Anthropology & Medicine最新文献

Whilst quarantine has been experienced in a multitude of ways around the world, for some anthropologists the quietening of public movement was met with a flurry of attentive typing. For those who were consciously quarantined, a social science response to COVID-19 was sought at University College London through a call for posts as part of the UCL Medical Anthropology blog; capturing the real-time observations and scholarly reflections on the unfolding pandemic situation as it reached its height across the globe. The global flow of coronavirus - both as a literal microbial agent and as an idea - has played out on the 'coronascape' in multiple ways since it exploded onto worldwide consciousness in early 2020. From an anthropological perspective, concerns have oscillated around a number of crucial themes, from (micro)biopolitics, governance, and sovereignty; the defence of borders from foreign bodies and post-colonial Others; a strengthening of medical pluralism and the global biomedical hegemony, and concerns over where to go from here as second-waves and the social consequences of such loom large. Such themes have often interrelated and tangoed with one another as individuals have reflected upon their significance. In this review we provide a critical overview of the first fifty-seven posts that were sent to the blog in the initial months of the pandemic; with contributors exploring the developing pandemic in over twenty countries, and with posts visited daily by over two thousand visitors from across the world during the months of the UK lockdown (March-May).

This paper analyses the lived experiences of people living with HIV in South Africa through the use of body mapping as a visual research method, by focusing on the physical and symbolic use of the body within the broader context of anthropology and medical anthropology. The study consists of an empirical analysis of the body maps themselves and the accompanied narratives of seven participants, six female and one male participant living with HIV in South Africa. Drawing upon theories and literature on theorising the body in medical anthropology and visual research, this study explores the significance of this practice as a visual research method in understanding the nuanced lived experiences of people living with HIV by highlighting the individuality of the body and emotions; embodied experiences: a bio-cultural approach; and the body politic: social injustice. The results of this study illustrate that body mapping is a unique visual research method, that explores the body as the vehicle in which we exist within the world, while containing a vast amount of layered interpretive and cultural meanings, which are key to understanding the lived experience of people from marginalised groups.

The dominant biomedical model perceives eating disorders as mental disorders and its 'sufferers' as people who need to be healed. It follows that people diagnosed with an eating disorder are pressured to accept medical and psychological care due to the moral obligations that are associated with the sick role, as delineated by Parsons. This, however, does not necessarily imply that they are willing to heal. By analysing compliance and resistance to treatment in an Italian residential Centre for eating disorders, this paper suggests that patients may accept medical care in order to achieve objectives other than those for which power is exerted over them. By complying with treatment, patients may in fact attempt to (re)become anorexic or escape from their everyday environment and problems. It is therefore argued that biomedical power can be subverted from within through the adoption of what De Certeau defines as tactics.

Emergency Contraceptive Pills (ECPs) are increasingly available over the counter as a form of hormonal birth control in India. As use of ECPs is increasing over time, this paper draws on ethnographic research in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand (Northern State) to highlight the everyday material conditions under which women create narrative around choice and agency regarding these ECPs. Women viewed ECPs as better options than abortion, appreciated the sense of empowerment these provided them because they could be consumed in houses where women had limited 'space and privacy;' and finally that ECPs and their advertisements could act as 'agents of social change.' Feminist scholarship on reproduction demonstrates that choice is a form of agency that is enacted within certain constraints. Using this framework, the research here highlights how women create narratives about ideas of contraceptive choice and notions of 'empowerment' when talking about ECPs and their advertisements. In revisiting the dilemma about women's agency and choice, this paper builds on Rosalind Gill's concept of 'critical respect' to propose 'critical ethnographic respect' as an ethnographic tool to help read women's responses and respectfully contextualise the materiality from within which these narratives emerge.

Today, in the field of hereditary colorectal cancer in Denmark, more than 40,000 identified healthy individuals with an increased risk of cancer are enrolled in a surveillance program aimed at preventing cancer from developing, with numbers still growing. What this group of healthy individuals has in common is lifelong regular interaction with a healthcare system that has traditionally been geared towards treating the acutely and chronically ill. In this article, we explore how people living with an inherited elevated risk of colorectal cancer orient themselves towards their families' and their own predispositions as well as the lifelong surveillance trajectories that they have embarked upon - what we call surveillance life. Unlike prior critiques of predictive genetic testing as generative of 'pre-patients' or 'pre-symptomatically ill', we suggest that for those enrolled in lifelong surveillance programmes in welfare state Denmark, the relevance of risk fluctuates according to certain moments in life, e.g. at family reunions, when a close relative falls ill, in the time leading up to a surveillance colonoscopy or when enduring the procedures themselves. As such, rather than characterising surveillance life in terms of 'living with chronic risk' we show how 'genetically at risk' chronicities take shape as persons come to terms with a disease that possibly awaits them leading them to recalibrate familial bonds and responsibilities while leading lives punctuated by regular medical check-ups.

Medication is closely involved in the subjective experience of chronic diseases, but also in the chronification process of illnesses which is described in this paper in the specific case of HIV. The development of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and the progressive recognition of their potential dual use as treatment as prevention (TasP) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reshape the experience of HIV and its transmission. Acknowledging the importance of a socioanthropological approach to drugs, this paper highlights how therapeutic strategies of treatment and prevention currently shape the process of HIV chronification and its experience for people concerned with ARVs in Switzerland, whether they are seropositive patients on lifelong treatment or seronegative people affected by the preventive properties of drugs.

This article looks at liver transplants as life-prolonging treatment for chronic liver failure and examines the role anticipation plays in the context of chronic liver conditions. Based on anthropological fieldwork in Germany, this article draws on three exemplary patient accounts to show how the anticipatory experience of waiting for a liver transplant serves as an important period in transplant trajectories, and how the lack of a wait may have long-term consequences for patients' wellbeing. A focus on waiting and anticipation in the context of chronic livers enables new understandings of the complex temporal qualities that living with chronic conditions entails. As the sole long-term treatment available for failing livers, the possibilities of transplant medicine shape patients' anticipation of their future. Conversely, the particular futures that patients anticipate mould how they make sense of their transplant and their chronic pre- and post-transplant lives. This article shows that rather than offering a unilinear treatment with a clear-cut end, liver transplants, as treatment for a wide range of chronic conditions, reproduce chronic lives.