{"title":"Sensing Rhabdomyolysis: Building Sensorial Knowledge in Inherited Metabolic Disorders in Poland.","authors":"Małgorzata Rajtar","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2475925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2475925","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sensations have emerged as an increasingly important topic in anthropological studies of health and disease. In this article, I draw from ethnographic research conducted among people living with selected rare inherited metabolic diseases (IMDs) and their caregivers in Poland, focusing specifically on recurrent rhabdomyolysis, a long-term complication that affects energy-consuming organs and muscles. Employing insights from sensorial and medical anthropology, I examine how people with IMDs and their caregivers, as parent-patient units, build anticipatory sensorial knowledge that enables them to attend to bodily sensations symptomatic of elevated creatine kinase levels, which are characteristic of rhabdomyolysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143574235","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 Reconfiguration of Stigma: (Mis)understanding the COVID-19 Infection and Contagion in Rural Central China.","authors":"Siyi Chen","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2475927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2475927","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on an ethnography of a Chinese village, this article examines the re-stigmatization of recovered COVID-19 patients in China's COVID-19 response between 2020 and 2022. I show that distrust in the local government was reactivated in epidemic governance and led to the production of localized knowledge as a proactive response to official knowledge, which prompted stigma driven by health concerns. As the epidemic governance intensified alongside viral mutations, the stigma was reconfigured into a broader threat to livelihoods. This research indicates stigmatization is a complex and nuanced process shaped by the interplay between epidemic governance and local social dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143573772","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-03-13DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2473500
Lewis Daly
{"title":"\"The Spirits Drink Cassava Beer\": The More-Than-Human Politics of Self-Help in Amazonian Guyana.","authors":"Lewis Daly","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2473500","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2473500","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article concerns vernacular practices of \"self-help\" among the indigenous Makushi people of Amazonian Guyana. Contrasted with \"Western\" self-care, the article examines <i>mayu</i>, a traditional system of communal work grounded in a collaborative ethic of \"helping each other out.\" A convivial event, <i>mayu</i> is always accompanied by feasting, drinking, and the celebration of social relationships. This cooperative ethos passes beyond the human realm to harness the agency of nonhuman beings who participate in this shared work. The article moves on to investigate how shamanism and the use of plant-charms are integral in mediating these generative relations of shared selfhood.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"153-167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143617602","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-03-28DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2482139
Barbara Fruth
{"title":"Self-Medication in Humans (<i>Homo sapiens</i>) and Bonobos (<i>Pan paniscus</i>) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.","authors":"Barbara Fruth","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2482139","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2482139","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article I engage with the complex interplay of primates, plants and parasites. We learn about the ethnobotanical records of an indigenous population and their medicinal plants, and get a glimpse into the interplay of man and ape in a jointly used ecosystem. I combine my long-term research on free-living bonobos, a species endemic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with historical work. I show the surprising and extraordinary ingestion of <i>Manniophyton fulvum</i>, a wild Euphorbiaceae plant widely used across Africa, bearing specific chemical and mechanical properties that make it suitable for gastro-intestinal self-care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"138-152"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143732423","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-03-28DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2479668
Elisabeth Hsu
{"title":"An introduction to the medical anthropology of care and self care.","authors":"Elisabeth Hsu","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2479668","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2479668","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This special section on self-care introduces a research perspective sensitive to aspects of caring for self and other that are core to sociogenesis. We start with critical post-humanist research that highlights how bondaries between self and other get blurred in the context of caring. This is also demonstrated by ethno- and evolutionary biological research that leaves unmentioned the selfish gene and, instead, foregrounds the socially relevant in humans and primates. The focus throughout this research project into self-care, which goes beyond disciplinary boundaries, is on socio-ecologically comprehended selves.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"97-108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143736167","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2198127
Gillian Chan
{"title":"Self-Care as Social Crafting: Transnational Narratives During COVID-19.","authors":"Gillian Chan","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2198127","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2198127","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Contrary to public health framings of self-care as individualized bodily regulation, people's transnational COVID-19 narratives revealed self-care to be a means of crafting social relatedness. In their self-care practices, interviewees drew on their richly structured field of relations, exercised dexterity and discernment in attending to them, and forged new webs of relatedness. Moreover, some recounted moments of radical care when they disregarded bodily boundaries in co-isolating with and caring for infected friends or relatives. These narratives of caring with rather than in isolation from one's social entanglements provide an alternative imaginary through which we can consider future pandemic responses.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"125-137"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9475641","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-02-28DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2471920
Rebecca Lynch
{"title":"(Self)care by Numbers: Self-Monitoring Technology and the Technology of a UK Public Health Trial.","authors":"Rebecca Lynch","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2471920","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2471920","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In an era of increasing interest in self-monitoring technologies to improve population health, this article considers how participants in a public health trial engaged with such technologies. Exploring how their engagement sits with the logic of self-monitoring and the technology of the trial highlights that the trial's blackboxing of its objects of study obscure the deeply contextualized care practices through which such technologies \"work.\" Attending to (self-)care and what the trial neglects offers a means of disrupting entrenched values in its objects, relations, and logics, questioning what is important and for whom through a critical anthropology of/through health technology.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"109-124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11974925/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143528106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-03-21DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2479673
Anne-Sophie Giraud
{"title":"Un-Knowing the Embryo: The Moral Labor of Doing Preimplantation Genetic Testing in France.","authors":"Anne-Sophie Giraud","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2479673","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2479673","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Preimplantation genetic testing is an ethically sensitive practice that aims to prevent the birth of children with hereditary diseases by transferring only \"healthy\" embryos. While French law forbids discarding healthy-carrier embryos, it leaves a \"gray area\" regarding the preference for non-carriers. This ambiguity creates \"moral tensions\" for professionals. To ease the ethical burden, they engage in a \"moral labor\" that involves maintaining - or even creating - ignorance about the exact genetic status of the embryos transferred, allowing them to navigate the moral complexities of their work.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"185-201"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143671495","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 : 2025-02-17Epub Date: 2025-02-27DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2471092
Anna Waldstein, Jason Irving, Dennis Francis
{"title":"Cleansing and Building in Rastafari Healing in London: Health Sovereignty for a Hostile Environment.","authors":"Anna Waldstein, Jason Irving, Dennis Francis","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2471092","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2471092","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Health sovereignty - the assertion of rights to culturally and ecologically appropriate medicines and the ability of communities to structure their own healthcare - is a biopolitical goal of the Rastafari movement. We examine how health sovereignty is enacted by Rastafari herbalists in south London and the contributions these healers make to health in the UK, particularly for migrants disenfranchised by \"hostile environment\" immigration policies. Using ethnographic data on \"bitters\" and \"roots tonics\" we show how herbal medicines are used by healers and their clientele to achieve key political and spiritual aims of the movement, as well as personal healing.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"168-184"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143524861","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":"Speculating About Futures with Covid Reinfection in the UK: The Body as a Site of Educated Guesswork.","authors":"Anna Dowrick, Kaveri Qureshi, Tanvi Rai","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2461305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2461305","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We revisit a time in 2021 when people in the UK were coming to terms with an unwanted future characterized by chronic COVID-19 infection. Drawing on experiences of people who had already experienced COVID-19 infection, we explore how they made sense of newly perceived vulnerabilities and the possibility of reinfection. We highlight the work of speculating about the future, which involved making \"educated guesses\" based on embodied knowledge as understanding about different consequences of \"living with COVID-19\" moved in and out of view.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143190914","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}