Carolina Verdicchio Rodegher
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a syndrome characterized by chronic musculoskeletal pain, besides manifestations of fatigue, sleep disorders and cognitive and psychiatric changes. In the International Classification of Diseases number 11 (ICD-11), which came into force at the beginning of 2022, it was included in the category of "generalized chronic pain". The recognition of the chronic nature of pain has been mobilized in the current Brazilian political landscape by patient groups advocating for the condition to be classified as a disability. It is estimated that the condition affects between 2.5% and 5.0% of the global population, with its majority prevalence in women. In this research project I seek to understand how medicine constructed the clinical framework of FM and how health professionals and patients perform and produce it in their daily lives. To this end, I will adopt as a methodological perspective the carrying out of an ethnography of science focused on the processes of scientific disclosure and the materialities that shape the condition. I was inspired by the work of AnneMarie Mol (1999; 2002) as a basis for carrying out my fieldwork in an outpatient clinic for people with fibromyalgia. I will pursue the "multiple" fibromyalgias, that is, the "different versions" (MOL, 1999) of the illness that are performed in the daily life of this reference center. On the other hand, I take FM as a locus to understand the ways in which medicine currently produces scientific mechanisms of disclosure in the creation of its clinical frameworks, especially those classified as "functional". In this sense, it will be important to consider the broader movements in the medical-scientific field involved in the process of constructing these conditions. With this aim, I will use the historiographical perspective as a way of investigating the intertwinings and dissonances that surround the production of clinical categories considered functional over time, as well as what forms of disclosure are managed for this purpose.