Anthropology of Biomedicine

An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new
introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing
on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies
bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural
anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and
medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the
thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive
product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down.

• Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective,
  exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history,
  environment, culture, and politics

• Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body
  in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable,
  malleable entity

• Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic
  materials around the globe to illustrate the importance
  of this methodological approach

• Integrates key new research data with more classical material,
  covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth,
  by military doctors from colonial times on

• Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the
  global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms
  of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into
  domestic and intimate domains

• Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and
  Anthropology

Auteur
Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Among her numerous awards are the Gold Medal for Research by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wellcome Medal of Britain's Royal Anthropological Society. In 2005 she was awarded both a Killam Prize and Trudeau Foundation Fellowship. She is the author and/or co-editor of 14 books and has published more than 190 articles. Vinh-Kim Nguyen is a physician and a medical anthropologist. He practices medicine in Montréal at the Clinique l'Actuel, which specializes in HIV and hepatitis, and the Emergency Department of the Jewish General Hospital, and teaches at the University of Montreal where he is an Associate Professor in Social Medicine. As a researcher, he is affiliated with both Global Health Unit of the Montreal University Hospitals' Research Centre and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He was recently awarded the Aurora prize for his research by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Texte du rabat
The concept of a universal, standardizable body that can best be technologically manipulated in isolation from its context has become a foundation of biomedicine. An Anthropology of Biomedicine introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, medical anthropologist Margaret Lock and physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the theory that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down. Tracking the historic global application of biomedical technologies -- including the management of epidemics as part of colonial medicine, the control of populations, organ transplants, assisted reproductions, genetic testing and screening, and other technologies -- the authors reveal the intended and unintended local consequences and the exacerbation of global inequalities and health disparities that such technologies bring about. The argument is put forward that in addition to focusing on the massive impact of poverty and social inequality on health and illness, attention must be given to local biologies, culture, and politics; as well as to the culture of biomedicine and the unexamined assumptions embedded in it. An Anthropology of Biomedicine serves as an important new introduction to the global implications of the implementation of biomedicine.

Résumé
An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down.

• Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics
• Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity
• Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic materials around the globe to illustrate the importance of this methodological approach
• Integrates key new research data with more classical material, covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth, by military doctors from colonial times on
• Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into domestic and intimate domains
• Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and Anthropology

Contenu

Acknowledgments xii

Introduction 1

Improving Global Health: The Challenge 3

Biomedicine as Technology 4

Does Culture Exist? 6

A Word about Ethnography 9

Outline of Chapters 11

Part I: Technologies and Bodies in Context 15

1 Biomedical Technologies in Practice 17

Technological Mastery of the Natural World and Human Development 19

Technology and Boundary Crossings 20

Biomedicine as Technology: Some Implications 22

Technologies of Bodily Governance 24

Technologies of the Self 27

The Power of Biological Reductionism 29

Techno/Biologicals 30

2 The Normal Body 32

Cholera in the 19th Century 33

Representing the Natural Order 35

Truth to Nature 35

The Natural Body 37

A Numerical Approach 38

Other Natures 39

Interpreting the Body 42

How Normal Became Possible 43

When Normal Does Not Exist 46

Problems with Assessing Normal 47

Pathologizing the Normal 50

Limitations to Biomedical Objectivity 53

Better Than Well? 54

3 Anthropologies of Medicine 57

The Body Social 57

Contextualizing Medical Knowledge 60

Medical Pluralism 61

The Modernization of Traditional Medicine 63

Medical Hybridization 64

Biodiversity and Indigenous Medical Knowledge 65

Self-Medication 66

A Short History of Medicalization 67

Opposition to Medicalization 70

The Social Construction of Illness and Disease 71

The Politics of Medicalization 75

Beyond Medicalization? 78

In Pursuit of Health 79

In Summary 81

4 Local Biologies and Human Difference 83

The End of Menstruation 84

Local Biologies 90

Rethinking Biology in the Midst of Life's Complexity 92

Is Biology Real? 93

Kuru and Endocannibalism 95

Racism and Birth Weight 98

Of Microbes and Humans 99

Antibiotics and Resistant Microbes 102

Debates about the Origin of HIV 103

In Summary 108

Part II: The Biological Standard 111

5 The Right Population 113

The Origins of Population as a Problem 115

Addressing the Problem of Population 117

Improving the Stock of Nations 118

Alternative Modernity and Indian Family…