Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-05-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2674065
Seonsam Na
{"title":"Physicians in Revolt: An Ethnography of Conflict within the Korean Medicine Community in South Korea.","authors":"Seonsam Na","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2674065","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2674065","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Media teaser: </strong>What happened to South Korean physicians practicing Korean medicine when state and market forces turned against them? This article examines a rebellion within their community.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"389-404"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147976487","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":1.3,"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: 2026-04-14DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2655769
Sara Lei Sparre, Stine Hauberg Nielsen
{"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":"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":"166-178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-05-07DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2666907
Maria Athena Campbell, Hanne Overgaard Mogensen
{"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":"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":"303-316"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-05-22DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2676660
John P DiMoia
{"title":"Mobilizing Biomedicine in Post-Colonial South Korea: Forming NMES (National Malaria Eradication Service), Creating a National Public Health Network, and Tracking its Reception, 1945-1969.","authors":"John P DiMoia","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2676660","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2676660","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>If South Korea has attracted considerable attention for its perceived success in health efforts in recent years, previous explanations have relied heavily on cultural or essentialist accounts. This paper examines the specific strategies, language, and pedagogy the ROK (Republic of Korea) government used to market itself to the Korean public, especially rural villages, following the Korean War. Specifically, the focus rests on the formation of the NMES (National Malaria Eradication Service) in the early 1960s, seeking to deal with the wartime rise in malaria cases. Transforming itself from an outside force to a more familiar partner, South Korean public health represents a recent phenomenon, and depends heavily upon the participation of citizens / villagers to function properly.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"376-388"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148007095","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: 2026-04-20DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2656476
Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori
{"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":"193-207"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-04-11DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2656931
Mingyuan Zhang Betancourt
{"title":"<i>\"Making One's Own Doctor\"</i> :\"<i>Épicerie medicine</i>\" and the Informal Circulation of Antibiotics in Northern Madagascar.","authors":"Mingyuan Zhang Betancourt","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2656931","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2656931","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People in Madagascar often resort to small grocery kiosks (<i>épicerie)</i> for various Western medicines including antibiotics - they call the practice \"<i>magnano docteur tegna</i>\" (\"making one's own doctor\"). Creating an unregulated antibiotic market, the practice is detrimental to the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This article explores the informal circulation of antibiotics in northern Madagascar and the local patterns of antibiotic use. I argue that the lack of healthcare coverage is the key reason for improvised health solutions. There is a discrepancy between the long-term threat of AMR and the most urgent need of people living in precarity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"242-255"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147663242","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: 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2558849
Jie Yang
{"title":"Governing \"Officials' Heartache\": Aesthetic Attunement, Philosophical Counseling, and Psychomoral Training in China.","authors":"Jie Yang","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2558849","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2558849","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Diverging from care modalities based on psyche, \"Confucianized\" psychomoral training for Chinese officials who suffer from heartache (mental distress and ethical conflicts) emphasizes the heart/<i>xin</i> as the moral core and its affective and aesthetic attunement in achieving harmony. However, the focus on the heart, while valuable in \"indigenizing\" or recasting psychology from Chinese precepts, remains tied to state ideologies. Such training moralizes structural issues that have generated heartache. This dual process of \"indigenization\" and Confucianization highlights contentious roles psychotherapists and moral psychologists play in cultivating a form of therapeutic governance anchored in the heart that straddles party-state and market in the name of care.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"362-375"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145066097","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: 2025-12-17DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2025.2597984
Amy Borovoy
{"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":"405-420"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","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}
Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-06-18DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2688803
Claire L Wendland
{"title":"Doctors and the State: Critical Perspectives from East Asia and Beyond.","authors":"Claire L Wendland","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688803","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2026.2688803","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anthropologists studying biomedicine have often analyzed the profession as a disciplinary arm of the state. This approach risks misrecognizing the complexity of state-physician-society relations, and the political agency of doctors. In this commentary, I analyze contributions of the articles in this special issue on East Asia in the context of other work on medicine and state power.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"446-451"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148273296","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}