Medicine Anthropology Theory
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No smoking within nine metres of discipline limits
Get PDFI seek to open the social practice of smoking to anthropological enquiry that has been largely caught up in the agenda of cessation – to the point that it is difficult to examine it outside this frame without being accused of advancing the interests of Big Tobacco. Analysis has also been foreclosed by adherence to frames that privilege rationality. Smoking behaviour becomes understandable and translatable via explanations of addiction or ignorance: it is rational for the addict to source her drug, and rational for the smoker ignorant of its harms to continue smoking. Equally, using a rational frame anthropologists might explain smoking practice in relation to pleasure – if they are not wedded to a cessation agenda – as maximising pleasure might also be rational, as might any practice if only one can understand the agent’s motivations. I argue for an anthropological analysis of smoking that permits more than translation
When comparison comes first: Reflections on theory in medical anthropology
Get PDFThis think piece draws on experiences of fieldwork in a Papua New Guinean hospital to reflect on tensions between political engagement and ‘deep’ comparison in medical anthropology theory. The paper argues that, contrary to the assumptions implicit in recent critiques of ‘suffering slot’ anthropology, paying attention to the workings of power does not preclude ontological comparison. Through a comparison of the different kinds of visibility sought by patients and doctors in the public hospital, I argue that the question of power re-surfaces in relation to the mutually entangled infrastructures required to realise those different projects
