The smell arrived in the middle of our interview. I was sitting in the trade union’s local center in Aliağa, on İzmir’s northern edge, three days into a preliminary study of industrial pollution and health. İbrahim is a retired petrochemical operator, a two-term union branch chair, and now an opposition member of the municipal council. […]
Somatosphere welcomes you to the October edition of “In the Journals.” Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals. BioSocieties Modeling the ‘patient cell:’ performances of proximity and the making of pathological proxies Timo Roßmann Scientists evaluate disease models by their capacity to capture salient features of […]
Mwanga is a 27 year-old pharmaceutical technician and was one of my closest associates during my 11-month stay in Morogoro Town, Tanzania, for fieldwork. After Mwanga graduated from St Francis University College of Health and Allied Sciences, with an Ordinary Diploma in Pharmaceutical Sciences, she obtained a job at a drug shop, locally known as […]
Somatosphere welcomes you to the September edition of “In the Journals.” Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals. Technology and Culture The Problem with the Sex Toy Narrative: Design and Medical Intent in Early Vibrators Dianya Mia Hua This article challenges the dominant interpretation of early […]
In many parts of the world, there is an increasing discomfort with middlemen in the healthcare industry (Pearl, 2024). They are characterized as greedy, profit seekers and vilified characters that put money before health and proliferate the markets with fake medicines, putting public health in danger (Kaprove R and M.D 2014, Rowland D 2021, Edema […]
In one of the oldest streets in Tehran’s city centre, an informal pharmaceutical marketplace unfolds amidst a crowded street, where ‘dalals’[1] (brokers) stand on the pavements, hands brimming with packages of pharmaceuticals, whispering various medication names to pedestrians. Here Maryam, seeking Bisoprolol for her mother’s heart condition, engages in conversation with Davood, a dalal in […]
Somatosphere welcomes you to the August edition of “In the Journals.” Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals. Sociology of Health and Illness More Than a Role Dispute: Physician Associates and the Changing Grounds of Medical Authority Louise Ashley This article examines how the legitimacy of […]
“Most of these other agency heads are, in my opinion, car salesmen. They would sell anything and would probably also somehow sell their grandmother’s washing machine, probably also their grandmother if they could get money for it.” This is how one CEO of a German nurse recruitment company explained to us what distinguished his enterprise […]
This is the story of how the World Health Organisation (WHO) came to partner with Interpol and the pharmaceutical industry to fight a war against fake drugs. This partnership took the form of a taskforce, the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeit Taskforce (IMPACT), which contributed greatly to how counterfeit drugs became understood as a threat to […]
Introduction I’m walking through Mwenge, one of Dar es Salaam’s central business districts. I’ve been spending time here with Hassan, a petty cosmetics trader, who carries his goods in a suitcase as he makes his daily tour of the market. We’ve been walking a while and Hassan suggests that we stop by at his favourite […]
Somatosphere welcomes you to the July edition of “In the Journals.” Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals. Cultural Anthropology Out of Time? Chronocracy and Ageism in Brexit–COVID-19 England Cathrine Degnen Generation or relative age is a common way humans define social difference. In Europe and […]
