Web Roundup: Zika virus and the politics of public health responses by Jane Roberts
What a difference a month makes. At the start of 2016, its likely that Zika virus was on very few of our radars, yet as we reach the…
Tag: Features
Ethnographic presents and futures of ‘health’—a summary of the Ethnographies and Health workshop by Emma Garnett
In this report we offer an overview of a two-day workshop entitled Ethnographies and Health that was held in October at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical…
Top of the Heap: Alexander I. Stingl by Hannah Gibson
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Alexander I. Stingl, who is a sociologist and a research consultant for Medical Humanities and…
Comics and the Medical Encounter by Ryan Montoya
Editor’s Note: In March of 2013 the Annals of Internal Medicine added the Graphic Medicine series as part of their medical humanities features. As they describe, “Annals Graphic…
The Case of the Cake: Dilemmas of Giving and Taking by Rima Praspaliauskiene
In my fieldwork at the Cardiology Unit at Vilnius public hospital I encountered what I call “the cake case.” In 2009-2010 I was in Lithuania to study how…
Why Does Everyone Hate Martin Shkreli? by Danya Glabau
The investor-boy-wunderkind-turned-pharmaceutical-CEO Martin Shkreli was the end of the year’s emblem of schadenfreude. Shkreli has been in the news regularly since September 2015 when his company, Tu…
Top of the Heap: Elly Teman by Hannah Gibson
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Elly Teman, a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction and a senior lecturer…
Traveling within the Case by Atsuro Morita
On a boat sailing through the still waters of the Noi River, a tributary of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand, Miura-san, a senior male engineer from a…
A polygraphic casebook by Susan Reynolds Whyte
There was a small glitch when our book Second Chances was almost ready to go to press. It was a layout problem. The Table of Contents was congested…
Book Forum—Anand Pandian’s “Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation” by Todd Meyers
Anand Pandian’s Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation is a fascinating and truly inspired inquiry into questions of experience and the media through which experience is rendered…
Anatomy of a Somatosphere post by Eugene Raikhel
Thanks to everyone who participated in our readership survey last month. One of the things that became immediately clear upon reading the responses was that many of our…
Pharmaceutical Prosthesis and White Racial Rescue in the Prescription Opioid “Epidemic” by Helena Hansen
Introduction A U.S. public discourse of addiction as a disabling psychiatric condition (as opposed to a moral flaw or social deviancy) was codified into Social Security policy in…
My Thoughts While Doing Chest Compressions: Reflections on Care in the Intensive Care Unit from an Intern Physician-Medical Anthropologist by Kimberly Sue
I was doing chest compressions on a 29-year-old woman who had just come up from the Emergency Room, and I was trying not to look at her face.…
What is a Family? Refugee DNA and the Possible Truths of Kinship by Carole McGranahan
Tashi thought they were his kids. They were his kids. He was the only father they had ever known. He had been their father since the day each…
Summer Roundup: Book Reviews by Deanna Day
In this last roundup of our summer posts, we draw your attention to the many insightful book reviews published on Somatosphere during the hazy days of summer, just…
In the Journals – November 2015 Part I by Michelle Pentecost
Here’s comes the first round of what you’ll find ‘In the Journals’ from November. Apart from the listings below, also see the Somatosphere post on a Special Issue…
Bianca Brijnath’s “Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India” by Tanja Ahlin
Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India by Bianca Brijnath Berghahn Books, 2014, 240 pages Bianca Brijnath’s book, Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia…
Authors and Impresarios: How to Move Across Disciplines by Hyo Yoon Kang
A conversation with Mario Biagioli. Mario Biagioli is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Science and Technology Studies, as well as Director of the Center for Science and…
Post-Script, Still Longer Shadows: Guillaume Lachenal on “In the Shadow of Ebola” by Guillaume Lachenal
This commentary on Gregg Mitman and Sarita Siegel’s In the Shadow of Ebola is intended as a post-script to the forum on the film which appeared earlier this…
NEW! — Jan Newberry: Restating the case: The social reproduction of care labor
Ever felt like the best conversation at the party is happening in the next room? When I did my field research in an urban neighborhood in Java some…
Swamp Dialogues: Filming Ethnography by Ildikó Zonga Plájás
In recent anthropological film practice we see a shift from established visual ethnographic paradigms focused on discursive representation (Crawford 1992), towards the realm of interdisciplinary coope…
NEW! — Sandy Smith-Nonini: Petrodollar financialization, the state, and fictive production
This article argues that the oil price shocks of the 1970s triggered a wave of global financialization led by Western banks and the US State that disconnected actual…
Summer Roundup: Features by Deanna Day
This Friday, we are rounding up a set of feature essays that were published on Somatosphere over the summer. Unlike our previous summer roundups, which have focused on…
NEW! — Samuel W. Rose: Marxism and mode of production in the anthropology of native North America
This contribution elaborates on the relevance of the concept of mode of production in understanding contemporary North American indigenous populations. While examination of Native American peoples pla…