Anemia in the Andes - Health promotion and Ethnography in the Northern Peruvian highlands

Abstract: In this study I will present an investigation conducted at two communities in the northernPeruvian highlands during the months of February and March of 2019. I applied an anthropological perspective to Communication for Development and investigated how health promotion concerning anemia was perceived by different groups (health care workers and Patients) at the communities. I applied an ethnomethodological approach and worked with an applied anthropology perspective as collected data through ethnography and semi-structured interviews throughout the communities. I found that perspectives that are hard to accommodate within dominating discourses – such as critical perspectives questioning inequality and poverty – may beless prioritized in favour of narratives that can be accommodated within a neoliberal context.Furthermore, I found that there exists a myriad of accounts of development and that development work cannot easily be accommodated within simplified dichotomies.