Global Biocultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Public Health

Catalog description

What does it mean to be healthy? Who decides and by what measures? What is the relationship between health and social environments? Drawing on sociocultural theories of biocultural processes and ethnographies of embodiment, illness, disability, reproduction, violence, and biotechnology, we will examine the biological experience as simultaneously material and socio-culturally plastic. We will ask: what lies at the intersection of health, medicine, society and racism, colonialism, gender-based discrimination, poverty and other key aspects of U.S. and global social environments? To that end, we will consider health and medicine as historically located and as systems that both shape and are significantly shaped by history and socio-cultural norms.