Medico-legal borderlands?
What is this nebulous sounding compound concept, “medico-legal borderlands”? How has it been used by social scientists whose ethnographic studies scratch at itches in the intersecting areas of human health and illness and the organization and production of health care systems?
Through a collection of four essays curated for this Somatosphere series, we invite readers to join us …
The concept of the “medico-legal borderland” commonly refers to the discursive intersection of medical and legal knowledges in the constitution of a new knowledge regime (McClelland, 2013). The following essay adds to the discussion of borderlands an empirical illustration showing how the flow of knowledge in borderland spaces is highly policed and disciplined. Further, it demonstrates that even disciplining itself …
On the evening of June 6, 2016, a man with a concealed carry permit misplaced his loaded 9mm Kahr handgun in the middle of a park filled with kids during the opening night of my town’s recreational soccer league.[1] A parent found the gun lying in the grass under a stand of pine trees a few yards from a …
“The necessity of respecting game is still widely acknowledged by Inuit. The awareness, that the continuity of society depends on the maintenance of correct relationships with animals and the land, is still very strong.” (Aupilaarjuk et al. 1999: 2)
In 2012, I spent eight months living and working in the Inuvialuit hamlet of Paulatuuq, which is situated on the coast …
It was recently reported by the Guardian that there has been drop in organ donation rates in the UK.[i] It was also reported at about the same time that a woman successfully argued in the courts that her mother’s last will and testament should be over-ridden so that she might receive a bequest that her mother never wanted her …
On January 17th 2014, Catherine Eagles, a federal judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, struck down as unconstitutional a portion of North Carolina’s 2011 Women’s Right to Know Act. The portion in question would have required abortion providers in the state to perform an ultrasound and display and describe the images presented to every woman seeking an …