This text is centered around globalization, capitalism, and the privatization and entrepreneurial enterprise surrounding certain medical procedures which it highlights through analyzing the phenomena of cross-national online communication and the pursuit of fetal cell transplant treatment in Beijing.
The text is designed around the comparison of dualities such as East vs West, patient vs care-giver, and online archived post vs. real experiences.
The cover of this text has a digital image of an orange spherical “web” made up of points and lines with varying degrees of shading in between coupled with bold blue font. As the text has to do with cyberspace I assume it is meant to represent this aspect of the text however, it does not give any further insight into what the text will be about nor does it draw me in.
Although the topic of the text is in itself interesting to me, I think the most notable portion of the sketch was the answer about the authors reflexivity. In response to this it is stated that, “The author reflects on ethnographer's role doing research in digital platform: how to credit the authors of online discussion stream?
This sketch proposes for the text to be reproduced within medical research institutions by highlighting empirical evidence collected from online forums and correspondence streams in order to exhibit the patient’s care seeking journey. I think that this proposal could be helpful in that it would allow the individuals providing/facilitating care to understand more about the other side of the process through a lens that is still accepted within the medical field in that it is a data driven (evidence-based) format.
As this ethnography is centered largely around dichotomies I think it would be interesting to translate the work into a debate activity for high-school or college aged students.
