Karol Górski
Ethnographies, Volume 46, Issue 1, 2018, pp. 51 - 75
https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.18.003.8684The aim of the article is to analyze the practices that Polish patients (suffering from anxiety disorders) can perform with the pills, prescribed by psychiatrists. There are three main practices which are highlighted in the article: manipulating the dosage and frequency of consumed drugs, deciding which medicines will be consumed and keeping the drugs at home without consumption. In a broader sense, they can be understood as a form of resistance against biomedicine (Clarke et al. 2010: 14) and form of Robert Merton’s self-fullfilling prophecy. The mentioned practices are connected with the opinions about pharmacotherapy shared by my interlocutors.
Karol Górski
Ethnographies, Vol 49 Issue 3, 2021, pp. 219 - 242
https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.21.014.14349The main purpose of the article is to analyse the learning practices of Brazilian jiu-jitsu through the Internet. The article reveals the results of the research conducted from 2016 to 2019 in one jiu-jitsu club in Warsaw, Poland. The material came mostly from the in-depth interviews, and describes the nuances, restrictions and implications of learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu from YouTube. Such form of learning becomes an „inevitably deficient” process although may lead to the „creation of hybrids” and „exploitation of the surplus” (of knowledge sources) but also may strengthen the fundamental local training regime. In the final part of the text, I present the general patterns of using YouTube in the process of learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In reference to the ideas of Tim Ingold I conclude that gathered data allow to present the results of mixing and knotting the particular kinds of knowledge.