Of Bodies and Symptoms (original) (raw)
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This essay discusses the anthropological studies on body and illness from the perspective of the way in which they relate to biological knowledge in the scientific field of health. Anthropological research implies an attitude before this area of knowledge to the point that the way in which one relates to the other becomes an epistemological problem, defining the status of anthropological knowledge in that field marked by the hegemony of bio-medical sciences. From this point of view, we distinguish two perspectives: medical anthropology, subsumed under the logic of bio-medical knowledge, and the anthropology of health, whose approach through the notion of culture gives rise to another epistemological reference, pointing to the anthropological contribution to this field that presupposes, in itself, the distance from the references that support bio-medicine.
Health/Illness, Biosocialities and Culture
Vibrant : virtual Brazilian anthropology, 2015
In this dossier, we present 10 articles exploring the theme of “Health/ Illness, Biosocialities and Culture”. Addressed to a larger non-Portuguese speaking audience, our aim is to promote the research that has been developed by Brazilian Anthropologists from different generations, academic disciplines and university institutions on a variety of topics associated with this central theme. The articles presented here highlight the diverse ways that medical knowledge and technologies are being constituted by and constitutive of culture, politics, ethics and identity in Brazil. In doing so they extend and bring to bear novel theoretical perspectives in approaching questions of biosocialities, health and illness. All the articles in this dossier consider the social impact of biomedicine, biotechnologies and public health policies and their role in the definition of new “pathologies”, novel meanings of risk, contemporary social practices and cultural conceptions of ‘life’. A range of ethno...
"Disease, Medicine and Health"
In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Studies ed. by Jose C. Moya. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011
XlV PREFACE essay actually focuses not on the history of physical maladies or the biomedical profession but on three overlapping trends in the historical study of human responses to illness, which they label as "new history of medicine, history of public health, and sociocultural history of disease." The topics range from colonial epidemiology and pharmacopoeia to twentieth-century public health institutions and urban hygiene. But a consistent focus on the social, cultural, and symbolic components of diseases and cures unifies this historiography and distinguishes it from the narrower scope of the long-established fleld of the history of medicine.
Bodies and Tales. Grounds for an Interdisciplinary Exchange between Medical and Social Sciences
Health is a field of study of a large set of disciplines. Biomedical disciplines, obviously, have an important role, but alongside them also social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology play an important part in the study of care relations, and in the reconstruction of the subjective experiences of health and illness. The cohabitation of these two scientific communities in the same field, that of health, meets some difficulties, due to the differences in the epistemic styles and in the way each community defines the proper way to produce evidence. This implies troubles in the reciprocal recognition, and some difficulties of communication. This essay analyzes two independent and parallel movements who characterize these disciplinary contexts, which offer an important occasion for an interdisciplinary exchange: namely the emergence in the field of social science of the body, and that of narration in the biomedical field. In both cases, attention will be directed to the most recent transformations, that have their roots in the last century, and that – at least in this writer's eyes – have had a decisive impact in shaping both the outlook (the epistemic dimension) of each discipline, and the forms of collaboration between them (the political dimension).
Societies
This article seeks to capture variations and tensions in the relationships between the health–illness–medicine complex and society. It presents several theoretical reconstructions, established theses and arguments are reassessed and criticized, known perspectives are realigned according to a new theorizing narrative, and some new notions are proposed. In the first part, we argue that relations between the medical complex and society are neither formal–abstract nor historically necessary. In the second part, we take the concept of medicalization and the development of medicalization critique as an important example of the difficult coalescence between health and society, but also as an alternative to guide the treatment of these relationships. Returning to the medicalization studies, we suggest a new synthesis, reconceptualizing it as a set of modalities, including medical imperialism. In the third part, we endorse replacing a profession-based approach to medicalization with a knowle...