Medicine Anthropology Theory
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PTSD or lack of love? For radical interdisciplinarity in global trafficking aftercare
Get PDFIn this Position Piece, I critically reflect upon some epistemological and political issues of interventions and intervention-oriented research in post-trafficking mental health care. I discuss three loci of friction within the framework of a critical global mental health approach to trafficking aftercare: ethnography, biomedical studies, and post-trafficking care. I address these loci through three case studies: two drawn from my own ethnographic fieldwork and one from a recent systematic review of biomedical studies on post-trafficking mental health. My discussion focuses on the limits of such activities when conducted as isolated interventions and highlights the need for radical interdisciplinary and participatory approaches
Bat portraits in times of pandemic
Get PDF In this Photo Essay, photographs are combined with drawings collected in Burkina Faso in the years following the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak. Portraits of bats are shown. The blacklisting of these animals following the recommendations of health authorities collides with local realities, where it is not possible to talk about bats in a ‘general’ sense. The same is true today in the period of COVID-19, when chiropterans are once again in the etiological hot seat: bats are behind the pandemic, according to Ridley\u27s shock phrase (2020). In Burkina Faso\u27s Lobi country, between the red and black fruit-eaters (which have always been eaten) and the small insectivores (which have never been eaten as such, but are very useful to animist healers), there is a chasm of representation that is unveiled by these images.  
Blessing unintended pregnancy: Religion and the discourse of women’s agency in public health
No full textWithin public health and medical anthropology research, the study of women’s agency in reproductive decision making often neglects the role of religion and women’s spirituality. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at a shelter for homeless (mostly African American) mothers in the southeastern United States. We explore the inadequacy of rational choice models that emphasize intentionality and planning, which our research shows are in tension with the vernacular religious and moral ethos of pregnancy as a ‘blessing’ or unplanned gift. Our findings confirm that young and disadvantaged women may view pregnancy and motherhood as opportunities to improve their lives in ways that mediate against their acceptance of family planning models. For these women, the notion of ‘blessing’ also reflects an acceptance of contingency and indeterminacy as central to the reproductive experience. We also question the increasingly popular distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in contemporary public health
Notes from the field: Failing to thrive?
No full textEvery day in my work as a resident physician, I deny my patients’ particular wishes about living and dying. It is not that I desire to be inhumane; rather, on a daily basis in my job, I am tasked with caring for patients who have been clinically marked with the diagnosis ‘failure to thrive’, in some way deeming them as unsafe to live out in the world. In this think piece, I trace the evolution of this term and what its growing use might mean. As a medical anthropologist, I feel deeply conflicted about these situations that physicians encounter routinely. And as I probed this internal conflict, I realized that the clinical diagnosis of ‘failure to thrive’ is actually an attempt by physicians to grapple with how the social world becomes embodied within our aging or chronically ill populations. Caring for these patients is a complicated, consuming task that also must be further illuminated in relation to the failures of self-care among trainees and practitioners of medicine. I consider here how anthropological theories of care and well-being of both patients and providers can illuminate this ongoing phenomenon of ‘failure to thrive’ among patients who are increasingly at the social margins
Regimes of freshness: Biopolitics in the age of cryogenic culture
No full textToday, it seems that nearly every aspect of life is affected by cryogenic techniques: we cool our food, environments, drugs, organs, eggs, milk, semen, tissue, blood and much more. Our central argument is that these developments lead to the formation of a new form of life, which in many ways is the antipode of what Agamben calls bare life. In analyzing the emergence of cryogenic culture from a biopower point of view, this study offers a new perspective on how populations are fostered and governed through regimes of freshness. While the history of chilled and frozen food slowly gains increasing attention in historical and cultural studies, the historical dynamics of the cryopolitical economy in the network society still need to be explored. Biotechnology, encompassing food production as well as assisted reproductive technology (ART), currently emerges as a most important apparatus (dispositif) of governing populations. It should be understood as a means of ‘biopower’ because it not only contributes to reproducing life but also helps to improve and preserve it. Highly dependent on refrigeration, modern biopower invents a new type of life, which is technologically self-sustained: this is the cryogenic culture. In our paper, we trace the emergence and dissemination of what we call cryogenic life – meaning the ways of producing, distributing, maintaining and dispositioning organic matter via cooling, chilling and freezing. With the introduction of artificial coldness in the late nineteenth century and the expansion of the cold chain, these techniques have become a constitutive element of modern biopower
