Lectures

February 11, 2022

Incarceration as Harm Reduction: The realities of lethal street-based opioid overdoses in neoliberal Philadelphia

By Tali Ziv

This article is part of the series: Reducing Harm Responsibly

Philadelphia is the poorest of the ten largest cities in the United States and has one of the highest rates of fatal opioid-related overdoses in the state of Pennsylvania. Faced with a limited landscape of social services and community-based support, and the responsibility of keeping their defendants alive, judges and attorneys in Philadelphia have begun to use probation and incarceration …

Lectures

January 5, 2022

9/11 and Beyond: Our World of Toxic Exposure/COVID-19 Syndemics

By Merrill Singer

For the last 25 years, in my work as an applied medical anthropologist, I have called attention to and explored syndemics, the biosocial adverse interaction of two or more diseases and the social conditions of the local or regional context in which they occur. The study of syndemics offers a way to address both health risks and unjust and …

Lectures

December 16, 2021

What A 1993 Outbreak Can Tell Us About Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pandemic Preparedness

By Rebecca Lynn Perez

In 1993, the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States experienced an unknown virus outbreak that killed its victims within 48 hours. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) turned to biomedical science to understand the mysterious virus, the affected Indigenous community turned to their own history. Ultimately, Navajo oral history offered answers that streamlined the research process and …

Lectures

January 17, 2020

Toxic Disavowal

By Chloe Ahmann

Figure 1. “Residents want out of industrial ghetto.” Photo by Lloyd Fox for the Baltimore Sun, 1998.

In April 1998, Jeanette succumbed to terminal cancer. She was only 56. Her obituary described her as a “high-energy grandmother with short, spiky hair” and a committed “environmental activist.”[1] Jeanette died fighting for a buyout of her home on Wagner’s Point, a …

Somatosphere

Science, Medicine, and Anthropology

A collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics.

Tag Archives: USA

Incarceration as Harm Reduction: The realities of lethal street-based opioid overdoses in neoliberal Philadelphia

9/11 and Beyond: Our World of Toxic Exposure/COVID-19 Syndemics

What A 1993 Outbreak Can Tell Us About Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pandemic Preparedness

Toxic Disavowal