In 500 words minimum and 600 words maximum, describe in your own words what is meant by an understanding of bodies as more than biological (cultural/social, medical, and/or political). Offer two examples from class readings or discussions to demonstrate this idea (reminder: you may use two examples from readings or one from readings and one from discussion, but not two from discussion). Then, locate in your example at least one health-related ethical/moral issue. Identify the issue, and explain why it is an ethical/moral one. Use at least one analytical concept from class readings and discussions (like “local moral worlds” or “ethical variability”) in your answer.
here is all reading
Course Schedule and Readings
Day 1, June 18: Medical Anthropology, Health, Healing, and Ethics
Bioethics and Medical Anthropology
Harris, John. 2001. “Introduction: The Scope and Importance of Bioethics” in John Harris, ed. Bioethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
Marshall, Patricia. 1992. “Anthropology and Bioethics.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 6(1): 49–73.
Sargent, Carolyn and Carolyn Smith-Morris. 2006. “Questioning our Principles: Anthropological Contributions to Ethical Dilemmas in Clinical Practice.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 15(2): 123–134.
Day 2, June 19: Power/Knowledge
Health Technology
Epstein, Steven. 1996. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter 6 and Conclusion.
Berk, Elizabeth. 2018. “A Kind of Disassembled and Reassembled, Post-Modern, Personal and Technical Self: Agency and the Insulin Pump.”
Inhorn, Marcia. 2016. “Religion and Reproductive Technologies.” In Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, edited by Peter Brown and Svea Closser. New York: Routledge. 274-276.
Stahl, Devan. 2018. Imaging and Imagining Illness: Becoming Whole in a Broken Body. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books. Chapter 1.
Day 3, June 20: Pharma
Petryna, Adriana, Arthur Kleinman, and Andrew Lakoff. 2006. Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chapters 2 and 9 (“Globalizing Human Subjects Research” and “Treating AIDS”).
Day 4, June 21: Bioethics and Science and Technology Studies
Hamdy, Sherine. 2013. “Not Quite Dead: Why Egyptian Doctors Refuse the Diagnosis of Death by Neurological Criteria.” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34(2): 147–160.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2000. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology 41(2): 191–224.