Abstract

This thesis is an autoethnography of the lived experiences of kidney disease and transplantation, through the lens of everyday life. I combine my own autoethnographic accounts of my experiences going through kidney disease, failure, dialysis, and eventually organ transplantation, with participant observation of other kidney patients and transplant recipients, as well as ethnographic research with a kidney donor. In doing so, and by employing an actor-network theoretical framework, this thesis moves away from seeing the kidney as simply a diseased organ or an object to medical intervention. Instead, it aims to unravel the multiplicity, contradictions and myriad of layers that comprise what we label kidney transplant. I connect my autoethnographic account to the cultural, the social, and the political fields within which kidney disease operates in Egypt and examine the way bodies carrying diseased organs are entangled with overindebted subjects, causing new possibilities to emerge – possibilities that sustain life. I place the social at the center of the analysis, and delve into questions of time, space, bodies, and the relationships between humans and non-humans. I move through these entanglements with a sensibility towards the messiness of the different fields through which diseased bodies operate, and with the aim of understanding how we can account for the messy worlds of diseased subjectivities.

School

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department

Sociology, Egyptology & Anthroplology Department

Degree Name

MA in Sociology-Anthropology

Graduation Date

Spring 6-10-2024

Submission Date

6-8-2024

First Advisor

Hanan Sabea

Committee Member 1

Manuel Schwab

Committee Member 2

Emiko Stock

Committee Member 3

Martina Rieker

Extent

125p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Approval has been obtained for this item

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Available for download on Monday, June 08, 2026

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