Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-03-09DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2640588
Yuan Yan
{"title":"Still in the Danwei: How Danwei Memory Anchors Institutional Dementia Care in Urban China.","authors":"Yuan Yan","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2640588","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2640588","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an urban Chinese care home, this article examines how residents with dementia establish familiarity in institutional settings. Contrary to home-making approaches that locate familiarity in domestic intimacy, residents reorient themselves through collective embeddedness. Engaging with routines, material arrangements, and social interactions, they reinterpret the care home through the <i>danwei</i>-the socialist work unit that once organized labor and welfare. This resonance activates embodied experiences of familarity and security rooted in the socialist state. The article shows that familiarity in dementia care may emerge not only from home but from collective institutional worlds that structured earlier life.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"140-152"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147379091","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":"\"It's a Limbo\": The Moral Scenes of Interpreting Autonomy in Danish Intellectual Disability Care.","authors":"Maya Christiane Flensborg Jensen, Rikke Horne Fischer","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2641740","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2641740","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In Denmark, people with intellectual disabilities who live in supported housing are entitled to both care and autonomy. Catering to these ideals creates situated dilemmas for caregivers and residents, especially when increased attention to autonomy brings \"good\" care into question. In this article, we demonstrate that individuals with intellectual disabilities express their autonomy by both verbal and non-verbal means, which can be multifaceted and difficult to interpret. As a result, caregivers must continuously experiment with interpreting what we refer to as \"expressions of autonomy\" while navigating sometimes competing values of autonomy and care on a situated basis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"124-139"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147435920","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-03-13DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2641738
Sophie Mylan
{"title":"'There is No Fixed time': Epidemic Preparedness and Relational Time Among Acholi Refugees in Uganda.","authors":"Sophie Mylan","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2641738","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2641738","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Techno-scientifically orientated public health approaches to epidemic preparedness are based on a linear temporality, and struggle to embrace the uncertainty surrounding unpredictable and uncontrollable events. Long-term ethnographic research with Acholi refugees in northern Uganda explored epidemics and other unexpected occurrences past, present, and future. For interlocutors, epidemics were \"like the wind\" - indeterminate and inseparable from people, the environment, and spiritual powers. Refugees anticipated and incorporated unpredictable and uncontrollable situations, such as epidemics, into their day-to-day lives. This was grounded in a relational temporality and a search for equilibrium. Accommodating such valuble perspectives requires a re-thinking of preparedness.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"94-108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147445575","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-02-02DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2619424
Ziqi Xie
{"title":"IVF Doctors as Moral Pioneers and Moral Guardians in Pronatalist China.","authors":"Ziqi Xie","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2619424","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2619424","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article I examine the roles of IVF doctors in two state-owned hospitals amid China's shift to pronatalism. Rather than simply promoting infertility treatment, some doctors act paternalistically as \"moral pioneers\" and \"moral guardians,\" reappropriating moral authority granted by biomedical expertise to persuade many women of \"advanced maternal age\" seeking a second child through ART to reconsider or discontinue treatment. Their reasoning arises from navigating contradictory reproductive governance while drawing on personal moral values. While reinforcing state narratives on declining fertility, they also provide medical justifications for forgoing treatment, offering some women an alternative model of femininity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"34-51"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146100744","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-02-04DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2617653
Sujith Kumar Prankumar, Ruthy Boli-Neo, Janet Gare, Helen Keno, Selina Silim, Simon Pekon, Melissa Schulz, Paulus Ripa, Nano Gideon, Andrew Vallely, Steven G Badman, Angela Kelly-Hanku
{"title":"Promises and Tensions: Clinic-Based HIV Viral Load Testing and Infant Diagnosis in Papua New Guinea.","authors":"Sujith Kumar Prankumar, Ruthy Boli-Neo, Janet Gare, Helen Keno, Selina Silim, Simon Pekon, Melissa Schulz, Paulus Ripa, Nano Gideon, Andrew Vallely, Steven G Badman, Angela Kelly-Hanku","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2617653","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2617653","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Using a sociomaterial perspective based on interviews with health workers, we examine how clinic-based HIV viral load testing and early infant diagnosis technologies reshape health care realities in Papua New Guinea. The use of such technologies redefine professional roles and health care experiences by empowering health workers to translate biomedical data into client-centered clinical management, while also contributing systemic tensions, such as the paradoxical recentralizing of care and heavier workloads. Despite these challenges, health workers view these clinic-based technologies as transformative tools that support ethical decision-making, reduce preventable deaths and expand equitable health care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"4-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146120633","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":"The Cosmopolitics of Health: Women's Communal Healing as Defense of More-Than-Human Worlds in the Andes.","authors":"Lucía Isabel Stavig","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2597239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2597239","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Illness is not only where colonial healthcare is experienced, but also a battleground over which worlds exist. Indigenous struggles to heal in their communities are political defenses of the more-than-human \"worlds of health\" vital to their well-being - a \"cosmopolitics of health.\" Between 1996 and 2000, the Peruvian government forcibly sterilized 314,000 people, mostly Indigenous women, disrupting the biosociospiritual world of the Runa <i>ayllu</i>. The New Dawn for Good Living healing house in Cusco supports forcibly sterilized women in remembering and re-membering the shared body of the ayllu through a combination of allopathic and ancestral techniques. La enfermedad no es solo un espacio donde se experimenta la atención sanitaria colonial, sino también un campo de batalla sobre qué mundos existen. Las luchas de los pueblos indígenas por sanar en sus comunidades constituyen defensas políticas de los \"mundos de salud\" más-que-humanos, esenciales para su bienestar: una \"cosmopolítica de la salud.\" Entre 1996 y 2000, el gobierno peruano esterilizó forzosamente a 314,000 personas, principalmente mujeres indígenas, alterando el mundo biosocioespiritual del ayllu runa. La casa de sanación Nuevo Amanecer para el Buen Vivir, en Cusco, apoya a estas mujeres a recordar y reconstituir el cuerpo compartido del ayllu mediante técnicas alopáticas y ancestrales.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145795210","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 Beyond the Clinic: Maintaining Life on Kidney Dialysis in Aging Japan.","authors":"Amy Borovoy","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2597984","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2597984","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Care for kidney failure in the context of rapid aging taxes society, the state, and the individual patient. Kidney dialysis is the predominant form of care for end-stage renal disease in Japan. In this article I explore how dialysis proficiency and dominance in Japan is made possible by a culture of \"high touch\" and paternalistic medicine, patient endurance, medicalization, socialization, and gendered care. This culture of management is both generous and demanding, making widespread dialysis possible while making extreme demands on patients, society, and the state. The article explores the fine lines between care and exhaustion.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145769494","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":"Ordinary Prosthetics: An Essay on Dementia and Alienation in Quebec.","authors":"Annette Leibing","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2597226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2597226","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on fieldwork in Quebec, in a home for 14 older people who were diagnosed with dementia - the Carpe Diem - the central proposal of this article is to suggest \"alienation\" as a way to rethink dementia care. This is based on the insight that the notion of personhood can become a fallacy of care when understood as continuity with the past and empathy, as is often the case in person-centered care. Alienation here consists of three central elements: ordinariness, prosthetics, and a critical reflection on origins, by paying attention to \"what is wrong\" in assemblages of care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145649672","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":"Trans Women, Uterine Transplants, and \"Biological Difference\" In the USA: Notes from the Field.","authors":"Derek P Siegel","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2597237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2597237","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although transgender women have increasingly expressed interest in uterine transplants as a means of pregnancy and gender-affirmation, the 2013 Montreal Code excludes them from consideration due - in part - to their perceived biological difference. Based on data from 54 semi-structured interviews, I examine how the regulation of uterine transplants in the USA reinforces dominant beliefs about sex/gender and the regulation of trans women in other domains (i.e. custody and adoption). I also discuss access to uterine transplants through the lens of reproductive justice, including its implications for not only trans women but also cisgender women and people of diverse gender backgrounds.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145649660","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}