The concept of a universal, standardizable body that can best be technologically manipulated in isolation from its context has become a foundation of biomedicine. An Anthropology of Biomedicine introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, medical anthropologist Margaret Lock and physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the theory that the human body inhealth and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down. Tracking the historic global application of biomedical technologies -- including the management of epidemics as part of colonial medicine, the control of populations, organ transplants, assisted reproductions, genetic testing and screening, and other technologies -- the authors reveal the intended and unintendedlocal consequences and the exacerbation of global inequalities and health disparities that such technologies bring about. The argument is put forward that in addition to focusing on the massive impact of poverty and social inequalityon health and illness, attention must be given to local biologies, culture, and politics; as well as to the culture of biomedicine and the unexamined assumptions embedded in it. An Anthropology of Biomedicine serves as an important new introduction to the global implications of the implementation of biomedicine.Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in the Department ofSocial Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Among her numerous awards are the Gold Medal for Research by the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wellcome Medal of Britain's Royal Anthropological Society. In 2005 she was awarded both a KillamPrize and Trudeau Foundation Fellowship. She is the author and/or co-editor of 14 books and has published more than 190 articles. Vinh-Kim Nguyen is a physician and a medical anthropologist. He practices medicine in Montréal at the Clinique l'Actuel, which specializes in HIV and hepatitis, and the Emergency Department of the Jewish General Hospital, and teaches at the University of Montreal where he is an Associate Professor in Social Medicine. As a researcher, he is affiliated with both Global Health Unit of the Montreal University Hospitals' Research Centre and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He was recently awarded the Aurora prize for his research by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
- ISBN: 978-1-4051-1072-3
- Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 520
- Fecha Publicación: 02/04/2010
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés