Medicine Anthropology Theory
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The therapeutic landscapes concept as a mobilizing tool for liberation
Get PDFIn this reflection, I argue for using the therapeutic landscapes concept as a tool for mobilizing positive change in the world. I first lay out three major research areas in therapeutic landscapes inquiry, and provide a review of similarities in this area of inquiry in both health geography and medical anthropology. Next, I argue for the application of the therapeutic landscapes concept in liberating, if even in a small way, the growing population of the most vulnerable in our society, countries, and globe. I note two anthropological contributions that illustrate how the concept of therapeutic landscapes can be employed in liberating vulnerability, before discussing a work in progress, specific to an intentional ashram community with a mandate dedicated to world peace. I conclude by setting out the importance of this new direction for the future application of the therapeutic landscape concept as a tool for liberation
‘When language skews narratives’: Critical medical humanitarianism after Beirut, Paris, and Baghdad
Get PDFThe ISIS-led attacks on Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad in November 2015 were covered in a variety of ways by major news outlets globally. Coverage of the Paris attack was widespread, and layered with personal stories about those personally affected and analysis about the effects of terrorism on the French way of life. By comparison, little coverage was given to either the Beirut or Baghdad events, the experiences of those suffering on the ground, or the wider issue of the effects of terrorism within Lebanese and Iraqi communities. In this think piece, the bombings in Beirut are used as a lens for examining the politics and consequences of mediated silence or ‘forgetting’ of violence and suffering in the Middle East. We employ a critical humanitarianism, rooted in a social medicine analysis, to connect these media trends to the training of health professionals. Our approach helps build accountability for the inequalities present in the Western construction of suffering and the emotive aspects of global violence, and promotes a wider conversation about the long-term biomedical effects of violence
In search of trust and efficacy: Tibetan medicine in multiethnic Rebgong, Qinghai, China
No full textThis article describes how Tibetan medicine, traditionally an ethnomedicine indigenous to Tibetan areas, travels across cultural boundaries in a multiethnic region, presenting empirical findings from Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) in Qinghai province, People’s Republic of China. Focusing on Muslim Hui and Han Chinese citizens, we describe how these patients smoothly engage with Tibetan medicine. This, we argue, is enabled by a strong sense of trust in distinguished Tibetan doctors, or ‘lineage doctors’, and their privately produced Tibetan medicines, and by shared understandings of the patient role. Contemporary medical pluralism in Rebgong invites us to revisit classic themes in medical anthropology as it brings the study of ethnomedicine into the context of a reconfigured instrumentalized public health system and ethnic relations, in which trust is a rare and treasured quality
Anthropological approaches to medical humanitarianism
Get PDFDespite broadly shared interest in the welfare of ‘precarious lives’, medical anthropology and medical humanitarianism are too often in tension. In this survey, we sketch a history of the two disciplines, then track three major patterns through which anthropologists approach the analysis of medical humanitarian efforts. Our three patterns frame medical anthropology as: 1) a critique of medical humanitarianism and its ties to colonialism and globalization, 2) a translation of medical humanitarianism and its associated lexicon, 3) and a reform of medical humanitarianism from the inside out. In highlighting the individual strengths of these three approaches, we argue for the value of medical anthropology – as both a mindset and a method – in health and humanitarian emergencies
