Professor’s research in Ecuador helps create globally engaged students

Elena Hines
College of Arts and Sciences staff writer

Western Michigan University sociology professor and cultural anthropologist Ann Miles has developed a relationship with the country of Ecuador over more than a quarter century as she has studied both Ecuadorian women diagnosed with lupus and the effects of globalization on the city of Cuenca.

Currently on a three-month sabbatical in the South American nation, she has begun preliminary work on a project documenting the changes to Cuenca in the nearly 30 years she has been coming there.

“The city was once considered ‘isolated’ but since 1988 there has been significant migration of workers to the United States who send back remittances,” she said. “The city was declared a UNESCO World Patrimonial site in 1999 inaugurating a tourist boom and since 2008 it has been the site of extensive in-migration of American retirees. My work involves trying to understand the multiple effects of globalization on the city and the ways that people talk about cultural memory and imagination, progress and tradition, modernity and loss, etc.”

Her other project, “Chronicling Illness over the Life Course,” started in 2005 and involved interviewing Ecuadorian physicians, conducting observations in clinics, homes and hospitals, and interviewing 20 Ecuadorian women diagnosed with the chronic illness systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) with the goal to collect “illness narratives.”

That research, funded by FRACAA (2006) and the Fulbright Commission (2006 and 2007), resulted in her 2013 book, “Living with Lupus: Ecuadorian Women and Chronic Illness,” published by the University of Texas Press.

Miles’ interest in lupus was piqued after someone she had known for 14 years was diagnosed with it.

“I wondered how someone with a third-grade education could manage such a complicated and ambiguous illness,” she said.

In this project, she will conduct follow up interviews to determine how the “socialist revolution” in Ecuador and the renewed state commitment to health care has affected the delivery of services to lupus patients, and how patients have continued to adjust to their chronic illness as they move through the life cycle.

As a cultural anthropologist, her work entails interviewing people but also conducting participant observation which means trying to understand the culture and place more broadly.

“People’s lives, how they experience events and make decisions are contextualized within larger cultural frameworks of meaning,” she said. “For example, in order to understand how women who have lupus experience the illness I have to have a broader understanding of women’s lives and gender roles. These are not things most people can talk about easily; they are part of what anthropologists call ‘implicit’ culture ... things we know but aren't able to explain. Spending time in a place is the only way to get at these more complicated and sometimes contradictory cultural ideas.”

Her time in Ecuador has also included giving talks at the University of Cuenca and the University of San Francisco in Quito.

“While there certainly are hardships that accompany leaving one’s home and family for months at a time, my 27-year relationship with Ecuador and with the many people I know here is a kind of wealth that cannot be measured,” she said. “I consider myself privileged to be able to do what I do and to be able to share that with my students.”

She says she has found that students are eager to learn about other cultures and places, and she always brings what she learns “in the field” to her classroom.

“I wrote ‘From Cuenca to Queens’ for our students because I could not find a book that dealt with the topic of transnational migration in a way that I thought would resonate with our students,” she said.

“As the University embarks on a new global engagement initiative meant to improve and strengthen our current endeavors our students will have more opportunities to learn about and experience the world for themselves. My research and teaching are part of WMU’s larger mission to create globally engaged students and citizens.”