Medical AnthropologyPub Date : 2024-02-17Epub Date: 2024-01-11DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2300080
Mette Terp Høybye, Lise Marie Andersen, Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg
{"title":"Making It Count - Tracing Signs of Consciousness and Potentiality in Severe Brain Injury in Denmark.","authors":"Mette Terp Høybye, Lise Marie Andersen, Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2300080","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2300080","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Healthcare professionals use various technologies to evaluate and support patients who have suffered severe brain injuries. They integrate monitoring and sensory assessments into their clinical practice, and these assessments can have an impact on treatment decisions and prognostication. Responses from patients during different interactions are interpreted as \"signs of consciousness\" when considered contextually relevant. This study is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in specialized Danish intensive care units, where we explore how signs of consciousness are made to count through practices of enactment. We ethnographically trace how the clinical concept of potential influences the interpretation of signs of consciousness as a complex biosocial practice based on the biomedical assumption that consciousness is a vital indicator of what makes a life. The article provides insights into the potential for recovery as an emergent biosocial practice and contributes to a broader discussion within medical anthropology of the moral landscapes of clinical and experimental borderlands.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"115-129"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139418287","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 : 2024-02-17Epub Date: 2023-08-21DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2206966
Michal Frumer
{"title":"Signs of Nothing: Negotiations Over Semiotic Indeterminacy in Danish Lung Cancer Diagnostics.","authors":"Michal Frumer","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2206966","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2206966","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In Denmark, injunctions of \"early\" cancer diagnosis increasingly imply surveillance of small tissue changes, which may or may not develop into cancer. Based on fieldwork at diagnostic lung cancer clinics and with people in CT surveillance for tissue changes, I explore how detected tissue changes are ascribed meaning as signs of \"nothing\" or \"something.\" Inspired by Peircean semiotics, I suggest that the semiotic indeterminacy of tissue changes points to how diagnostic socialities both expand medical semiotics and enable this expansion. The article, thereby, contributes to understandings of signs as diagnostic infrastructures.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"102-114"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10041522","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2282976
Asha Persson, Agnes Mek, Richard Naketrumb, Elke Mitchell, Stephen Bell, Angela Kelly-Hanku
{"title":"Local Pathways of \"Serodiscordant Couples\": Unpacking a Global HIV Population Category in Papua New Guinea.","authors":"Asha Persson, Agnes Mek, Richard Naketrumb, Elke Mitchell, Stephen Bell, Angela Kelly-Hanku","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2282976","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2282976","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>HIV prevention programs focus on global \"key populations\" and more localized \"priority populations\" to ensure effective targeting of interventions. These HIV population categories have been subject to considerable scholarly scrutiny, particularly key populations, with less attention given to critically unpacking priority populations at local levels, for example \"serodiscordant couples\" (one partner has HIV, but not the other). We examine this population in the context of Papua New Guinea to consider how local configurations, relational pathways, and lived realities of serodiscordant relationships strain the boundaries of this population category and raise intriguing questions about its intersection with contemporary biomedical agendas.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"31-45"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138177574","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2266858
Julia Vorhölter
{"title":"(Mis)Perceiving Apnea and Insomnia in Germany: A Tale of Two Disorders.","authors":"Julia Vorhölter","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2266858","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2266858","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In Germany, both apnea and insomnia are highly prevalent sleep disorders. But while there is an extensive and growing infrastructure to deal with apnea, there is very little support for insomnia patients. I argue that this is due to various interrelated factors: the role of evidence and experience in diagnosis, the availability of treatment, and-importantly-how evidence, experience, and treatment can (or cannot) be materialized in the medical economy. Drawing on phenomenology and affordance theory, and based on fieldwork among German sleep doctors and their patients, I analyze how different sleep disorders are perceived, evaluated, and acted upon. I use different examples to reflect on the possibilities of \"objectively\" knowing and \"subjectively\" experiencing (disordered) sleep, and on how different perspectives (patient versus doctor, first-person versus third-person) and modes of perception (direct or indirect, narrative-based anamnesis or technology-based assessment) matter (or not) for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"46-60"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41216035","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2269467
Kathleen Rice, Sarah Williams
{"title":"Partner Exclusion from Childbirth During COVID-19 in Canada: Implications for Theory and Policy.","authors":"Kathleen Rice, Sarah Williams","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2269467","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2269467","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We explore partner exclusion from perinatal care in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants' narratives show that pregnant couples frame partner presence as a [human] right that was denied, and articulated this as denial of the \"right to experience\" and the \"right to care.\" These restrictions deprived birth partners and families of an experience that is important to them, and represent a repudiation of the resurgence of birth as a social event which entails valued forms of care. We show that the medical establishment's commitment to partner presence during perinatal care is weak, although caring masculinity is normative.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"5-16"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49693046","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2266860
Maj Nygaard-Christensen
{"title":"\"More Concerned About Mr. and Mrs. Denmark\": Coping with Pandemic Crisis at the Intersection of Homelessness and Drug Use.","authors":"Maj Nygaard-Christensen","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2266860","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2266860","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article builds on fieldwork conducted during lockdown in Denmark among users of services at the intersection of homelessness and drug use. The paper bridges two distinct approaches to understanding the relation between marginalization and crisis, with one focused on the impact of \"big events\" on marginalized populations, and another on everyday strategies employed to survive situations of homelessness and drug use. The paper shows how past experiences of hardship became relevant for coping with pandemic crisis. It further exploreshow, through critical engagement with dominant accounts of vulnerability, research participants carved out a space for negotiating their marginality in the Danish welfare state.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"17-30"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41216034","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2276708
Claudia Fonseca, Lucia Scalco
{"title":"Defining the Limits of Acceptable Parenthood: Reproductive Governance in Brazil.","authors":"Claudia Fonseca, Lucia Scalco","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2276708","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2276708","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawing on sources relating to the Brazilian scenario - from ethnographic research in lower-income neighorhoods to the analysis of official documents and public debates - we build on cases of forced child removals to explore the intersectional dynamics of class, race, and gender that underlie institutionalized practices of discrimination against poverty-stricken families. After first addressing the influence of recent global trends in child-protection policy, we observe how adoption procedures in Brazil have been increasingly facilitated by the resignification of rights and corresponding changes in the country's legal infrastructures. Next, asking what sort of authoritative knowledge is invoked to define a child's best interests, we reflect on the role played by biomedicine in appraising the limits of acceptable parenthood. Guided by the notion of stratified reproduction, our investigation of these political, scientific, and moral technologies suggests plausible connections between policies that condition the demand for and the supply of adoptable children.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"61-73"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71432272","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2293125
Rebecca Marsland, James Staples
{"title":"Time for a Focus on Climate Change and Health.","authors":"Rebecca Marsland, James Staples","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2293125","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2293125","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":"43 1","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139492254","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 : 2024-01-02Epub Date: 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2293113
Lauren Carruth
{"title":"The Multispecies Sociality of Digestion and the Microbiopolitics of the Belly Among Somalis in Ethiopia.","authors":"Lauren Carruth","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2293113","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2023.2293113","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Management of what Somalis call \"<i>dacar</i>\" - translated as digestive bile, bitterness, aloe, and masses of tiny beings in the gut - is key to popular health cultures and ethnophysiologies in eastern Ethiopia. Managing bodily <i>dacar</i> requires cultivating multispecies sociality and flows of life between humans, vegetation that nourishes livestock, and animals that produce milk consumed for therapeutic and nutritional properties. Transcending Western scientific conceptualizations of the \"gut microbiome\" and the instrumentalization of microbes to improve human health, Somalis' gut epistemologies and concept of <i>dacar</i> provide an ecological perspective on the co-constructed, mutable, and multispecies nature of digestion and life itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":"43 1","pages":"74-89"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139492316","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}