Critical Medical Anthropology
jacobo herrera :D2019
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Abstract
Jennie Gamlin is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow based in the Institute for Global Health at UCL. Jennie has carried out extensive research in Mexico and the UK on reproductive and maternal health and has worked for the past 10 years with indigenous Wixárika communities. She is also co-director of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health and teaches and writes about the political economy of gender and health. Sahra Gibbon is associate professor in the Medical Anthropology Department at UCL. She has carried out research in the UK, Cuba and Brazil examining developments in genomics, public health, activism, gender and identity. Her recent publications include (as co-editor) The Routledge Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (2018) and she is editor, with Jennie Gamlin, of the UCL Press book series Embodying Inequalities.
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The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology
Gender' and 'sexuality' are elusive terms, commonly used as if self-evident yet as problematic in their definitions as in their politics. The simplest distinctions are between sex and gender, in order to differentiate biology and social and behavioral traits, but these distinctions are not made and do not make sense in all cultures (Rubin 1975); anthropologists studying sexuality, as well as queer theorists and activists, have made the insensitivity of this demarcation clear (Jackson 2011). 'Gender' references broader configurations of social life, encompassing ideologies and practices of kinship; sex, in contrast, is generally seen to be a biological classification of living things as male or female according to their external and internal genitalia, their chromosomes, endocrine systems and reproductive organs (Karkazis 2008; Wizemann and Pardue 2001). But as controversies illustrate, such as that over the gold medal for the 800-meter race of the South African woman, Caster Semenya, definitions of male and female are not straightforward. Semenya was found to have an intersex condition, leaving her with no uterus or ovaries and high levels of androgens. Defining one's sex is complex-there is not one biological marker that allows for a simple categorization of people as male or female. Moreover, gendered life experiences impact endocrinological processes, and thereby affect biologically defined sex differences between men and women (Karkazis 2008). Together sex/gender as an intertwined concept contributes to the meanings given to sexuality, and to how it is understood in social, political, and cultural life. 'Sexuality' can refer to sexual feelings, sexual desire, and pleasure; to identity and its implications; and to social arenas where moral discourses on 'good' sexual behavior are played out. In this chapter, we use the term 'sexuality' as a relational concept within a medical anthropological framework, and reflect on the ways that different strands of sexuality research, involving historians, sexologists, and queer and feminist scholars, have contributed to our understanding of these issues. We focus on how sexuality is affected by and how it shapes medical technologies. We approach sexual behavior not as a biologically determined drive, but as a socially and culturally constructed practice shaped by power relations (see, for example, Spronk 2009). Using four case studies, we show how sexuality has been shaped by access to medical technology, and how medical technologies can be experienced and analyzed as liberating and oppressive, reflecting and shaping cultural notions of appropriate sexual identities, practices, and gender roles. Note 1. Kathoei refers to sexually diverse people. See Jackson (2010) and Käng (2012).
Singh 2018 Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Review of my Book titled 'A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India'., 2018
Sheoran, Nayantara, Daisy Deomampo, and Cecilia Van Hollen. 2015. "Extending Theory, Rupturing Boundaries: Reproduction, Health, and Medicine Beyond North-South Binaries." Medical Anthropology 34(3): 185-191.
This introduction briefly explores how scholarship emerging from the global South inverts prior assumptions of how medicine operates there. Building on Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff’s work, Theory from the South, we discuss how the four articles included in this special issue help us to understand health, medicine, and reproduction in new ways using theory developed in the South. We reflect on new articulations of healthcare, biotechnology, medicine, and reproductive/contraceptive technology throughout distinct locations in the global South, in order to demonstrate how North-South representations are inadequate in revealing the complex terrain from which new theory might emerge. By moving beyond North-South binaries, this special issue allows us to apprehend new ways of thinking about health and medicine around the globe.
The field of medical anthropology in Social Science 2018 Social Science Me Theme 1 additional reading
Conceptually and methodologically, medical anthropology is well-positioned to support a "big-tent" research agenda on health and society. It fosters approaches to social and structural models of health and wellbeing in ways that are critically reflective, cross-cultural, people-centered, and transdisciplinary. In this review article, we showcase these four main characteristics of the field, as featured in Social Science & Medicine over the last fifty years, highlighting their relevance for an international and interdisciplinary readership. First, the practice of critical inquiry in ethnographies of health offers a deep appreciation of sociocultural viewpoints when recording and interpreting lived experiences and contested social worlds. Second, medical anthropology champions crosscultural breadth: it makes explicit local understandings of health experiences across different settings, using a fine-grained, comparative approach to develop a stronger global platform for the analysis of health-related concerns. Third, in offering people-centered views of the world, anthropology extends the reach of critical enquiry to the lived experiences of hard-to-reach population groups, their structural vulnerabilities, and social agency. Finally, in developing research at the nexus of cultures, societies, biologies, and health, medical anthropologists generate new, transdisciplinary conversations on the body, mind, person, community, environment, prevention, and therapy. As featured in this journal, scholarly contributions in medical anthropology seek to debate human health and wellbeing from many angles, pushing forward methodology, social theory, and health-related practice.
What is missing? Reflections on Indigenous Health - Interview with Axel Kroeger and Francoise Barbira-Freedman
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Axel Kroeger is a professor on International Community Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine/University of Liverpool, and is currently engaged in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at Freiburg University in Germany. He is supporting the World Health Organization in Geneva (TDR-WHO) with the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. Axel has several works regarding Health focused in low and middle-income countries in Latin America and Asia and has done extensive fieldwork in those places. He was for four years a medical doctor in the rainforest of Ecuador and has maintained links to this area until now. Françoise Barbira-Freedman is an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She has done long periods of fieldwork among Keshwa Lamas (formerly known as Lamistas) people throughout the years, and has had a lifetime dedication on analysing childbirth, with a series of inspiring publications refle...
Making Bare Life Visible: Critical Public Health and Salmaan Keshavjee’s (2014) Blind Spot (University of California Press). Medicine Anthropology Theory 3(3): 158-169.
Published book review as part of symposium on Salmaan Keshavjee's (2014) Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health.
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To be confirmed How can what we know as anthropologists be applied to saving lives, alleviating suffering, and promoting vitality? This class surveys some answers to this question from the perspectives of medical anthropology and sister disciplines such as social medicine and global health. We will read and interrogate classic and contemporary studies from the anthropology and medical literatures, and policy documents from the World Health Organisation and philanthropic foundations. Along the way, we will engage with key theoretical approaches including Critical Medical Anthropology, political ecology, and the social determinants of health. The goal of the class is to equip students to critically evaluate and apply anthropological ideas to current problems in medicine and global health.
The_Field_of_Medical_Anthropology_SS&M_2017.pdf
Conceptually and methodologically, medical anthropology is well-positioned to support a “big-tent” research agenda on health and society. It fosters approaches to social and structural models of health and wellbeing in ways that are critically reflective, cross-cultural, people-centered, and transdisciplinary. In this review article, we showcase these four main characteristics of the field, as featured in Social Science & Medicine over the last fifty years, highlighting their relevance for an international and interdisciplinary readership. First, the practice of critical inquiry in ethnographies of health offers a deep appreciation of sociocultural viewpoints when recording and interpreting lived experiences and contested social worlds. Second, medical anthropology champions cross-cultural breadth: it makes explicit local understandings of health experiences across different settings, using a fine-grained, comparative approach to develop a stronger global platform for the analysis of health-related concerns. Third, in offering people-centered views of the world, anthropology extends the reach of critical enquiry to the lived experiences of hard-to-reach population groups, their structural vulnerabilities, and social agency. Finally, in developing research at the nexus of cultures, societies, and health, medical anthropologists generate new, transdisciplinary conversations on the body, mind, person, community, environment, prevention, and therapy. As featured in this journal, scholarly contributions in medical anthropology seek to debate human health and wellbeing from many angles, pushing forward methods, social theory, and health-related practice.
Introduction to Medical Anthropology - ANTH 134 - Summer 2018
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In this course, we explore the cultural and historical specificity of what appear to be biological givens, drawing from a variety of anthropological questions, theoretical approaches, and research techniques. We begin by examining the experience of illness and how understandings of disease and health are affected by - and in turn influence - social, cultural, and political concerns. We will approach biomedicine as one of many culturally produced medical systems, comparing ways of seeing and knowing across traditions and exploring the power of medicine to act as a form of social control. Finally, we will examine how local and global inequalities produce contemporary suffering and the role that anthropology might play in efforts to achieve greater health equity.
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This course provides an overview of critically applied medical anthropology – the examination of the social origins of vulnerability, the role of structures of power in its social reproduction, and critical praxis in responding to it. We will explore the major theoretical lenses within medical anthropology with a particular focus on how medical anthropologists theorize the relationship between culture, structural violence, and health. We will consider its position within the broader discipline, with a particular focus on debates over its applied dimensions and radical alternatives related to those dimensions. In this course, you will gain ways to utilize ethnographic, anthropological, and qualitative data in health-related fields including advocacy and organizing, program evaluation and needs assessments, and health care delivery. You will gain critical skills in evaluating the adequacy and validity of formulations about “culture” and “tradition” in health programs and research, examine emic perceptions of disease, and consider the ways in which western science and biomedicine are themselves cultural constructs. You will become familiar with a range of work on culture and health, domestically and internationally. You will acquire skills in utilizing data about culture and health at macro- and micro- levels.
Medical anthropology at the intersections: histories, activisms, and futures
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Conceptions of quality of life, body and gender among Turkish breast cancer patients Aysecan Terzioglu An ethnography about women with breast cancer: a case study at Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) of Coimbra Diana Silva Martins 10.50 Coffee-break (20 minutes) 11.10 Podium presentations (20 minutes each, including discussion) Chair: Vítor Rosado Marques Paint, butterflies and metastasis: art as experience, knowledge and action on breast cancer Susana de Noronha Dynamics of risky sexual behaviours between gays in Portugal Marta Maia Cosmovision, leprosy and therapeutic itineraries within the Felupe community from Guinea-Bissau Luís Costa
Critical Medical Anthropology as a roadmap -- Understanding access to abortion in the Catalan health system
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Critical medical anthropology: Perspectives in and from Latin America
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Post-coital pharmaceuticals and abortion ambiguity: Avoiding unwanted pregnancy using emergency contraception and misoprostol in Lima, Peru 90 Rebecca Irons vi CONTENTS Part II: Globalisation and contemporary challenges of border spaces and biologised difference 5. Migrant trajectories and health experiences: Processes of health/illness/care for drug use among migrants in the Mexico-United States border region
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