Section 3, Room 5: Sensory Community of Pain in a Hospital in Tabriz: Ethnography without Movement

Medical anthropology of the sensations considers the experience of pain on individuals and groups with a special focus on sensory perceptions to show that pain and the way of its experience is a something between biology and society. This paper is a description about the pain of ethnographer and four patients in a hospital in Tabriz. Leg breaking of the ethnographer, ideally, enabled him to become a native among the natives of the hospital: ethnographer/patient. Five day hospitalization and surgery experience of all five patients show that pain conceptualized and sensed differently, based on socio-cultural and personal contexts: from fatalism to agency and from perplexity to becoming self. Five patients in room 5 in section 3, have formed a sensory community of pain. Based on the lived experiences, some analytical concepts were developed: pain culture, dardmandi, hesbandi, sensory philosophies, horizontal world, horizontal body, sensory community of pain, and dardnegari or pain-graphy. Writing with pain and about pains is a scientific and humanistic commitment of anthropology.