Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-02-04DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2461305
Anna Dowrick, Kaveri Qureshi, Tanvi Rai
{"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":"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":"486-497"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-04-21DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2655775
Almudena Mari-Saez, Frédéric Le Marcis
{"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":"289-302"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-06-17DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2688798
Seonsam Na, Roger Goodman
{"title":"Exploring State-Doctor Relationships in East Asia: An Anthropological Approach.","authors":"Seonsam Na, Roger Goodman","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688798","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688798","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines state - doctor relationships in East Asia through an anthropological lens, arguing that states and medical professions are mutually dependent. Despite divergent modern histories, East Asian societies remain shaped by Confucianism and traditional medicine, which continue to influence governance and health systems. The authors argue that scholarship has insufficiently addressed the complexities of state - doctor relations in nation-building and public health, proposing an anthropology of medical politics to fill this gap. Drawing on ethnographic studies from China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the issue explores how medical professionals negotiate state power, market pressures, and professional identity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"355-361"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148266590","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: 2026-05-22DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2678373
Neil Krishan Aggarwal
{"title":"Erasing Anthropological Knowledge in American Psychiatric Classification: The Culture Concept for DSM-6.","authors":"Neil Krishan Aggarwal","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2678373","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2678373","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has introduced its concept of culture for the sixth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-6). However, these articles do not cite recent work from cultural psychiatrists trained in anthropology or anthropologists of mental health. In this article, I analyze the APA's proposed culture concept, review recent culture theories from cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists in prior DSM revisions, and suggest ways for anthropologists to engage the APA.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"346-354"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148007092","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":1.3,"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}
{"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":1.3,"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: 2026-06-02DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2671803
Haripriya Narasimhan, Shriram Venkatraman, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri
{"title":"Pandemic Memes and Tamil Health Narratives.","authors":"Haripriya Narasimhan, Shriram Venkatraman, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2671803","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2671803","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article analyses the Tamil COVID-19 memes as artifacts of humor and social commentary during Tamil Nadu's first pandemic wave. Drawing on a corpus of WhatsApp memes, cross-verified on Facebook and Instagram, we trace how Tamil cinematic iconography and anthropomorphism articulated health anxieties and negotiated therapeutic authority between Siddha and biomedicine. Using visual ethnography, we identify two narrative logics, namely, dissonance (skepticism, satire) and congruence (pragmatic coexistence). Framed by encoding and decoding, carnivalesque inversion, and performative health communication, we argue that memes do not merely reflect sentiment, rather, they actively stage reasoning about care and pluralist health imaginaries.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"257-273"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148145077","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: 2026-06-24DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2688802
Natassia Brenman, Natashe Lemos Dekker
{"title":"Interrogating Speculative Futures: The Politics of Imagining Futures With(out) Chronic Illness.","authors":"Natassia Brenman, Natashe Lemos Dekker","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688802","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688802","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We introduce the empirical papers in this special issue, each of which presents a different mode of speculation in the context of living with, and caring for, chronic conditions: \"educated guesswork\" about covid reinfection, \"ambivalent speculations\" in learning to live \"at risk\" with Barrett's Esophagus and \"retrospective speculation\" in pressure ulcer prevention. We reflect on how they together contribute to current thinking on the politics of time in health and medicine, and wider conversations in medical anthropology and beyond, about chronic illness as both a lived everyday reality and part of an unfolding, unpredictable collective future.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"453-458"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148309999","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: 2026-06-22DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2601671
Els Roding
{"title":"Retrospective Speculation and Responsibility in Pressure Ulcer Prevention in the United Kingdom's National Health Service.","authors":"Els Roding","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2601671","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2601671","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the UK's National Health Service pressure ulcers are considered mostly avoidable, but they develop in large numbers. This problem is hard to resolve, due to uncertainty around which particular (in)actions caused the ulcer. I argue that hospital staff's practices of navigating this uncertainty are based on \"retrospective speculation\": the practice of assessing the past to anticipate and intervene on the future. In contrast to dominant narratives that frame pressure ulcers as failure, I argue that \"retrospective speculation\" provides space for hospital staff to reassess where responsibility for prevention lies in the context of high pressures on the health service.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"459-471"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148303586","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: 2026-06-02DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2681054
Elena Popa
{"title":"Undiagnosed Lives: Structural Vulnerability and Infertility Among Romani Migrant Women in France.","authors":"Elena Popa","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2681054","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2681054","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Academic and media accounts have neglected Romani women's issues with infertility. Historically, they have been discriminated against and stereotyped as hyperfertile, which excluded them from narratives on women's struggles with reproductive health. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in France, this article makes visible the neglected issue of infertility. It argues that structural vulnerability dramatically restricts Romani women's access to health care and makes reproductive technologies unattainable. The article shows how structural vulnerability is felt and lived and how precarious living conditions, bureaucratic obstacles, and limited access to health care intersect to produce \"undiagnosed lives\" among rightful migrants and European Union citizens.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"500-513"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148145119","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}