{"title":"Lead as pharmakon: IQ, violence, and the racialization of a toxic element.","authors":"Stefanie Toney Graeter","doi":"10.1111/maq.70009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By tracking lead toxicology and politics from the United States to Peru, this article shows how contemporary discourses of human lead exposure have become complexly racialized. Despite its nearly global ban from gasoline and paint, lead poisoning remains a systemic health problem in marginalized communities throughout the world. Viewed as a \"social pharmakon,\" lead's ongoing \"cures\" outweigh current social valuations of its systemic physiological harm in racially devalued communities. While scientific research linking lead to decreased IQ and increased violent behavior has attempted to animate broader public interest in the inequitable spread of lead exposure, it does so by reanimating racist tropes of biogeographic inferiority. Rather than dehumanizing lead-exposed individuals and communities, narratives of lead intoxication must integrate its immediate social and material harms in specific locales and as a symptom of systemic racial injustice at a global scale.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70009"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144327268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Euthanasia as a safeguard for living: Anticipation and incurable cancer in a Colombian context","authors":"Camilo Sanz","doi":"10.1111/maq.70012","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article builds on years of ethnographic conversations I sustained with my father, 89, who lives in Colombia. Soon after getting diagnosed with an incurable Multiple Myeloma—a cancer known for unleashing prolonged and painful agonies—he withdrew from oncology treatments and secured access to euthanasia (assisted-dying) on his own, bypassing medico-insurance guidelines created to regulate this medical practice and prevent abuses. Eight years after withdrawing treatments, my dad is still alive. His case shines a light on how securing access to euthanasia may have had unintended therapeutic effects on existential fears, pain perception, and quality of life on his way to dying. My storytelling also seeks to discuss the ethical and legal dimensions of assisted-dying in Colombia, especially for patients who do not consider life as biological deterioration, and who are caught between aggressive treatments and painful agonies, on the one side, and burdensome medico-insurance bureaucracy, on the other.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144327267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biotraffic: Medicines and environmental governance in the afterlives of apartheid By Christopher Morris, Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2024. 264 pp.","authors":"Damien Droney","doi":"10.1111/maq.70011","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Living together across borders: Communicative care in transnational Salvadoran families By Lynnette Arnold, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2024. 220 pp.","authors":"Teresa M. Mares","doi":"10.1111/maq.70010","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145013065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anxious Projections: Mass Hysteria and the Problem of Interpretation.","authors":"Aidan Seale-Feldman","doi":"10.1111/maq.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Stories of \"mass hysteria\" among teenage girls have often graced the headlines of Nepal's local and national newspapers, creating a public spectacle of a strange and mysterious form of affliction. Treatments include both shamanic rituals and psychosocial interventions, a new therapeutic modality that has gained prominence over the past two decades following the rise of global mental health. This article shows how the discourse around the collective affliction of teenage girls reveals a number of anxieties at the heart of Nepali society regarding the moral rupture of community, the status of shamanic knowledge, and gender and the management of emotion. I argue that due to the ambiguity of cause, the dramatic public display of symptoms, and the absence of the experiencing subject of affliction, cases of \"mass hysteria\" offer a blank screen onto which the broader collective anxieties of a society in flux are projected and debated.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70007"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144259122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marshallese mothers navigating discrimination in Hawaiʻi: Bwebwenato as method","authors":"Katriel Wong, Jan Brunson","doi":"10.1111/maq.70008","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Marshallese mothers face the highest rates of adverse maternal and child health outcomes compared to other ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi. Previous studies used interviews with healthcare providers to understand these disparate outcomes; however, the voices of Marshallese women are relatively absent. This project explores the bwebwenato (Marshallese mode of storytelling) of first-generation Marshallese mothers who navigated discrimination before, during, and after pregnancy in Hawaiʻi. Using collaborative methodology, we co-produced research that centers the bwebwenato of Marshallese women. In addition to the intersections of power and race in healthcare settings, Marshallese mothers chose to highlight the discrimination they faced growing up in Hawaiʻi. Through these stories, they profess their ability to navigate their cultural traditions and beliefs within and against a local racial hierarchy that places Micronesians at the bottom. Bwebwenato as a method has the potential to transform research into a more acceptable form for groups experiencing discrimination and patient-provider interactions into more equitable exchanges.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144227248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mal-nutrition: Maternal health science and the reproduction of harm By Emily Yates-Doerr, Oakland: University of California Press. 2024. 268 pp.","authors":"Rebecca Howes-Mischel","doi":"10.1111/maq.70004","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Life at the center: Haitians and corporate Catholicism in Boston By Erica Caple James, Oakland: University of California Press. 2024. 303 pp.","authors":"Bertin M. Louis Jr","doi":"10.1111/maq.70006","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dangerous love: Sex work, drug use, and the pursuit of intimacy in Tijuana, Mexico By Jennifer Leigh Syvertsen, Berkeley: University of California Press. 2022. 188 pp.","authors":"Sonia Rupcic","doi":"10.1111/maq.70001","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"39 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Claiming normal: Disability, stigma, and relationality in Amman.","authors":"Christine Sargent","doi":"10.1111/maq.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawing on the experiences of mothers raising children with Down syndrome in Amman, Jordan, this article approaches disability stigma as a phenomenon that attached to meaningful relations of kinship and community. These same relations, however, enabled mothers, children, spouses, relatives, and other disability advocates to (re)claim Down syndrome as normal. In doing so, they challenged extant narratives that treated embodied difference as a relational risk in need of containment. \"Normal\" possesses disciplinary and oppressive capacities, but it can also become an effective tool. Claiming \"normal\" helped some families situate Down syndrome as an unexceptional way of being in the world and a valuable mode of being in relations with others.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70003"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144152397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}