Medicine and Culture: Science, Technology and the Body

Catalog description

This course offers an introduction to medical anthropology, an interdisciplinary inquiry of the social and natural sciences, by using approaches from science and technology studies (STS). It surveys several key concepts from STS as well as case studies of current medical and biotechnologies—how they 'work,' their context of development, how expert-designed use mis-matches users' embodied experience, and how individuals and communities adopt, resist, or seek alternative medical explanations and treatments based on their experience cross-culturally.