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    ANT 3133 (Abridged Somatosphere)

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    This document provides the course outline for a Medical Anthropology class. It includes the course description, assessment methods, schedule, and required readings. The course will introduce students to medical anthropology and examine topics such as cultural constructions of the body, theories of disease causation, medical pluralism, and emerging infectious diseases. Students will complete two papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The schedule lists the weekly topics and assigned readings, which cover issues such as witchcraft, traditional Chinese medicine, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, and new reproductive technologies. Required texts include books on immunity, migrant farmworkers, America's opioid epidemic, and a memoir about illness.

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    ANT 3133 (Abridged Somatosphere)

    Uploaded by

    admin1666
    4K views7 pages
    This document provides the course outline for a Medical Anthropology class. It includes the course description, assessment methods, schedule, and required readings. The course will introduce students to medical anthropology and examine topics such as cultural constructions of the body, theories of disease causation, medical pluralism, and emerging infectious diseases. Students will complete two papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The schedule lists the weekly topics and assigned readings, which cover issues such as witchcraft, traditional Chinese medicine, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, and new reproductive technologies. Required texts include books on immunity, migrant farmworkers, America's opioid epidemic, and a memoir about illness.

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    Medical Anthropology

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    This document provides the course outline for a Medical Anthropology class. It includes the course description, assessment methods, schedule, and required readings. The course will introduce students to medical anthropology and examine topics such as cultural constructions of the body, theories of disease causation, medical pluralism, and emerging infectious diseases. Students will complete two papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The schedule lists the weekly topics and assigned readings, which cover issues such as witchcraft, traditional Chinese medicine, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, and new reproductive technologies. Required texts include books on immunity, migrant farmworkers, America's opioid epidemic, and a memoir about illness.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    4K views7 pages

    ANT 3133 (Abridged Somatosphere)

    Uploaded by

    admin1666
    This document provides the course outline for a Medical Anthropology class. It includes the course description, assessment methods, schedule, and required readings. The course will introduce students to medical anthropology and examine topics such as cultural constructions of the body, theories of disease causation, medical pluralism, and emerging infectious diseases. Students will complete two papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The schedule lists the weekly topics and assigned readings, which cover issues such as witchcraft, traditional Chinese medicine, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, and new reproductive technologies. Required texts include books on immunity, migrant farmworkers, America's opioid epidemic, and a memoir about illness.

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    Facult des sciences sociales | Faculty of Social Sciences

    Medical Anthropology
    ANT3133

    Ari Gandsman
    Winter 2017

    COURSE OUTLINE

    OFFICIAL COURSE DESCRIPTION


    Theoretical approaches in medical anthropology. Examination of
    knowledge, technologies, policies and experiences of health, disease,
    the body, as well as their articulation to both local and global contexts.

    THEMATIC COURSE DESCRIPTION


    Medical anthropology examines beliefs and practices about sickness,
    healing, and the body in a cross-cultural and global perspective. This
    course will introduce students to the most popular subfield of
    anthropology and focus on such topics such as cultural constructions of
    the body, theories of disease causation, beliefs about healing and
    efficacy, reproductive technologies, medicalization and risk,
    pharmaceuticals, genetics, emerging infectious diseases, and
    international public health. One of the primary questions that medical
    anthropologists attempt to answer and that students will learn how to
    respond to is Who gets what and why? who refers to different
    classifications of people, what refers to both disease and to medical
    services, and why examines the cultural, social, biological, political,
    and economic determinants of health and disease.

    ASSESSMENT METHODS

    Components of Final Mark

    Evaluation format Weight Date

    Paper 1 20 % February 1
    Midterm 20 % February 15

    Paper 2 20% March 15

    Final Exam (regular 40% Exam Period


    exam)

    SCHEDULE

    January 9
    Introduction to the Course
    Topics: The scope of Medical Anthropology - four stages in the
    development of the sub-discipline

    January 11
    Proto-medical anthropology
    Topics: Rationality debates and the logic of witchcraft
    Reading Due: Evans-Pritchard, E.E. The Notion of Witchcraft Explains
    Unfortunate Events. (online reading)

    January 16
    Medical systems
    Topics: Internalizing and externalizing medical systems; Chinese
    Traditional Medicine;

    Reading Due: Biss (3-50)

    January 18
    Healing efficacy of symbols and rituals
    Topics: Sorcery, shamanism, and magic

    Reading Due: Biss (pages 51-97)

    First Essay Assigned

    January 23
    Medical Pluralism in a Globalised World
    Topics covered: Patterns of resort, efficacy, and the problem of belief;
    The question of Culture Bound Syndromes

    Reading Due: Biss (pages 98-163)

    January 25
    Traditional Medicines
    The assumptions of biomedicine, biomedicine vs. traditional medicine;
    Complementary and Alternative Medicine
    Reading Due: Biss (pages 98 163)

    January 30
    Culture Bound Syndromes

    Reading Due:
    Hikikomori: the Postmodern Hermits of Japan. Flavio Rizzo. Warscapes.
    June 14, 2016. (online reading)

    LATAH: The symbolism of a putative mental disorder. Michael Kenny,


    Culture, Medicine, Psychiatry (1978): 2: 209 (online reading).

    February 1 (First Essay Due)


    Illness experience and narratives
    Topics: Subjectivity; Healing; Explanatory Models; Illness and Identity

    Reading Due: Stitches (first part)

    February 6
    Biomedicine and the Definition of Normality

    Reading Due: Stitches (second part)

    February 8
    The Mind, Self, and Mental Illness, Topics: Mind/Body dichotomy,
    embodiment, placebo effect;

    Reading Due: Stitches (finish)

    Second Essay Assigned

    February 13
    Social Determinants of Health and Illness
    Topics: Health disparities; illness and inequalities; social epidemiology

    Reading Due: Holmes, Introduction, Worth Risking Your Life? and Two,
    We Are Field Workers: Embodied Anthropology of Migration

    February 15
    MIDTERM

    Study Week
    February 20 24
    February 27
    Race, Eugenics and Populations
    Topics: Urbanization; migration; demographic transitions

    Reading Due: Holmes, Segregation on the Farm: Ethnic Hierarchies at


    Work, and How the Poor Suffer: Embodying the Violence Continuum

    March 1
    Biomedicine and the Clinical Encounter
    Topics: clinical gaze; power; social suffering; symbolic violence

    Reading Due: Holmes, Doctors Dont Know Anything: The Clinical


    Gaze in Migrant Health

    March 6
    Medical Humanitarianism
    Topics: health and human rights, health interventions

    Reading Due: Holmes, Because Theyre Lower to the Ground:


    Naturalizing Social Suffering and Conclusion

    March 8
    Introducing the Body, Sex, and Gender
    Topics Covered: Body; Embodiment; Social and Biological Constructions
    of Sex and Gender

    Reading Due: Catch up or move ahead day: Finish Holmes and/or


    start Quinones

    March 13
    Phamarceutical Revolutions
    Topics: pharmaceuticals, neuroenhancement

    Reading Due: Quinones, Preface, Introduction, Part I,

    March 15 (Second Essay Due)


    Public Health, Global Health and Infectious Diseases
    Topics: Modern plagues and pandemics; emerging infectious diseases;
    globalization

    Reading Due: Quinones, Part I & Part II

    March 20
    Biological Citizenship
    Topics: Human experimentation; laboratories; markets; social
    relationships; clinical trials

    Reading Due: Quinones, Part III & Part IV

    March 22
    Medicalization and Risk
    Topics: Anthropology of Biomedicine

    Reading Due: Quinones, Part IV and Part V

    March 27
    Death and Dying
    Topics: brain death; end of life issues

    Reading Due:
    Kaufman, Sharon. 2000. In the Shadow of "Death with Dignity":
    Medicine and Cultural Quandaries of the Vegetative State. American
    Anthropologist 102(1): 69-83.

    Kaufman, Sharon et al. 2004. Revisiting the Biomedicalization of Aging:


    Clinical Trends and Ethical Challenges. The Gerontologist 44(6): 731-
    738.

    Lock, Margaret. 2004. Living Cadavers and the Calculation of Death.


    Body and Society 10:135-152.

    March 29
    Organ Transplantation
    Topics: Commodification of the Human Body and Its Parts

    Reading Due:
    Sharp, Lesley. 2001 Commodified Kin: Death, Mourning, and Competing
    Claims on the Bodies of Organ Donors in the United States. American
    Anthropologist 103(1):112-133.

    Lock, Margaret & Megan Crowley-Makota. 2008. Situating the practice


    of organ donation in familial, cultural, and political context. Transplant
    Reviews 22(3): 154-157.

    April 3
    Reproduction and Kinship
    Topics: New reproductive technologies; fetal imagery; surrogacy;

    Reading Due:
    Inhorn, Marcia. 2003. Global Infertility and the Globalization of New
    Reproductive Technologies: Illustrations from Egypt. Social Science and
    Medicine 56:1837-1851

    Ivry, Tsipy. 2010. Kosher medicine and medicalized halacha : an


    exploration of triadic relations among Israeli rabbis, doctors, and
    infertility patients. American ethnologist 37(4): 662-680.

    April 5
    Genetic and Postgenomic Futures
    Topics: Genetic discrimination; genetic testing; biological reductionism;
    epigenetics

    Reading Due:
    Konrad, Monica. 2003. Predictive genetic testing and the making of the
    pre-symptomatic person: prognostic moralities amongst Huntingtons-
    affected families. Anthropology & Medicine 10:23-49.

    Lock, Margaret. 2010. Dementia Entanglements in a Postgenomic Era.


    Science, Technology, & Human Values 36 (5): 685-703
    REQUIRED TEXTS

    Biss, Eula. 2014. On Immunity: an inoculation. Graywolf Press: Minneapolis,


    MN.

    Holmes, Seth. 2013. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the
    United States. University of California Press.

    Quinones, Sam. 2015. Dreamland: the true tale of Americas opiate epidemic.
    Bloomsbury Press.

    Small, David. 2010. Stitches: A Memoir. W.W. Norton.

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