Tag Archives: Medical Anthropology

Lectures

Epistemic and Temporal Disjunctions: (Re)Mapping “Suicide Risk” Epigenetics Through Birth Cohorts

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This article is part of the series:

The McGill Group for Suicide Studies (MGSS) has garnered significant attention for its epigenetic models of suicide risk. These models suggest that early life adversity may set people on pathways of neurobiological vulnerability and, ultimately, suicide risk, which are correlated with distinctive epigenetic traits. While the core of this epigenetic and neuroscientific research is carried out on the donated brains …

Announcements

Working Definitions: Making and Unmaking “Medical Anthropology” around the World

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Somatosphere Special Series – Call for Contributions

Editors: Professor Paschal Kum Awah (Chair, Anthropology, University of Yaoundé I) and Elizabeth Durham (PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Princeton University)

Anthropology’s interest in health, illness, prevention, and treatment is longstanding and increasingly robust. In this era of medical development, epidemics and pandemics, and debates in both the oft-called “Global North” and “Global South” over …

Lectures

COVID-19 Forum III – Introduction

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This article is part of the series:

Thirty-eight days have passed since the publication of Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum II. In the course of these days the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the globe has risen from 1.1 to 4,3 million, with coronavirus-related deaths rising from 60,000 to 294,997. While some countries, like Italy and Germany, have started relaxing their lockdowns, epidemic control measures in …

Lectures

Fragments of a Transient Affliction: “Mass Hysteria” and the Question of Subjectivity

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A study of “mass hysteria” is a study of fragments of a phenomenon in its absence. Absent because of its transient nature; the affliction appears suddenly, without warning, spreading and transferring from one person to another, and then suddenly it dissipates and is gone. People cautiously return to their lives, unsure when another outbreak might occur. How to study a …

Books

Alison Kenner’s Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change

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Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change

Alison Kenner

University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 236 pages.

Asthma is thought to affect an estimated 339 million people around the globe, with a prevalence rates as high as 20% of adults in some nations (Global Asthma Network 2018). It is one of the most common chronic conditions, impacting people across …

Books

Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India

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Sugar and Tension: Diabetes in Modern India

Lesley Jo Weaver

Rutgers University Press, 2019. 202 pages.

Sugar and Tension is a must-read for anyone interested in how social constructions of gender influence the physical and mental health of individuals living with diabetes. Lesley Jo Weaver, a biocultural medical anthropologist with degrees in global health and in medical anthropology, presents case …