AP/ANTH 4330 3.00 Critical Issues in Medical Anthropology
Arthur Kleinman (2013) states that “Ultimately, caregiving is about doing good for others, and doing good in the world, as naive as it may sound” (p.1377). Remaining engaged in providing collective care while facing the enormity of contemporary health issues from local to planetary scales is a critical issue of our times and of medical anthropology. This course will explore pressing contemporary issues in health and medicine, like racism, climate change and the use of big data and algorithms in medical surveillance, profit-making and self-care. By exploring such contemporary issues in health and medicine, the course aims to shed light on how people, including anthropologists, have amplified the everyday efforts of communities, activists, advocates and community workers to participate in collective approaches to health and well-being. It also examines how medical anthropologists have applied anti-racist, anti-oppression and decolonizing approaches to their research. Drawing from work done by medical anthropologists who are in conversation with medical sociologists, medical historians, and public health science scholars, we address the above questions through pressing health issues in clinical, environmental and global spaces. We will see ways that people have refused cynicism, apathy, despair or individualistic solutions. As well, we see how the health issues (which are always social, political and material) cannot be solved through piecemeal approaches. Throughout, we identify skills and sensibilities that you now have as fourth year students in medical anthropology.
Course Director (Winter 2025): F. Jackson-Best - fjb@yorku.ca