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":1.3,"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":"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}
{"title":"After Antibiotics - Events, Episodes and the Veterinization of UK Livestock.","authors":"Stephen Hinchliffe","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2539760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2539760","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As antimicrobial use is more tightly regulated, animal medicine is under pressure. Drawing on UK fieldwork with veterinarians, farmers, and animal health providers, this article examines how animal health practices are being reorganized. It argues that antimicrobial reductions have not driven the systemic changes some predict. Instead, the antibiotic era's legacy persists, shaping preventive efforts and reinforcing data-driven control. As veterinary roles are marginalized, the illusion of mastery over animal life endures. It is an illusion that risks undermining progress on antimicrobial resistance by reinforcing, rather than challenging, dominant forms of biopolitical control.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144761773","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":"Beyond Body Parts: The Uterus as a Symbol of Self in the USA.","authors":"Ophra Leyser-Whalen","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2540527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2540527","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Utilizing a symbolic interactionist lens in analysis of 16 in-depth interviews with 13 women and three men who had used fertility treatments in the United States, I reveal how the uterus was a powerful symbol for those struggling with infertility as they drew upon cultural norms and co-created meaning through interactions with multiple others. The uterus represented more than a biological body part; it symbolized the cultural power of biomedicine and created biographical disruptions that affected people's self-perceptions as women, mothers, wives, and lovers. Findings further uncover the relationship between science, medicine, culture, and identity and the body.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144733911","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":"Rethinking the Jewish Womb in Israel.","authors":"Elly Teman, Orit Chorowicz Bar-Am","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2535996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2535996","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article revisits questions about the womb's role in conferring Jewish identity in Israel. Judaism is transmitted matrilineally, yet orthodox rabbis increasingly view babies from non-Jewish eggs as requiring conversion. Through interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish-Israeli gestational surrogates who see surrogacy as an act of \"loving-kindness\" (chesed), we explore how they navigate halakhic uncertainty surrounding the Jewish status of babies they carry when non-Jewish donor eggs are used. Though the State recognizes their \"Jewish womb\" as determining the baby's religious status, these surrogates resist acknowledging this power because they conceptualize themselves as merely \"hosting\" a child that belongs to others.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683383","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":"Value-Scapes of Death: Livestock Veterinarians and the Regulation of Farm Animal Life in the Netherlands.","authors":"Else Vogel","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2527089","DOIUrl":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2527089","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the crucial role of veterinarians in making animal death valuable, enabling productive life, and managing uncontrolled dying. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on dairy farms in the Netherlands, and considering veterinarians as gatekeepers of the food chain, health practitioners, and governance actors, I articulate the \"value-scapes\" of food production that shape which animals die, when, and how, and whether death is desirable, a waste, or a warning. Veterinization here narrates how veterinary expertise is shaped by diverse societal concerns like food security, public health, animal welfare, and ecological sustainability, and knotted into shifting and multifaceted formations of Dutch-European animality.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144576677","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":"Making Up Persons.","authors":"Matthew Wolf-Meyer","doi":"10.1080/01459740.2025.2487669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2025.2487669","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Personhood is alternatively accepted as something that is innate in individuals or subject to processes of attribution that rely on the existence of specific capacities. Taking Ian Hacking's discussion of \"dynamic nominalism\" as a point of departure, I focus on how the categorization of difference makes \"people\" into a \"person\" or not, in relation to the legitimacy of their needs and desires. To explicate, I turn to Lorna Rhodes' <i>Total Confinement</i> and Neely Myers' <i>Recovery's Edge</i> and demonstrate how ideas of personhood's innateness or attributability reify conceptions of need and desire, particularly associated with experiences of mental disorder and psychosis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47460,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143989623","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}