Learning outcomes:
After the completion of the course the student will be familiar with:
- The contemporary themes and theoretical trends in the field of anthropology of health and of critical medical anthropology.
- The cultural construction of health and disease and the problematization of perceived as fixed concepts, such as the body, health, wellbeing, biology.
- The culturally multiple ways conceptualization of the suffering body-self.
- The globalization of health, disease and therapies.
- The dominance of Western biomedicine.
The relation between health and inequalities.
General Competences
Working Independently.
- Production of new research ideas.
- Criticism and self-criticism.
- Production of free, creative and inductive thinking.
- Working on interdisciplinary issues.
- Respect for difference and multiculturalism.
- Showing social, professional and ethical responsibility and sensitivity to gender issues.
During the course we will study and elaborate on contemporary research, themes and theoretical trends in the field of medical anthropology. Emphasis will be given on critical medical anthropology, in critically approaches glocal health agendas, in the relationship between health, disease and inequality. In addition, students will become familiar with the understanding of health and disease as biosocial phenomena, via the use of analytical tools such as local biologies, health environments, biosocial becomings, and more. Various ethnographic examples and case studies will be studied drawing from multiple cultural contexts.
(1). Introduction to the course. Anthropology of Health. Themes of study.
(2). Key concepts and fields of study.
(3). Introduction to Critical Medical Anthropology
(4). Anthropology of Global Health
(5). Critical approaches to Global Health. Beyond Global Health.
(6). Health, structural violence and applied medical anthropology. The works of Paul Farmer.
(7). Health, Political Ecology and pandemics.
(8). Approaching the Covid-19 pandemic via critical medical anthropology.
(9). “Biosocial worlds. Health environments beyond determinisms”. Permeable bodies and local biologies.
(10). “Biosocial worlds. Health environments beyond determinisms”. Health, Climate change and more-than-human ethnographies.
(11). Embodying inequalities. Examples from Latin America.
(12). Health and technologies (new reproductive technologies, new biotechnologies, epigenetics, digital technologies and health, etc.).
