Medical Anthropology Quarterly

This month’s edition of MAQ examines the Covid-19 pandemic and the role of medical anthropology in making sense of and responding to it.

Medical Anthropology in the Time of COVID‐19 (free access)
Vincanne Adams, Alex Nading

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article opening the current issue:

In different ways and

This special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry explores the under-examined roots of Western psychotherapy, complicating the idea that it is, in the words of the issue organizers, “exclusively…a modern phenomenon.”

“Other psychotherapies”: Healing interactions across time, geography, and culture (open access)
Ross G. White, Cheryl McGeachan, Gavin Miller, Sophia Xenophontos

This article introduces the special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry entitled “Other Psychotherapies”:

American Anthropologist 

Fitness Fanatics: Exercise as Answer to Pending Zombie Apocalypse in Contemporary America
Katie Rose Hejtmanek

Physical fitness has a long history in the United States. Currently, functional fitness has emerged as a popular, novel method of exercising. Based on years of ethnographic research on a branded version of functional fitness, I argue this form of exercise is

Here’s the first part of November’s round-up of new journal articles that may be of interest. Enjoy!

Science, Technology and Human Values

Borderlands of Life: IVF Embryos and the Law in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany (open access)
Sheila Jasanoff, Ingrid Metzler

Human embryos produced in labs since the 1970s have generated layers of uncertainty for law and

This special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry addresses the growing field of Global Mental Health. As the organizers state in their introduction to the issue,

“Over the past decade, efforts in Global Mental Health (GMH) have significantly evolved in parallel with critical commentary on its claims and interventions. The initial debate between global and local, universalist and culturalist, emic and etic

This open-access special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry examines mental health among Indigenous populations, with an emphasis on research. As the organizers state in their introduction, the articles in this issue “illustrate some of the distinctive ethical, conceptual and methodological challenges in contemporary Indigenous mental health research.” They continue:

“In most parts of the world, Indigenous peoples have experienced colonization