Please note that readings are subject to change. Readings marked with an asterisk* will be provided to you in advance. Readings marked with (QC Library) are available through the campus library and you can search for them with OneSearch.
If you come across this syllabus and would like help accessing any of the texts which are not open access, please email me at [email protected].
Part I: Framing Medical Anthropology
Week 1: Introduction to the Course
Mon., Aug. 29
Syllabus
Wed., Aug. 31
Anderson, W. 2018. Epidemiology, social history, and the beginnings of medical anthropology in the highlands of New Guinea.
Ackerknecht, Erwin H., 1945.On the Collecting Of Data Concerning Primitive Medicine (QC Library)
Lindenbaum, Shirley and Margaret M. Lock, Eds. 1993. Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Preface
Recommended: W.H.R. Rivers, (1915-16), Medicine Magic and Religion, Chapter 1
Week 2: Theoretical Frameworks in Medical Anthropology
Mon., Sept. 5
NO CLASS
Wed., Sept. 7
Joralemon, Donald. 2017. Exploring Medical Anthropology, Ch. 3: Recognizing Biological, Social & Cultural Interconnections*
Hans A. Baer, Merrill Singer, and Ida Susser, eds., 1997. Medical Anthropology and the World System. A Critical Perspective. Ch. 1 & Ch. 2 (QC Library)
Recommended: Lindenbaum, Shirley. 2013. Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands. Pgs. vi-x, 147-192, 193-194
Week 3: Critical Medical Anthropology
Mon., Sept. 12
Gamlin, Jennie, et al., eds. 2020. Critical Medical Anthropology Latin American Perspectives, Introduction (Pgs. 1-6) and Ch. 1
Wed., Sept. 14
Gamlin, Jennie, et al. 2021. Centring a critical medical anthropology of COVID-19 in global health discourse
Week 4: Interpretive & Meaning-centered Approaches
Mon., Sept. 19
Good, Byron J. and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. 1982. Toward a Meaning-Centered Analysis of Popular Illness Categories: “Fright Illness” and “Heart Distress” in Iran,
Recommended: Good, Byron. 1994. “Medical Anthropology and the Problem of Belief” in Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective
Wed., Sept. 21
Kleinman, Arthur. 1988. Illness Narratives Ch. 6 “Neurasthenia: Weakness and Exhaustion in the United States and China.”*
Week 5: Synthesis
Mon., Sept. 26
NO CLASS
Wed., Sept. 28
Qureshi, Kaveri. 2010. Sickness, Dreams and Moral Selfhood among Migrant Pakistani Muslims. (QC Library)
Thurs., Sept. 29
Kleinman, Arthur and Peter Benson. 2006. Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It
Part II: Cultural Worlds, Science and Medical Pluralism
Week 6: Biology & Culture Entangled
Mon., Oct. 3
Margaret Lock. 2001. Menopause, Local Biologies and Cultures of Aging
Emily Yates-Doerr. 2017. Where is the local? Partial biologies, ethnographic sitings.
Remaking Local Biologies in an Epigenetic Time – Somatosphere
Recommended: Good, Byron. 1994. “How Medicine Constructs Its Objects,” in Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Martin, Emily. 1992. “The End of the Body?” American Ethnologist 19: 120–38.
Wed., Oct. 5
NO CLASS
Week 7: The Body
Mon., Oct. 10
NO CLASS
Wed., Oct. 12
Fullwiley, Duana. 2010. Revaluating genetic causation: Biology, economy, and kinship in Dakar, Senegal
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Margaret Lock. 1997. “The Mindful Body” Excerpts*
Halliburton, Murphy. 2002. Rethinking Anthropological Studies of the Body: Manas and Bōdham in Kerala.*
Week 8: Beyond Western Epistemology
Mon., Oct. 17
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1992. “Science, Experimentation, and Clinical Practice in Āyurveda,” in Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge*
Tidwell, Tawni. 2020. Covid-19 and Tibetan Medicine: An Awakening Tradition in a New Era of Global Health Crisis
Wed., Oct. 19
Kuriyama, Shigehisa. 1995. “Visual Knowledge in Classical Chinese Medicine.” In Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions*
Week 9: Medical Pluralism & Hegemony
Mon., Oct. 24
Langwick, Stacey. 2007. “Devils, Parasites and Fierce Needles: Healing and the Politics of Translation in Southern Tanzania.” (QC Library)
Banerjee, Madhulika. 2020. Ayurveda and Covid-19: The Politics of Knowledge Systems Yet Again
Wed., Oct. 26
Halliburton, Murphy. 2020. Hegemony versus pluralism: Ayurveda and the Movement for Global Mental Health
Payyappallimana, Unnikrishnan. 2020. Doctors at the Borders: Ayurveda’s Encounter with Public Health and Epidemics
Recommended: Amarasingham, Lorna Rhodes. 1980. “Movement among Healers in Sri Lanka: A Case Study of a Sinhalese Patient.”
Part III: Power, Inequality and the Global Politics of Health
Week 10: Colonialism, Biomedicine and Power
Mon., Oct. 31
Michel Foucault. 1994 [1976]. “The Politics of Health in the 18th Century” Bhattacharya, Nandini. 2012. Contagion and Enclaves: Tropical Medicine in Colonial India , Ch. 1 & 6
Wed., Nov. 1
Hewa, S. 1994. The Hookworm Epidemic on Plantations in Sri Lanka
Week 11: Rethinking Global Mental Health
Mon., Nov. 7
Jain S. & S. Jadhav. 2009. “Pills That Swallow Policy: Clinical Ethnography of a Community Mental Health Program in Northern India.”
Kottai, Sudarshan. 2022. Migrant Workers and the Politics of Mental Health. Economic and Political Weekly. (QC Library)
Recommended: Basu, Helene. 2009. “Contested Practices of Control: Psychiatric and Religious Mental Health Care in India.”
Kirschner, Suzanne R., 2013. “Diagnosis and Its Discontents: Critical Perspectives on Psychiatric Nosology and the DSM”
Luhrmann, T.M. and Jocelyn Marrow. 2016. “Introduction” In Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia Across Cultures.
Wed., Nov. 9
Mills, China and Suman Fernando. 2014. “Globalising Mental Health or Pathologising the Global South? Mapping the Ethics, Theory and Practice of Global Mental Health”
Di Nicola, V. 2020. The Global South: An Emergent Epistemology for Social Psychiatry.
Recommended: Interview with China Mills (Audio)
Week 12: Structural Violence and Social Determinants of Health
Mon., Nov. 14
Das, Veena. 2014. Affliction: Health, Disease Poverty, Ch. 2 (QC Library)
Austerity, Not COVID-19, Strains National Healthcare Systems – Somatosphere
Paul Farmer Interview – Democracy Now
Recommended: Bourgois, Philippe, Seth M. Holmes, Kim Sue, & James Quesada. 2017. Structural Vulnerability: Operationalizing the Concept to Address Health Disparities in Critical Care.
Wed., Nov. 16
Sangaramoorthy, Thurka. 2018. “Putting Band-Aids on Things That Need Stitches”: Immigration and the Landscape of Care in Rural America. (QC Library)
Moreno, Argenis Hurtado. 2020. El Virus: A Contagion of Racism & How Networks of Care Can Stop It
PBS, COVID-19 May Not Discriminate based on Race But US Health Care Does (Video)
Week 13: Racism, Class Inequality & Reproductive Health in the US
Mon., Nov. 21
Mullings, Leith. 2005. “Resistance and Resilience: The Sojourner Syndrome and the Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem”*
Recommended: Mullings, Leith and Amy Schulz, “Intersectionality and Health: An Introduction” in Gender, Race, Class, and Health: Intersectional Approaches (2005)
Gravlee, Clarence C. and Elizabeth Sweet. 2008. “Race, Ethnicity, and Racism in Medical Anthropology, 1977-2002.”
Wed., Nov. 23
Davis, Dana-Ain. 2019. Reproductive Injustice, Introduction (QC Library)
Week 14: Racism, Class Inequality & Reproductive Health in the US
Mon., Nov. 28
Davis, Dana-Ain. 2019. Reproductive Injustice, 2 & 3
Wed., Nov. 30
Davis, Dana-Ain. 2019. Reproductive Injustice, Ch. 6 & Conclusion
Week 15: Anthropology & Critical Global Health
Mon., Dec. 5
Biruk, Cal (Crystal) and Ramah McKay. 2019. Introduction: Objects of critique in critical global health studies
Matza, Tomas. 2019. Collaboration and critique: In between the Battelle Diagnostic Inventory and ethnography
Wed., Dec. 7
Final project discussions
Week 16: Wrapping up
Mon., Dec. 12
Final thoughts & questions to be continued…
