Have you heard about Lissa, the ethno-graphic collaboration between medical anthropologists Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye? The story follows an American and an Egyptian girl in Cairo who navigate class difference, revolutionary struggle, family health crises, and medical uncertainty.
The book offers an exciting new way to teach medical anthropology, and is filled with resources for the classroom. Check out reviews by Lochlann Jain, Parismita Singh, and Stacey Leigh Pigg at our Second Spear blog.
And! Just out in the Journal:
Navne, Svendsen and Gammeltoft explore how people form relations with extremely premature infants whose lives are uncertain.
Gili Hammer considers how the nonvisual senses are deployed in medical training and become part of medical knowledge.
Gjødsbøl and Svendsen draw on Ian Hacking and Paul Ricouer to argue that clinical dementia unmakes the knowing subject and consider the humiliation this may confer.
Tanja Ahlin’s fieldwork with Indian nurses working abroad argues that international communications technologies become key members of ‘care collectives’ that allow the nurses to care for their parents at a distance.
Cecelia Van Hollen explores the ethical debates about disclosing information to cancer patients in India, where some feel disclosure is a right, while others argue it may do more harm than good.
Susanna Trnka studies the efficacious nature of sanatorium-style spa treatments in the Czech Republic, considering therapeutics alongside elements of pleasure and discipline that mediate their success.
Jessica Hardin’s work with Pentecostal Christians in Samoa analyzes how conversion narratives become ’embedded’ in their illness narratives, shifting the object of care from a disease process to the creation of a religious life.
Rania Kassab Sweiss examines the rise of ‘humanitarian psychiatry’ among adfāl al shawāri’ (street children) in Cairo, who the state defines as the most vulnerable and at-risk population.