297B2

SoSe 13: Dimensions of illness, suffering and healing. An introduction into Medical Anthropology

Dominik Mattes

Comments

This seminar addresses the social, cultural, moral and political dimensions of human health, illness, suffering and healing. We will initially read and discuss some antecedents of medical anthropology (e.g. Turner, Evans-Pritchard) before we get to know the work of authors who came to be understood as the founders and "classics" of the subdiscipline (e.g. Kleinman, Leslie, Janzen) and whose ideas remain influential to this day. Based on the profound understanding of core concepts developed by these authors (e.g. explanatory models, medical pluralism, idioms of distress) we will then explore two prominent theoretical trajectories in detail: While Interpretive Medical Anthropology engages with the construction and deciphering of "meaning" in local contexts of illness experience and practise, Critical Medical Anthropology highlights the connection between the micropolitics of health and illness and macrosocial phenomena like political and economic inequalities. In the last part of the seminar we will explore three contemporary - and at times heatedly discussed - research areas: the relation between health and urbanization, mental health in post-conflict settings, and the anthropology at the end of life (including the debate on euthanasia). The students participating in this course are to gain a thorough understanding of the close entanglement of health and illness with distinct social, cultural, and political configurations in specific localities as well as with wider social forces that shape the living conditions of entire populations. They will also learn to analyse the power relations between different truths about affliction and healing and to thus critically address the hegemony of "universal" and "culture-free" biomedicine without denying its unquestionable contribution to human life. The seminar discussions and readings will primarily be in English. However, seminar papers may also be submitted in German. Introductory texts: Brown, Peter et al. (2010). Medical Anthropology: An Introduction to the Fields. In: Brown, Peter and Ron Barrett (eds.). Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology. Boston a.o., MacGraw Hill: 3-15. Good, Byron (1994). Illness representations in medical anthropology: a reading of the field. In: Medicine, Rationality and Experience. Cambridge University Press: 25-64. Greifeld, Katharina (1995). Einführung in die Medizinethnologie. In: Pfleiderer, Beatrix et al. Ritual und Heilung. Eine Einführung in die Ethnomedizin. Berlin, Reimer: 11-31. Lux, Thomas (2003). Viele Namen für dieselbe Sache? Ethnomedizin, Medizinethnologie und Medical Anthropology. In: Lux, Thomas (Hg.). Kulturelle Dimensionen der Medizin. Berlin, Reimer: 10-30. Selection of seminar readings: Abramowitz, Sharon (2010). Trauma and humanitarian translation in Liberia: The tale of open mole. In: Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 34: 353-379. Bourgois, Pilippe (2010). Useless suffering: The war on homeless drug addicts. In: Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman (eds.). The Insecure American. How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It. Pp. 238-254. Berkeley: Berkeley University Press. Comaroff, Jean (1993). The diseased Heart of Africa: Medicine, Colonialism, and the black body". In: Lindenbaum, Shirley and Margaret Lock (eds.). Knowledge, power, practice. The anthropology of everyday life. Pp. 305-330. Berkeley: University of California Press. Foucault, Michel (1983). Recht über den Tod und Macht zum Leben. In: Der Wille zum Wissen. Sexualität und Wahrheit. Bd. 1. S. 131-152. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Kleinman, Arthur (2006). Chapter 4. Yan Zhongshu. In: What Really Matters. Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger. Pp. 27-45. Oxford a.o.: Oxford University Press. Lock, Margaret (2000). The quest for human organs and the violence of zeal. In: Das, Veena et al. (eds.). Violence and Subjectivity. Pp. 271-295. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mattingly, Cheryl (1994). The concept of therapeutic 'emplotment'. In: Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 811-822. Nichter, Mark (1981). Idioms of distress. Alternatives in the expression of psychosocial distress. A case study from South India. In: Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 5: 379-408. Obrist, Brigit (2010). Soziale Vulnerabilität im städtischen Kontext. Eine medizinethnologische Perspektive. In: Hansjörg Dilger und Bernhard Hadolt (Hg.). Medizin im Kontext. Krankheit und Gesundheit in einer vernetzten Welt. S. 411-428. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Turner, Victor (1968). A performance of Ihamba analyzed. In: The drums of affliction. A study of religious processes among the Ndembu. Pp. 156-197. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van der Geest, Sjaak (2004). Dying peacefully: considering good death and bad death in Kwahu-Tafo, Ghana. In: Social Science and Medicine 58: 899-911. close

13 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Mon, 12:00 - 14:00 13 Class schedule

Mon, 2013-04-08 12:00 - 14:00

Lecturers:
Dominik Mattes