{"title":"The State, the Household, the Voluntary Sector: The Pharmaceuticalization and Collectivization of Care in Athens' Social Clinics of Solidarity.","authors":"Letizia Bonanno","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2666903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2666903","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Athens' social clinics of solidarity, I explore how the volunteers redefined pharmaceuticals as they moved from state-licensed pharmacies to households and into the grassroots voluntary sector. Therefore, I trace how their value, status and meaning shifted in the process: medicines were no longer seen as commodities but treated as sociable objects of care. In showing how state policies and market forces made pharmaceuticals increasingly central to social relations and care practices in times of austerity, I argue that pharmaceuticalization can develop alongside and even arise from grassroots, collective efforts to pool and redistribute medicines.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147857472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dads and Digital Devices: Embodied and Spectral Presences in Diabetes Care in Greece and Denmark.","authors":"Maria Athena Campbell, Hanne Overgaard Mogensen","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2666907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2666907","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fathers to children with type 1 diabetes increasingly engage with digital technologies that monitor and regulate their child's condition, yet the embodied and emotional dimensions of this care remain underexplored. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Greece and Denmark, we show how diabetes technologies mediate new forms of paternal attunement, aligning care work with technological competence and culturally valued masculinities. Through routine device work and remote monitoring, fathers cultivate embodied and spectral forms of presence while navigating moments of connection and disruption.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147844379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response-Able Care and Undone Care Spaces: The Role of Digital Technologies in Danish Epilepsy Care.","authors":"Frederike Fahse, Henriette Langstrup","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2653857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2653857","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, we explore how people with epilepsy and their caregivers handle everyday life with epilepsy and the constant fear of an unexpected seizure through digital care technologies. These technologies are often used outside clinical settings and without clinicians' involvement or awareness. Their use is dependent on response-able care relations. We explore the precarities that arise when this dependency leads to the creation of \"undone care spaces\" - spaces outside the clinical realm, where the potential for care is effectively absent due to people with epilepsy's active rejection of digitally enabled but socially-obligating care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147844394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Affordances of Fun: An Ethnography of Special Educators and Intellectually Disabled Adults in India.","authors":"Shruti Vaidya","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2657571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2657571","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, I focus on a vocational and arts center named Udaan in Pune, India that prioritizes the value of fun as its institutional goal to analyze the affordances of fun for intellectually disabled adults. Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic research, I examine how special educators at Udaan created a fun ethos for intellectually disabled adults through practices, such as, teasing, going on overnight trips, and organizing music performances. While this fun ethos was classed as gendered and sometimes unsettling, it also created subversive possibilities for intellectually disabled adults, pointing to the multidimensional, complex, and contradictory nature of fun.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between the Extraordinary and the Everyday: Embodied Memory and Epidemic Preparedness During Ebola Outbreaks in Guinea.","authors":"Almudena Mari-Saez, Frédéric Le Marcis","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2655775","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2655775","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 2021, an outbreak of Orthoebolavirus occurred in Nzerekore (Guinea). Following the declaration, diagnostic and containment actions were triggered, framing the outbreak as an extraordinary event. Yet, outbreaks are embedded in the everyday of social life and generate embodied memories that shape interactions between local populations and outbreak response teams. We examined locally the tension between the community's everyday and the exceptional in the outbreak response. We argue that the bodily imprint of such extraordinary events plays a critical role in shaping preparedness, yet it remains unseen by the global health technocracy.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"<i>Amarrados</i>: How Precariousness Structures Inconsistent Care in a Residential Facility for Peruvian Older Adults.","authors":"Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2656476","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2656476","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article I examine how care is enacted, justified, and contested in a precarious residential institution for older adults in Lima, Peru. I analyze how material scarcity shapes everyday care practices and moral reasoning, especially regarding physical restraint. The study draws on thirty months of ethnographic fieldwork at La Merced shelter, including participant observation, informal conversations with residents and staff, and embodied participation in daily care routines. Theoretically, it engages anthropological scholarship on care, biopolitics, moral economies, and governmentality, framing care as an ambivalent practice that sustains life while generating ethical tension amid structural deprivation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147724428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sensory Ecologies of Therapeutics: Anti-Coloniality, Heritage Practices and Community Healing.","authors":"Kristina Baines","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2657567","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2657567","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Belizean Maya and Garifuna communities, this paper forefronts the therapeutics of sensory experience in traditional healing practice. Exploring the sensory aspects of daily ecological interactions and asking which ways community heritage practices become constitutive of healing practices, it engages the embodied ecological heritage (EEH) framework to ask how these practices respond to ongoing forces of imperial projects. This paper brings together research around Indigenous land rights and identity-making in times of change with the author's personal experience of grief and collective healing toward a sensory ecology of therapeutics as a responsive, anti-colonial, community healing practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147692768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Care (Mis)match: Arranging \"Good\" Care Relations for Multilingual Care Work Trainees in Denmark.","authors":"Sara Lei Sparre, Stine Hauberg Nielsen","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2655769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2655769","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In Denmark, a growing number of care workers are multilingual. To address labor shortage, municipalities recruit resident migrants for training in elderly care. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore how migrant care work trainees' struggles with Danish language affect their relationships with older citizens and influence supervisors' work practices. We show how supervisors arrange \"good\" care relations by matching multilingual trainees with particular older citizens to support migrants' training and language learning. This practice fosters some relationships while hindering others, as part of broader efforts to meet care expectations and secure the future workforce in the Danish elderly care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147677738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Treatment Multiplicity in a Nigerian Psychiatric Hospital.","authors":"Timothy Olanrewaju Alabi","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2656925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2656925","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, I investigate the multiplicity of mental healthcare practices at Aro Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Abeokuta, Nigeria, using Annemarie Mol's theory of multiple bodies to explore how biomedical, sociocultural, and spiritual dimensions intersect in treatment. Drawing on nine months of hospital ethnography, I illustrate how care practices integrate global biomedical standards with local cultural beliefs about personhood and recovery. Formal interventions-psychotropic medication and occupational therapy-are complemented by spiritual counseling and moral rehabilitation, reflecting Yoruba ontology. These practices adapt global holistic frameworks to resource-constrained settings. This article advocates for culturally resonant recovery models, contributing to global mental health discourse.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147677726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Naturalizing Machines, Mechanizing Bodies: Constructions of Personhood at the NICU.","authors":"Paula Martone, Anna Molas, Diana Marre","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2653862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2026.2653862","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Preterm infants represent a medical and social challenge. Their liminal state in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can jeopardize parental recognition of their personhood and even of their status as human beings. Aware of how this could affect infants' recovery, the neonatal team enacts material and symbolic strategies that appeal to practices framed as \"natural\" and that parents are expected to perform. We argue that this process simultaneously reconfigures the NICU as a more \"natural\" environment while mechanizing mothers' bodily functions. These dynamics often generate tensions, as parents feel their own needs are overlooked in favor of their infants' well-being.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147663237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}