Biomedicine looks different in different places. Biotechnologies change under new moral frameworks. The same pharmaceutical pill can offer freedom to some and evoke colonialism in others. And in some contexts hunger is more pressing than curing a specific disease. How do we go about challenging our biomedical assumptions and understanding medicine in context? Medical anthropologists have relied on the art and science of ethnography to provide cross-cultural accounts of health and healing that are accessible, provocative, and timely. In this writing-intensive course, we will read exemplary ethnographies in medical anthropology to explore the intersection of medicine, culture, and narrative text. We will explore four themes that cover provocative discourses in the field: the challenges of participant observation during vulnerable encounters with sickness and disease; regimes of power; local-global encounters; and food, eating, and the gendered body. |