Medical Anthropology最新文献

Although transgender women have increasingly expressed interest in uterine transplants as a means of pregnancy and gender-affirmation, the 2013 Montreal Code excludes them from consideration due - in part - to their perceived biological difference. Based on data from 54 semi-structured interviews, I examine how the regulation of uterine transplants in the USA reinforces dominant beliefs about sex/gender and the regulation of trans women in other domains (i.e. custody and adoption). I also discuss access to uterine transplants through the lens of reproductive justice, including its implications for not only trans women but also cisgender women and people of diverse gender backgrounds.

Diverging from care modalities based on psyche, "Confucianized" psychomoral training for Chinese officials who suffer from heartache (mental distress and ethical conflicts) emphasizes the heart/xin as the moral core and its affective and aesthetic attunement in achieving harmony. However, the focus on the heart, while valuable in "indigenizing" or recasting psychology from Chinese precepts, remains tied to state ideologies. Such training moralizes structural issues that have generated heartache. This dual process of "indigenization" and Confucianization highlights contentious roles psychotherapists and moral psychologists play in cultivating a form of therapeutic governance anchored in the heart that straddles party-state and market in the name of care.

As antimicrobial use is more tightly regulated, animal medicine is under pressure. Drawing on UK fieldwork with veterinarians, farmers, and animal health providers, this article examines how animal health practices are being reorganized. It argues that antimicrobial reductions have not driven the systemic changes some predict. Instead, the antibiotic era's legacy persists, shaping preventive efforts and reinforcing data-driven control. As veterinary roles are marginalized, the illusion of mastery over animal life endures. It is an illusion that risks undermining progress on antimicrobial resistance by reinforcing, rather than challenging, dominant forms of biopolitical control.

Utilizing a symbolic interactionist lens in analysis of 16 in-depth interviews with 13 women and three men who had used fertility treatments in the United States, I reveal how the uterus was a powerful symbol for those struggling with infertility as they drew upon cultural norms and co-created meaning through interactions with multiple others. The uterus represented more than a biological body part; it symbolized the cultural power of biomedicine and created biographical disruptions that affected people's self-perceptions as women, mothers, wives, and lovers. Findings further uncover the relationship between science, medicine, culture, and identity and the body.

Taiwan, internationally acclaimed for its early success in COVID-19 control, credits its robust system of medical epidemiologists as pivotal. This article examines how these physicians were caught between the professionalism of global health initiatives and the challenges of local governance in a structurally unequal world. These dynamics shaped their roles as both members of transnational networks upholding professional principles and national scientists representing a state eager for "global citizenship"--a vision championed by UN agencies and international organizations. The conflation and disruption of biological citizenship, nationally and globally, together influenced the identity negotiation of Taiwanese medical epidemiologists.

This article revisits questions about the womb's role in conferring Jewish identity in Israel. Judaism is transmitted matrilineally, yet orthodox rabbis increasingly view babies from non-Jewish eggs as requiring conversion. Through interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who see surrogacy as an act of "loving-kindness" (chesed), we explore how they navigate halakhic uncertainty surrounding the Jewish status of babies they carry when non-Jewish donor eggs are used. Though the State recognizes their "Jewish womb" as determining the baby's religious status, these surrogates resist acknowledging this power because they conceptualize themselves as merely "hosting" a child that belongs to others.

This article examines the crucial role of veterinarians in making animal death valuable, enabling productive life, and managing uncontrolled dying. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on dairy farms in the Netherlands, and considering veterinarians as gatekeepers of the food chain, health practitioners, and governance actors, I articulate the "value-scapes" of food production that shape which animals die, when, and how, and whether death is desirable, a waste, or a warning. Veterinization here narrates how veterinary expertise is shaped by diverse societal concerns like food security, public health, animal welfare, and ecological sustainability, and knotted into shifting and multifaceted formations of Dutch-European animality.

Personhood is alternatively accepted as something that is innate in individuals or subject to processes of attribution that rely on the existence of specific capacities. Taking Ian Hacking's discussion of "dynamic nominalism" as a point of departure, I focus on how the categorization of difference makes "people" into a "person" or not, in relation to the legitimacy of their needs and desires. To explicate, I turn to Lorna Rhodes' Total Confinement and Neely Myers' Recovery's Edge and demonstrate how ideas of personhood's innateness or attributability reify conceptions of need and desire, particularly associated with experiences of mental disorder and psychosis.

In this article, I explore connections of reproductive coercion and surveillance care through ethnographic research conducted at two independent abortion clinics in North Carolina from 2018 to 2019. Examining the lived experiences of those who seek abortion care shows how patients navigate surveillance during the clinical encounter to receive care. Patients experiencing reproductive coercion often need to maintain existing social ties, involving the providers as mediators to ensure their preferred outcome. Because patients may only receive care if they express an autonomous decision for abortion, providers often observe and negotiate specific social-relational cues, draw-specific ethical conclusions about patient autonomy, and act accordingly.

People trying to conceive (TTC) often rely on accessible technologies and associated apps to track aspects of menstrual cycles. We explore this growing phenomenon from the perspective of self-testing as surveillance-care for the TTC individual or couple and their current and future fertility and pregnancy. Through an analysis of anonymous fora posts, we argue that surveillance-care provides those TTC with a sense of community, as well as agency and control over inexact bodily processes. Here, surveillance-care enacted on the self is about care for the hoped-for future pregnancy, and resulting baby, as opposed to one's own current health status.