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ANTH/HSERV 475 Janelle Taylor
Autumn 2009 Office: Denny M39University of Washington Phone:
543-4793
Tue & Thu 10:30 12:20 Office hours: Thu 1:30 - 3:00
Condon 139 [email protected]
Perspectives in Medical AnthropologyCourse Syllabus
About the Course
This course is an introduction to some aspects of the field of
medical
anthropology. We shall focus especially on theoretical and
methodological questions of
how one approaches illness, healing or medicine as an object of
ethnographicstudy. Though we shall read articles based on research
carried out in many different parts
of the world, many concern illness experience and medical
practice in the United States.
All of the scholars whose work we shall read examine illness,
healing andmedicine in sociocultural and historical context. Most
rely on ethnographic researchmethods, especially open-ended
interviews and observation of social life over an
extended time. Within this very broad consensus, however, there
remain significant
differences in the kinds of questions medical anthropologists
ask, and the kinds ofinsights they achieve. The course is organized
in a manner intended to highlight these
differences.
We thus begin by reading work that focuses on interpretive
medicalanthropology, in other words work which emphasizes questions
of meaning, experience
and language. From there we move on to approaches that join
attention to interpretive
questions with a heightened concern for dynamics of power at
work in the making of
meanings around illness. We turn next to critical medical
anthropology, meaning worksthat examine health, illness and
medicine from the perspective of how they are bound up
with inequality and power though, as we shall see, the
researchers understand power
in a range of different ways. We then consider some work that
considers thebiotechnologies upon which so much of contemporary
medical practice depends, the
global inequalities with which medicine is entangled, and the
practices in which caring
consists.My goals for students in this course are: 1) to gain a
working knowledge of
theoretical issues in the field of medical anthropology; 2) to
practice applying this
knowledge to specific topics; 3) to gain some understanding of
current issues in US andworld medical systems; and more generally
4) to develop analytical skills that will help
us think critically about issues of health, illness, and
medicine as we encounter them inour lives and in our world.
Texts: One textbook has been ordered for this course at the
University Book Store; it is
Exploring Medical Anthropology, 3rd
Edition, by Donald Joralemon. All other readingsare included in
a course packet of photocopied articles has also been prepared
specifically
for this class, and will be available for purchase at Ave Copy
on University Ave (near the
intersection with 42nd
Street).
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Class Schedule and Assignments
First Meeting
Oct 2 Introductions (no readings assigned)
Week 2: Opening New Perspectives Through Ethnographic
Research
Oct 6
Joralemon, chapters 1-2
Firsthand description account due
Oct 8
Lock, Margaret. 2002. Medical Knowledge and Body Politics,
inExotic No More:
Anthropology on the Front Lines, ed. Jeremy MacClancy. Chicago:
University ofChicago Press, pp. 190-208.
Kaufman, Sharon. 2005. Appendix A: About the Research and
Introduction, inAnd a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the
End of Life. New York:Scribner, pp. 327-332 and 1-20.
Week 3: Questions of Meaning, Experience, and Language
Oct 13
Frank, Arthur. 2002. Becoming Ill, Illness as Incident, Becoming
Ill Again. InAtthe Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 8-28.
Becker, Gay. 1994. Metaphors in Disrupted Lives: Infertility and
Cultural Constructionsof Continuity. Medical Anthropology Quarterly
8(4):383-410.
Oct 15Aggegard Larsen, John. 2004. Finding Meaning in First
Episode Psychosis: Experience,
Agency, and the Cultural Repertoire. Medical Anthropology
Quarterly18(4):447-
471.Mattingly, Cheryl and Mary Lawlor. 2001. The Fragility of
Healing.Ethos 29(1):30-
57.
Week 4: Narrative Struggles and Noncompliance
Oct 20
Rouse, Carolyn. 2004. If Shes a Vegetable, Well Be Her Garden:
Embodiment,
Transcendence, and Citations of Competing Cultural Metaphors in
the Case of a
Dying Child. American Ethnologist31(4):514-529.Oct 22
Hine. Janet. 2008. Managing the Unmanageable: Elderly Russian
Jewish Emigres andthe Biomedical Culture of Diabetes Care. Medical
Anthropology Quarterly
22(1):1-26.Chapman, Rachel R. 2003. Endangering Safe Motherhood
in Mozambique: Prenatal
Care as Pregnancy Risk. Social Science and Medicine
57:355-374.
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Week 5: Workings of Power and Narrative in Epidemics
Oct 27Joralemon, chapters 3-5
Paper #1 due
Oct 29Kroeger, Karen A. 2003 AIDS rumors, imaginary enemies, and
the body politic in
Indonesia.American Ethnologist30(2):243-257.
Briggs, Charles. 2004. Theorizing Modernity Conspiratorially:
Science, Scale, and thePolitical Economy of Public Discourse in
Explanations of a Cholera Epidemic
American Ethnologist31(2):164-187.
Week 6: Structural Violence, State Policies, and Embodied
Consequences
Nov 3
Farmer, Paul. 2005.On Suffering and Structural Violence: Social
and Economic Rights
in the Global Era, inPathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights,
and the New
War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press,
29-50.Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Nervoso: Medicine, Sickness, and
Human Needs, inDeath Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life
in Brazil. Berkeley:University of California Press, pp.
167-215.
Nov 5Horton, Sarah. 2004. Different Subjects: The Health Care
Systems Participation in the
Differential Construction of the Cultural Citizenship of Cuban
Refugees and
Mexican Immigrants. Medical Anthropology Quarterly
18(4):472-489.Janes, Craig and Oyuntsetseg Chuluundorj. 2004. Free
Markets and Dead Mothers: The
Social Ecology of Maternal Mortality in Post-Socialist Mongolia.
Medical
Anthropology Quarterly 18(2):230-257.
Week 7: Power/Knowledge in Biomedicine
Nov 10Joralemon, chapter 6
Good, Byron. 1994. How Medicine Constructs Its Objects, in
Medicine, Rationality,
and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 65-87.
Nov 12Rhodes, Lorna. 1990. The Game of Hot Shit, inEmptying
Beds: The Work of an
Emergency Psychiatric Unit. Berkeley: University of California
Press, pp. 55-80.
Davenport, Beverly Ann. 2000. Witnessing and the Medical Gaze:
How MedicalStudents Learn to See at a Free Clinic for the Homeless.
Medical Anthropology
Quarterly 14(3):310-327.
Week 8: Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies
Nov 17
Joralemon chapters 7-9
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Nov 19Sharp, Lesley A. 2001. Commodified Kin: Death, Mourning,
and Competing Claims on
the Bodies of Organ Donors in the United StatesAmerican
Anthropologist
103(1):112-133
Tober, Diane. 2002. Semen as Gift, Semen as Goods: Reproductive
Workers and theMarket in Altruism. In Commodifying Bodies, ed.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and
Loic Wacquant. London: Sage, pp. 137-160.
Week 9: Medicine and Global Inequalities
Nov 24
Paper #2 duePetryna, Adriana. 2005. Ethical Variability: Drug
Development and Globalizing Clinical
Trials.American Ethnologist32(2):183-197.
Nov 26 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Holiday)
Week 10: Caring (about) Practices
Dec 1Harbers, Hans, Annemarie Mol, and Alice Stollmeyer. 2002.
Food Matters: Arguments
for an Ethnography of Daily Care. Theory Culture & Society
19(5/6):207-226.
Taylor, Janelle. 2008. On Recognition, Caring, and Dementia.
Medical Anthropology
Quarterly 22 (4): 313-335
Dec 3 NO CLASS (instructor attending American Anthropological
Assn conference)Dec 4 Reflection Paper due via Catalyst website (by
5pm)
Week 11
Dec 8
Seventh-Inning Stretch (Readings TBD)
Reflection Paper groups assigned
Dec 10
Final Discussion (where everything magically comes
together!)Read the Descriptions and Reflections of classmates in
your group, and come prepared to
discuss them, with at least two thoughts/comments/questions on
individual papers and/or
on the group of papers that you read, written out in
advance.
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Requirements
1. Class participation: In addition to reading texts and writing
papers, learning aboutanthropology requires listening, reflection,
dialogue, and engagement with an
intellectual community. In order to cultivate these essential
skills you must
participate. Attending class regularly, preparing well, and
taking part actively areimportant for your learning in this class.
As an element of participation you will be
asked, over the course of the quarter, to prepare for particular
discussion roles(jargon scout, contextualizer, etc.) as discussed
and announced in class.
2. Found Object (5% C/NC): You will also be asked to try using
questions and conceptsof medical anthropology can be used to query
the world around us, by finding and
sharing (on the Catalyst website, and also in class if possible)
one found object
something you encounter or discover that connects. Here are some
options:A) Post a new article, together with a short annotation
(max 200 words) that explains
how you see it connecting with issues discussed in the
course.
B) Provide a link to a website of interest, together with a
short annotation (max 200words) that explains how you see it
connecting with issues discussed in the
course.
C) Write a short (max 300 words) review of a work of fiction,
documentary or feature
film, museum exhibit etc., evaluating it in terms of how it
addresses questions wehave considered in the course.
Last names A-H post some time within weeks 1-4,
Last names I-O post some time within weeks 5-7Last names P-Z
post some time within weeks 8-10
3. Short papers (30% each, 60%): You will be asked to write two
papers, ~5 double-
spaced typed pages each, due at the beginning of class on
October 27th andNovember 24th, in response to questions that will
be distributed in class in advance.
These papers are an opportunity to pursue in greater depth and
detail directionsdeveloped through our active and thoughtful
collective engagement.
4. Firsthand Account: Description, Revision, and Discussion (40%
C/NC):Description: The first written assignment for the course is a
description of someepisode or event that has some bearing on
health, illness, and healing, which you
either experienced, participated in, or witnessed at first hand.
As you consider which
episode to write about, bear in mind how we will be using these
accountssubsequently; please select an episode that you feel merits
sustained reflection, and
one you will comfortable sharing with your classmate. Write your
account beforeyou have read anything at all just try to clearly and
accurately convey the episodein question. This should be roughly
2-3 double-spaced pages in length, and is due at
the beginning of class, on the second class meeting, and should
be posted on the
Catalyst site as well. Reflection: At the end of the quarter,
you will be asked to
revisit this descriptive firsthand account, and write a short
and coherent (4-5 page)reflective essay that brings to bear upon
your original account some of the ideas,perspectives, questions,
and comparative examples encountered in the course of our
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readings. Detailed guidelines for this revision process will be
distributed shortly.
This is due no later than 5pm via the course Catalyst site, on
December 3rdDiscussion: In the last class meeting Dec 10th, we
shall use the experience paper and
the process of revising it as a springboard for a concluding
discussion of medical
anthropology and the perspectives that it offers. You will be
asked to read the papers
of a few of your classmates, and to come prepared to contribute
to this discussion(some guidelines will be distributed in
advance).
Policies: Assignments are due when they are due; late papers
will not be accepted. If
truly extraordinary circumstances make it impossible for you to
meet a deadline, talk
to the instructor as early as possible. All work must be
completed in order to receive apassing grade for the course.
