Becoming asustado. Consequences of susto in children?s developmental pathways and their everyday care from caregivers? perspective

REMORINI, C.; PALERMO, M. L.

San Jose

Congreso; 5th Latin American Regional Conference of IACCP.; 2019

Universidad de Costa Rica- International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology

We analyze caregivers? discourse about the consequences of suffering susto for children?s health, development outcomes, and sociability and its implications for childrearing. We conduct ethnographic research in peasant communities located in North-western Argentina, oriented to characterize women and their children?s therapeutic itineraries, combining the Case Study Methodology with Social Network Analysis. The results obtained so far show that the therapeutic itineraries involve complex sequences in which diagnosis categories and symptoms are constantly resignified. Diagnosis and treatment combine traditional and biomedical knowledge and resources. Suffering susto during women?s pregnancy or in the first stages of life could have a variety of consequences in children developmental pathways, even throughout adulthood. The analysis of narrative around the episodes allowed us to recognize caregivers, doctors and teachers? criteria for classifying and treat children known as asustaditos and to identify values and expectations about children?s performance and competence in different community domains. We analyze how the caregivers search for alternative ways to understand the diversity of children? paths, by confronting local cultural knowledge, values, and practices with biomedical and educational ones. Case analysis combined with ARS allowed us to go beyond the micro-level of the ?case? to describe the alternatives of dealing with these children at home and other institutional levels.