@article{3d4ba82f00294f599a4b6d7aee15b820,
title = "The {\textquoteleft}dirty work{\textquoteright} of risk in Northern Territory renal services",
abstract = "In remote Indigenous communities, people with end stage kidney disease have limited access to dialysis services and the vast majority of patients contend with urban displacement in order to access treatment. Through ethnographic encounters with Yol{\ng}u renal patients and other actors in Northern Territory healthcare systems, this paper explores how the threats posed by end stage kidney disease are multiply conceptualised and imbued with different forms of moral and political value. Drawing on Mary Douglas{\textquoteright} cultural theory of risk, I consider how Yol{\ng}u, health professionals and health policymakers construct topographies of safety and danger. I argue that medical risk is deployed in Northern Territory healthcare systems to perform the {\textquoteleft}dirty work{\textquoteright} of governing uncertainties and threats to renal patients{\textquoteright} health and of distributing treatment amongst patients and over space. The {\textquoteleft}dirty work{\textquoteright} of medical risk recasts questions of value and the distribution of resources into matters of safety and liability.",
keywords = "health, kidney disease, medical risk, remote communities, Yolngu",
author = "Stefanie Puszka",
note = "Funding Information: I am indebted to the Yol{\ng}u renal patients and their families who welcomed me into their lives and homes in the course of this research and shared their experiences and perspectives of kidney disease with me, and especially to two Yol{\ng}u co‐researchers who advised me and worked alongside me, Yinin Dhurrkay and the late Mr Mu{\ng}uḻpurr. As Mr Mu{\ng}uḻpurr's family wanted him to be remembered, . I am grateful to Mr Mu{\ng}uḻpurr's family and the families of other Yol{\ng}u interlocutors no longer with us, for providing permission for me to publish their relatives' data. I would also like to thank health professionals and health policymakers with whom I conducted qualitative interviews, and reviewers of drafts of this manuscript: Hanna Jagtenberg, Yasmine Musharbash, Katie Curchin, Paul Lawton, Alex D'Aloia, Frances Morphy and other anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council postgraduate scholarship (APP113270), a National Health and Medical Research Council project grant (APP1092092) and a Barbara Hale Fellowship. No competing interests are identified. Mu{\ng}uḻpurr {\ng}arra dhuwal, ga bulu {\ng}arra dhuwal dhayinhu, dhabanba 1 Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Authors. The Australian Journal of Anthropology published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Anthropological Society Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2021",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1111/taja.12390",
language = "English",
volume = "32",
pages = "54--65",
journal = "The Australian Journal of Anthropology",
issn = "1035-8811",
publisher = "Australian Anthropological Society",
number = "1",
}