This paper suggests that it is urgent for anthropologists to respond to a current move in epigenetics in which nature and nurture are no longer understood as dichotomous elements. It is argued that a ...neobiological reductionism is currently taking shape due to molecularization of the environment by epigeneticists. Anthropological concepts of embodiment should be retheorized in light of this development. The formation of epigenetics as a discipline is discussed, then the habitual black-boxing of the post-Enlightenment material body is noted. Five illustrative examples are given of recent epigenetic findings: the impact of maternal stress on fetal dysfunction, social deprivation and epigenetic changes, food as molecularized epigenetics, aging and epigenetics, and toxins as epigenetic triggers. "Embedded bodies," "local biologies," and "biosocial becomings" are introduced as concepts that enable the insertion of an anthropological perspective into this emerging debate. A brief account of historical trauma and its ongoing effects as experienced by First Nations and Inuit of Canada are given in conclusion. It is argued that historical and ethnographic accounts are indispensable if epigenetic findings are to avoid neoreductionism and contribute to policy changes to improve human well-being.
In this review, we trace the origins and dissemination of syndemics, a concept developed within critical medical anthropology that rapidly diffused to other fields. The goal is to provide a review of ...the literature, with a focus on key debates. After a brief discussion of the nature and significance of syndemic theory and its applications, we trace the history and development of the syndemic framework within anthropology and the contributions of anthropologists who use it. We also look beyond anthropology to the adoption and use of syndemics in other health-related disciplines, including biomedicine, nursing, public health, and psychology, and discuss controversies in syndemics, particularly the perception that existing syndemics research focuses on methodologies at the individual level rather than at the population level and fails to provide evidence of synergistic interactions. Finally, we discuss emerging syndemics research on COVID-19 and provide an overview of the application of syndemics research.
Transnational Humanitarianism Ticktin, Miriam
Annual review of anthropology,
01/2014, Volume:
43, Issue:
1
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
This review traces anthropological studies of humanitarianism starting in the late 1980s, when humanitarianism began to take shape as a particular moral and political project through the formation of ...transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It follows both the evolving relationship of anthropologists to humanitarianism-initially as allies, then as critics, alternately embracing and challenging their conjoined humanist legacy-and the growing field of the anthropology of humanitarianism.
How functional medicine leverages systems biology and
epigenetic science to treat the microbiome and reverse chronic
disease. Each body is a system within a system-an ecology
within the larger ...context of social, political, economic, cultural,
and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of
epigenetics, whereby structural inequalities are literally encoded
in our genes. But our ecological embeddedness extends beyond DNA,
for each body also teems with trillions of bacteria, yeast, and
fungi, all of them imprints of our individual milieus. Nested
Ecologies asks what it would mean to take seriously our
microbial being, given that our internal ecologies are shaped by
inequalities embedded in our physical and social environments.
Further, Rosalynn Vega argues that health practices focused on
patients' unique biology inadvertently reiterate systemic
inequities. In particular, functional medicine-which attempts to
heal chronic disease by leveraging epigenetic science and treating
individual microbiomes-reduces illness to problems of "lifestyle,"
principally diet, while neglecting the inability of poor people to
access nutrition. Functional medicine thus undermines its own
critique of the economics of health care. Drawing on novel digital
ethnographies and reflecting on her own experience of chronic
illness, Vega challenges us to rethink not only the determinants of
well-being but also what it is to be human.
Medical anthropologists working in interdisciplinary teams often articulate expertise with respect to ethnography. Yet increasingly, health scientists utilize ethnographic methods. Through a ...comparative review of health ethnographies, and autoethnographic observations from interdisciplinary research, we find that anthropological ethnographies and health science ethnographies are founded on different epistemic sensibilities. Differences center on temporalities of research, writing processes, sites of social intervention, uses of theory, and analytic processes. Understanding what distinguishes anthropological ethnography from health science ethnography enables medical anthropologists - who sometimes straddle these two ethnographic modes - to better articulate their epistemic positionality and facilitate interdisciplinary research collaborations.
Triangulating health Jackson, Paul; Neely, Abigail H.
Progress in human geography,
02/2015, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Calls for a political ecology of health have recently emerged in geography. This article builds on these to suggest a practice of a political ecology of health by incorporating the insights of ...medical anthropology, STS, and history of medicine. Framed around three perspectives – partial and situated knowledges, Marxist-feminist approaches, more-than-human geographies of health – this article argues that incorporating the insights of political ecology and cognate disciplines into the problems we investigate and the methods we use will make for a stronger practice of a political ecology of health.
Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical disease concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness ...from antiquity to the seventeenth century.Focusing on the systematisation and classification of illness in its multiple forms, manifestations and causes, this volume examines case studies ranging from popular concepts of illness through to specialist discourses on it. Using philological, historical and anthropological approaches, the contributions cover perspectives across time from East Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, spanning ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome to Tibet and China. They aim to capture the multiplicity of disease concepts and medical traditions within specific societies, and to investigate the historical dynamics of stability and change linked to such concepts.Providing useful material for comparative research, the volume is a key resource for researchers studying the cultural conceptualisation of illness, including anthropologists, historians and classicists, among others.
Syndemic Theory (ST) provides a framework to examine mutually enhancing diseases/health issues under conditions of social inequality and inequity. ST has been used in multiple disciplines to address ...interacting infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and mental health conditions. The theory has been critiqued for its inability to measure disease interactions and their individual and combined health outcomes. This article reviews literature that strongly suggests a syndemic between food insecurity (FI) and diet-related chronic diseases (DRCDs), and proposes a model to measure the extent of such interaction. The article seeks to: (1) examine the potential syndemic between FI and DRCDs; (2) illustrate how the incorporation of Life History Theory (LHT), into a syndemic framework can help to highlight critical lifeperiods when FI-DRCD interactions result in adverse health outcomes; (3) discuss the use of mixed methods to identify and measure syndemics to enhance the precision and predictive power of ST; and (4) propose an analytical model for the examination of the FI-DRCD syndemic through the life course. The proposed model is more relevant now given the significant increase in FI globally as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The differential impact that the pandemic appears to have among various age groups and by other demographic factors (e.g., race, gender, income) offers an opportunity to examine the potential FI-DRCD syndemic under the lens of LHT.
•Systematic review of literature on Food Insecurity and Diet Related Chronic Diseases.•New conceptual model of Food Insecurity and Diet Related Chronic Disease Syndemic.•Use of qualitative and quantitative methods and Life History Theory.•Use of Structural Equation Modeling to identify and measure syndemics.
PDF
