The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
“Traveling Pains”: Embodied Metaphors of Suffering Among Southern Sudanese Refugees in Cairo
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a larger study conducted among Southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo, Egypt. "Illness talk" and body metaphors are the focus of the present work, which is based mainly on an analysis of the illness narratives of people attending a church-run medical clinic. The findings suggest that refugees use certain narrative styles in discussing their illnesses that highlight the interconnection of bodily ills and refugee-related trauma. The refugees narrated the histories of their illnesses in terms consistent and coterminous with their refugee histories, and articulated illness causes in terms of threatening assaults on their sense of self as human beings and as part of a distinct community and culture. The use of embodied metaphors to understand and cope with their current and past traumatic experiences was echoed in narratives that were nonillness related. Metaphors such as "the heart," "blood," and "body constriction" were consistently used to discuss social and cultural losses. Understanding the role that the body plays in experience and communication within a given cultural context is crucial for physicians and others assisting refugees.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Earlier qualitative research with southern Sudanese displaced populations [27, 28] similarly notes the importance of ‘thinking too much’, and suggests that psychological distress may be considered as a problem in and of itself.”
From Mental health and psychosocial support for South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda: a needs and resource assessment (2016) · cites this paper as [28]
In the citing paper
“Communal coping strategies (social support through connecting with elders, relatives, community members, religious institutes) are consistently mentioned in both earlier and later qualitative research as coping and help-seeking strategies [27, 28].”
From Mental health and psychosocial support for South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda: a needs and resource assessment (2016) · cites this paper as [28]
In the citing paper
“Coker [28] interviewed southern Sudanese refugees in Egypt and found that the refugees often discussed their illnesses in social or existential terms rather than in physical terms. “Thinking too much” was a common factor in illness and was thought to “fuel” their illnesses.”
From Mental health and psychosocial support for South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda: a needs and resource assessment (2016) · cites this paper as [28]
Citations
Cites
Outline of a Theory of Practice
Bourdieu, P. (1977) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511812507 · Cited by 27,606
Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Frank, A. W., & Bourdieu, P. (1980) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2066038 · Cited by 14,591
Kleinman, A. (1980) · doi:10.1525/9780520340848 · Cited by 4,945
The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual
Ben-Amos, D., & Turner, V. W. (1970) · Western Folklore · doi:10.2307/1498807 · Cited by 4,286
The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics
Frank, A. W. (1995) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226260037.001.0001 · Cited by 3,214
The birth of the clinic : an archaeology of medical perception
Foucault, M., & Sheridan, A. (1974) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780203406373 · Cited by 2,679
Douglas, M. (1966) · Cited by 2,247
Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania
Malkki, L. H. (1995) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226190969.001.0001 · Cited by 1,786
The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology
Scheper‐Hughes, N., & Lock, M. M. (1987) · Medical Anthropology Quarterly · doi:10.1525/maq.1987.1.1.02a00020 · Cited by 1,689
Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self
Csordas, T. (1995) · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · doi:10.2307/3034915 · Cited by 1,229
Research works printed but not linked: 14
- Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Csordas, Thomas J. 1994 Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground and Self. Cambridge University Press.
- Das, Veena 1997 Language and the Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain. In Social Suffering. A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock, eds., pp. 67-91. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Douglas, Mary 1973 Natural Symbols. New York: Vintage Books.
- Foucalt, Michel 1977 What Is an Author? In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Donald F. Bouchard, ed., pp.124-127.Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Frazer, James G. 1890[1981] The Golden Bough. New York: Gramercy Books.
- Jablensky, Assen, A.J. Marsella, Solvig Ekblad, Lennart Levi, and Bengt Jansson 1992 The International Conference on the Mental Health and Well-Being of the World's Refugees and Displaced Persons. Stockholm, Sweden, October 6-11, 1991. NewYork: Oxford University Press.
- Thomas J. Csordas, ed., pp.163-182. Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Johnson, D.H. 2003 Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
- Kleinman, A. 1989 The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books.
- Kugelmann, Robert 1997 Narratives of Chronic Pain. In The Anthropology of Medicine: From Culture to Method, 3rd ed. Lola Romanucci-Ross, Daniel E. Moerman, and Laurence R. Tancredi, eds., pp. 254–272. Westport: Bergin and Garvey.
- Low, Setha M. 1994 Embodied Metaphors: Nerves as Lived Experience. In Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology. Thomas J. Csordas, ed., pp. 139-162. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Seligman, C.G., and B.Z. Seligman 1965 Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
- Young, Allan 1997 Suffering and the Origins of Traumatic Memory. In Social Suffering. A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock, eds., pp. 245-260. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 101–111 of 111
Utilization of Mental Healthcare Services among Refugees: Past, Present and Future
Xin, H. (2018) · Journal of Public Health Issues and Practices · doi:10.33790/jphip1100112
Dialogue and Dialogue Theatre: Processes Toward Decolonial Praxis
Law, S. F., Deng, M., Cifuentes, D., & Barber, R. (2021) · Community psychology · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-75201-9_7
‘This Is My Body Which Will Be Given Up for You.’
Littlemore, J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108241441.008
Littlemore, J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108241441.010
Littlemore, J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108241441.013
Littlemore, J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108241441.012
Littlemore, J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108241441.011
Brown, B., Ramaiya, A. K., & Cronkright, P. (2020) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-47668-7_11
Toward Understanding Muslim Responses to Forced Migration
Zaman, T. (2024) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190076511.013.16
Dynamics of Identity Re-Definitions Among Refugees
(2014) · Emerald Group Publishing Limited eBooks · doi:10.1108/978-1-62396-719-220251019
‘I needed this journey’: home visits in wartime as transformative events
Falkenhain, M. (2026) · Journal of Refugee Studies · doi:10.1093/jrs/feaf088
Metadata
- Authors
- Coker, E. M.
- Affiliations
- American University in Cairo (EG)
- Corresponding author
- Coker, Elizabeth Marie
- Venue
- Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
- Published
- 2004-03
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 15-39
- ISSN
- 0165-005X (ISSN-L)
- 1573-076X
- OpenAlex
- W2000779100
- Cited by
- 111
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 5.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Culture Medicine and Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- American University in Cairo
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Migration, Health and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration, Identity, and Health
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Medicine, History, and Philosophy
- Keywords
- illness narratives, embodied metaphor, refugee trauma, body metaphor, selfhood, heart metaphor, refugee health, cultural context of illness, coping with trauma
- MeSH terms
- Attitude to Health, Culture, Depression, Egypt, Humans, Pain, Refugees, Sudan, Travel, Metaphor
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
