{"title":"\"Buprenorphine doesn't hold me\": Neurochemical afterlives of state violence and the struggle for meaning in addiction treatment.","authors":"Lauren Textor","doi":"10.1111/maq.70083","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70083","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper analyzes two disparate experiences of buprenorphine, a medication for opioid addiction, in California. Within the context of the U.S. War on Drugs and after decades of criminalization, buprenorphine represents a shift toward outpatient medical treatment of opioid addiction, but it has been unequally distributed and experienced across geographic settings and populations. Drawing on my interlocutor's description of buprenorphine's \"hold,\" I interrogate how buprenorphine's symbolic and pharmacological power to embrace, restrain, and otherwise \"hold\" people arises through its social context. \"Holding\" is a patient-driven epistemology, working metaphorically and neurochemically, illustrating raced, classed, and gendered positionalities that simultaneously express and constrain forms of agency and resistance in ideological struggles over the meanings of care in addiction treatment. Buprenorphine's \"hold,\" or lack thereof, can be read as a neurochemical embodiment of state violence, revealing intensities of carceral forms of \"care\" and possibilities for transforming addiction treatment meanings.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70083"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148333392","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":"Border tuberculosis: Migrant tuberculosis screenings and the enactment of disease in the Indonesia-Malaysia migration corridor.","authors":"Jonathan Kraemer","doi":"10.1111/maq.70085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70085","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Documented migrant workers from Indonesia recruited for work in Malaysia need to undergo tuberculosis screenings before being issued work permits and visas. Centered on the production, circulation, and interpretation of chest X-ray images, these screenings are shaped in concrete, practical ways by the demands of border control regulations requiring them. By focusing on how these screenings are practiced in Indonesian clinics, I argue that migrant tuberculosis screenings in the Indonesia-Malaysia migration corridor enact a distinct form of tuberculosis, co-determined by its relation to border control-what I call border tuberculosis. The notion of border tuberculosis draws attention to how biomedical practices and standards are adjusted in ways that lend themselves to the selective and productive function of the border. Thus, the article shows that these biomedical screenings are not disinterested instances of data gathering, but constitutive and productive elements of the particular mode of governing borders they are embedded in.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70085"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148310019","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":"Care-full negotiation of hospital discharge and end-of-life care in an Indonesian palliative care unit","authors":"Hanum Atikasari","doi":"10.1111/maq.70049","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70049","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How do palliative care professionals negotiate end-of-life care with family members when prognosis and dying are not openly discussed? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Indonesian palliative care unit, I argue that palliative care professionals employ implicit, ambiguous and culturally sensitive communication to carefully negotiate hospital discharge and discuss end-of-life care. I focus on listening to what is said and what remains unspoken in the embodied communicative practices about end-of-life care in family meetings to discuss hospital discharge. I show how palliative care professionals carefully navigate tensions between the hospital's need to discharge patients, family expectations of a cure, and the palliative care value of supporting patients and families. They do so by keeping the possibility of receiving treatment open while simultaneously using implicit language to suggest that end of life may be near.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70049","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145776070","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}
Max D. López Toledano, Hari Basnet, Anna Durrance-Bagale, Natasha Howard
{"title":"Zoonotic anxieties: The cultural politics of Nepal's quest for pandemic preparedness","authors":"Max D. López Toledano, Hari Basnet, Anna Durrance-Bagale, Natasha Howard","doi":"10.1111/maq.70025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70025","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Based on fieldwork conducted in Nepal (2022–2024) and by paying attention to how local and transnational notions of epidemiological risk are deployed, this ethnography introduces the concept of “zoonotic anxieties” to make sense of the multi-species relational ethos that contemporary global health regimes propose. Namely, at the intersection of “health security,” “pandemic preparedness,” and “One Health,” multispecies interactions are becoming subject to a resignification where cultural, racial, and geopolitical anxieties are deposited, expressed as fears over the potentially apocalyptic emergence of zoonotic disease. Nepal is produced through this lens as an epidemiologically risky terrain, receiving funds from international agencies to enhance its “disease surveillance” capacity with the underlying hope that, by identifying infectious diseases early, a foretold global disaster can be contained. These investments, however, have had little impact, producing conflicts between the country's claim to medical modernity and the shortcomings of its disease surveillance ambitions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148274923","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":"Searching for therapeutic connections: Ukrainian refugee women with HIV in the EU","authors":"Dafna Rachok","doi":"10.1111/maq.70045","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70045","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article addresses healthcare experiences of Ukrainian refugee women with HIV in the EU. It shows that refugee expectations of healthcare starkly contrasted with their lived experiences. To explain this mismatch, I introduce the idea of therapeutic connections. Building upon the concepts of biosociality and the Imaginary West, I show that refugees’ pursuit of HIV treatment in their host countries was about seeking both medicine and therapeutic connections with clinicians and other patients. Unable to find similar tight-knit communities (e.g., sex workers or women who use drugs) in their host countries and to forge relationships with clinicians that would go beyond patient-doctor encounters, many refugees decided to mobilize their therapeutic connections to Ukrainian vulnerable communities and clinicians to receive medicine and satisfy the need for belonging. In other cases, the mismatch between the expectations and experiences of healthcare led refugees to return home, even when it was not safe yet.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145776075","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":"Building walls around the safety net: Bureaucratic exclusion and cross-border health care utilization among pregnant women on the US-Mexico border","authors":"Rosario P. Olmos, Carina Heckert","doi":"10.1111/maq.70035","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70035","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing from ethnographic work with women utilizing publicly funded prenatal care in El Paso, Texas, this paper considers how bureaucratic mechanisms lead to systematic exclusion of US citizens and legal permanent residents from health services for which they would appear to qualify under Texas's Medicaid for Pregnant Women. This bureaucratic exclusion contributes to cross-border utilization of health services, with the Mexican health sector functioning as a safety net for an inadequate public health system in the United States. This article considers how immigration and health care bureaucracy intersect to exclude pregnant people from publicly funded health services, even when a person appears to be legally entitled to benefits. This exclusion contributes to the normalization of cross-border utilization of health services among those with a certain degree of transnational cultural capital. Attending to transnational cultural capital is revealing of the ways individuals exert agency in the context of constrained access.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145490685","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":"Fluctuations and remaining bonds: Challenging undynamic fetal personhood through women's experiences of early pregnancy endings in England","authors":"Susie Kilshaw","doi":"10.1111/maq.70061","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70061","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Women's subjective relationship with their pregnancy is central in understanding fetal personhood, a relationship that is theirs to assemble and disassemble. A rigid perception of personhood as either present or absent is problematized, instead revealing an evolving approach. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in an NHS Trust in England the paper explores women's experiences of personhood during pregnancy, pregnancy endings, and their aftermath. It shows personhood is neither fixed, nor constant, but rather oscillates; revealing that dichotomous understandings of personhood based on a specific moment, and which are unidirectional, are flawed. Women's experiences add further evidence that personhood is not biological and is not always tied to the fetus or fetal body. Instead, it is social relations including an imagined future that confers personhood with these sometimes continuing after the pregnancy ending. Yet, social relations that bring a fetus into being may also unmake it.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70061","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147391554","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":"Sensing the Landscape: An Ethnography of Blindness By Karis Jade Petty, New York, NY: Routledge, 2025, 208 pp. ISBN: 978-0-367-65022-3","authors":"Greg Weinstein","doi":"10.1111/maq.70070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70070","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148274856","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":"Extraordinary measures of sibling worldmaking","authors":"Pamela Block, Helen Ries, Dima Kassem","doi":"10.1111/maq.70048","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70048","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this ethnographic research project involving disabled and non/disabled siblings in Canada, we have found that during major life-changing transitions, such as the death of a parent, siblings face many challenges, including structural and systemic inequalities, struggles with and within various service systems, and difficulties with emotions and mental health. In response to these challenges, siblings undertake “extraordinary measures” through co-creative “sibling disability worldmaking” to imagine livable futures. During times of major transition, worldmaking is a strategy siblings use to navigate these upheavals and attempt to co-create livable lives despite a lack of systemic support.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145776125","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":"Concealed coexistence: Reproductive choice and coercion in Timor-Leste","authors":"Laura Burke","doi":"10.1111/maq.70056","DOIUrl":"10.1111/maq.70056","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Choice is a central concept in reproductive rights. However, a discourse of choice in reproductive health can also mask precisely the act it aims to protect against: coercion. Whilst choice has been explored extensively in studies of reproductive rights and justice, understandings of coercion are fragmented and under-theorized. This article explores the relationship between coercion and choice, not as a binary but as a coexistence in which they overlay and conceal one another. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst health professionals during family planning training in Timor-Leste, this article shows how a discourse of choice obscures coercive structures and practices, whilst coercive approaches can paradoxically reveal hidden choices. I argue that this coexistence, characterized by concealment, leads to iatrogenesis—medical harm with immediate and lingering effects. By recognizing the coexistence of choice and coercion, and revealing their concealment of one another, we might limit iatrogenesis and enable greater reproductive freedom.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":"40 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.70056","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146044072","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}