Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41833015
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Residents of Tangier Island, Virginia, a subsiding island in the Chesapeake Bay, embody psychosocial dimensions of environmental change. Analysis of ethnographic data shows islanders' experiences and articulations of anx...Residents of Tangier Island, Virginia, a subsiding island in the Chesapeake Bay, embody psychosocial dimensions of environmental change. Analysis of ethnographic data shows islanders' experiences and articulations of anxiety, panic, and despair as "that sinkin' feeling," resulting from the stress of living with the long-term threat of imminent displacement. Islanders generally acknowledge higher-order causes, such as economic precarity, socio-spatial and institutional losses, and demographic decline, rather than the underlying ecological changes that produce them. The reality and threat of land subsidence not only reshapes the physical island, but undermines social relations among islanders, resulting in often tragic outcomes as many attempt to escape into substance abuse and suicide. On Tangier Island, ecological changes, including those caused by anthropogenic climate changes such as sea-level rise, are the prime cause of islanders' crisis of well-being-disappearing feelings among disappearing people on a disappearing island.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41814570
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Dementia prevention now focuses on individual lifestyle choices as loci of intervention in the hope of delaying or preventing cognitive impairment in aging. Drawing from interviews with dementia experts and middle-aged a...Dementia prevention now focuses on individual lifestyle choices as loci of intervention in the hope of delaying or preventing cognitive impairment in aging. Drawing from interviews with dementia experts and middle-aged adults in Canada, we discuss how prevention expectations compete with adults' experiences, showing that enacting prevention is not simple but rather fraught with tensions. Addressing the troubles of prevention, we propose aging affordances as the particular ways mid-life adults construct, make sense of, and act toward their aging process, including how they navigate expectations of prevention amidst tensions that fashion their relationships with their environment. We take the environment in a broad sense to include social and cultural systems of values and discourses, such as dementia prevention recommendations. It allows us to turn the preventive focus on its head, looking not at its normative behavioral prescriptions but at the range of possibilities mid-life adults strive for as they age.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41802203
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Plastics are ubiquitous in the contemporary practice of medicine, where they are tied to notions of hygiene and quality of care. However, when plastics first infiltrated global medical practice, they did so because of co...Plastics are ubiquitous in the contemporary practice of medicine, where they are tied to notions of hygiene and quality of care. However, when plastics first infiltrated global medical practice, they did so because of considerations related to patient comfort and durability. It was only after developments in the sterilization of plastics and the aggressive marketing of single-use plastics that medical plastics came to be emblematic of hygiene as they are today. In this article, drawing from historical data and fieldwork in India, I argue that dependence upon disposable medical plastics is not just about infection control but also about enabling reductions in labor at the site of use. This labor is displaced into the future-as new plastic production-and downstream, onto waste management. Medical plastics thus function as a materiality of displaced labor in clinical settings. Recognizing this displacement effect is crucial to plastic control interventions within sustainable healthcare.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41802200
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This article explores how students experiencing mental unwellness negotiate psychiatric constructs of mental health to make their suffering morally legible within the North American University context. I argue while the...This article explores how students experiencing mental unwellness negotiate psychiatric constructs of mental health to make their suffering morally legible within the North American University context. I argue while the psychiatric construct remains pervasive, students are ambivalent toward it as a metaphor for their distress. Students engage in bottom-up psychiatrization pragmatically to navigate relational contexts when appropriate for them, while recognizing that the impacts of top-down psychiatrization can limit institutional moral care obligations, constraining their authority to communicate their subjective experiences authentically outside psychiatric idioms. In essence, psychiatric labeling is constraining, but students often exert agency by refusing a psychiatric master status while still recognizing their need to use psychiatric labels to allow their suffering to be seen and addressed within the current cultural-historical moment of psychiatrization.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41802144
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Women's subjective relationship with their pregnancy is central in understanding fetal personhood, a relationship that is theirs to assemble and disassemble. A rigid perception of personhood as either present or absent i...Women's subjective relationship with their pregnancy is central in understanding fetal personhood, a relationship that is theirs to assemble and disassemble. A rigid perception of personhood as either present or absent is problematized, instead revealing an evolving approach. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in an NHS Trust in England the paper explores women's experiences of personhood during pregnancy, pregnancy endings, and their aftermath. It shows personhood is neither fixed, nor constant, but rather oscillates; revealing that dichotomous understandings of personhood based on a specific moment, and which are unidirectional, are flawed. Women's experiences add further evidence that personhood is not biological and is not always tied to the fetus or fetal body. Instead, it is social relations including an imagined future that confers personhood with these sometimes continuing after the pregnancy ending. Yet, social relations that bring a fetus into being may also unmake it.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41579368
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Choice is a central concept in reproductive rights. However, a discourse of choice in reproductive health can also mask precisely the act it aims to protect against: coercion. Whilst choice has been explored extensively...Choice is a central concept in reproductive rights. However, a discourse of choice in reproductive health can also mask precisely the act it aims to protect against: coercion. Whilst choice has been explored extensively in studies of reproductive rights and justice, understandings of coercion are fragmented and under-theorized. This article explores the relationship between coercion and choice, not as a binary but as a coexistence in which they overlay and conceal one another. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst health professionals during family planning training in Timor-Leste, this article shows how a discourse of choice obscures coercive structures and practices, whilst coercive approaches can paradoxically reveal hidden choices. I argue that this coexistence, characterized by concealment, leads to iatrogenesis-medical harm with immediate and lingering effects. By recognizing the coexistence of choice and coercion, and revealing their concealment of one another, we might limit iatrogenesis and enable greater reproductive freedom.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jan · PMID 41524680
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Based on mixed-methods, ethnographic research in a geographically isolated rural medical center in the upper midwestern United States, this paper explores the social implications of healthcare quality assurance policies...Based on mixed-methods, ethnographic research in a geographically isolated rural medical center in the upper midwestern United States, this paper explores the social implications of healthcare quality assurance policies highly reliant on managerial logics, including measurement and monitoring programs. Initially observed as expressions of apathy, throughout 21 months of observation in the medical center I increasingly witnessed tensions erupt due to divergent views of quality care. While explicitly intended to improve biomedical care, clinicians were quick to describe how quality assurance policies impeded their ability to provide high-quality primary care in this rural setting. This article theorizes ongoing tensions between patient care and institutional care as a key aspect of the observed organizational discord. The article concludes with recommendations for how to operationalize institutional care in this setting to respond to clinician and staff concerns about the unique challenges of this biomedical practice environment.
van der Waal R, Helberg-Proctor A, Davis DA
… +1 more, Goodarzi B
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jan · PMID 41524171
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In this article, we conceptualize how Davis' two concepts of uneven reproduction and obstetric racism-both rooted in the US context-are effectuated in the Netherlands. We consider uneven reproduction to consist of bio- a...In this article, we conceptualize how Davis' two concepts of uneven reproduction and obstetric racism-both rooted in the US context-are effectuated in the Netherlands. We consider uneven reproduction to consist of bio- and necropolitics, namely the management and regulation of a population's bodies, life and death. Through bio- and necropolitics, certain life is optimized by investments, and other life is negated by disinvestments in reproductive care in daily care work through obstetric racism. We develop an understanding of obstetric racism in the Netherlands by analyzing how it operates as a form of uneven reproduction, by providing theoretical depth to the concept of obstetric racism in the context of Europe. Based on data analysis from interviews and focus group conversations on obstetric violence with midwives, doulas, midwives-in-training, and mothers who gave birth within the last 10 years, we link the concept of uneven reproduction to daily practices of obstetric racism in the Netherlands. We find that obstetrics operates on the basis of linguistic racism and othering through exoticization, specifically for women racialized as Black through the racial stereotype of being "natural birthers," while other marginalized racialized women are seen as "bad birthers."
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Dec · PMID 41472337
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In this article, I explore the connections between the medicalization of childbirth and environmental devastation through Guarani-Mbyá understandings of life and the living. I argue that the cuts made to Guarani-Mbyá wom...In this article, I explore the connections between the medicalization of childbirth and environmental devastation through Guarani-Mbyá understandings of life and the living. I argue that the cuts made to Guarani-Mbyá women's vaginas (episiotomies) in Brazilian hospitals are experienced and situated on the same cosmopolitical level as the cuts made in their ancestral territories by fences that demarcate soybean plantations and cattle ranches. What I call an extractivism of vitalities occurs precisely through both bodies and territories. In exploring this issue, I highlight connections obvious to Indigenous women: Their bodies and territories are inherently linked by vital forces that are shared and modulated through different qualities of relations involving humans and other-than-human beings.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Dec · PMID 41468518
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Harm reduction professionals strive to reduce the health, social, and legal consequences associated with drug use in contexts permeated by violence. Building on fieldwork in Paris and Barcelona, we examine how they make...Harm reduction professionals strive to reduce the health, social, and legal consequences associated with drug use in contexts permeated by violence. Building on fieldwork in Paris and Barcelona, we examine how they make sense of this violence. In Paris, the discussion of violence primarily hinges on the narratives of suffering from people who use drugs and the obstacles posed by the political context. In Barcelona, the narrative emphasizes precariousness and deficiencies in organizational violence management, which intensifies perceptions of violence. Moving beyond polarized understandings of violence, we argue that violence is socially constructed as an inherent aspect of the culture of harm reduction work. This process involves mechanisms of naturalization, delegitimization, and normalization, shaping work experiences and the construction of the professional self. Although violence manifests in similar forms and manifestations across settings, experiences of that violence differ based on how it perpetuates power dynamics and inequalities within the workplace.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41468357
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How do public health metrics of "good death" shape care and everyday life? Concerns over dying alone has become prevalent worldwide. In Japan, social anxieties over solitary deaths (kodokushi) have intensified in a rapid...How do public health metrics of "good death" shape care and everyday life? Concerns over dying alone has become prevalent worldwide. In Japan, social anxieties over solitary deaths (kodokushi) have intensified in a rapidly aging society. In response, care practices have emerged to keep people social in life and death. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a tsunami-affected town in Miyagi, I examine how post-disaster care has been reorganized in response to fears of kodokushi. Care workers improvised their activities to reconcile bureaucratic demands for "statistics of sociality" with survivors' shifting needs and desires. These activities demonstrate the impact of standardized scripts of "good death" on the quality of life and care of those they aim to protect. At the same time, they reveal the potential for care that embraces the indeterminacy and situatedness of what constitutes a good death, allowing for diverse ways of living and dying well.
Kearney A, Bradley J, Norman A-Marrngawi D
… +1 more, Timothy A-Muluwamara M
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Dec · PMID 41466513
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For over four decades we have collaborated as a team of anthropologists and Indigenous Elders of the Yanyuwa language group. The Yanyuwa are the Indigenous owners of lands and waters in Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria. W...For over four decades we have collaborated as a team of anthropologists and Indigenous Elders of the Yanyuwa language group. The Yanyuwa are the Indigenous owners of lands and waters in Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria. While medicalized healthcare has not been our specific research focus, wellness and ill health have been recurring themes. Death has been tragically prevalent. So too has been a sense of liveliness among households in the remote township of Borroloola. This paper explores ethnographic moments that speak to how Yanyuwa experience illness, as a bodily, relational, and communal possibility. Building out from these, we reflect on how people in this community seek to survive, in part, through kincentric relationality: the art of keeping company. Reflecting on culturally nuanced responses to illness supports anthropological engagements with connections that heal and those that pose a threat, offering some insights to progress efforts in medical pluralism and kincentric care.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Dec · PMID 41461065
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In the United States, emergency departments aren't supposed to turn anyone away. They are the safety-net of the safety-net providing life-saving care. Yet, what happens to healthcare when conditions are so strained that...In the United States, emergency departments aren't supposed to turn anyone away. They are the safety-net of the safety-net providing life-saving care. Yet, what happens to healthcare when conditions are so strained that patients and staff lash out at each other? What happens when the safety net becomes a carceral net? I argue that social and economic pressures placed on emergency medicine generate conflict between patients and nurses who increasingly rely on the restriction of resources, use of restraints, and police in healthcare.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41406417
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How do palliative care professionals negotiate end-of-life care with family members when prognosis and dying are not openly discussed? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Indonesian palliative care unit, I argue that p...How do palliative care professionals negotiate end-of-life care with family members when prognosis and dying are not openly discussed? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Indonesian palliative care unit, I argue that palliative care professionals employ implicit, ambiguous and culturally sensitive communication to carefully negotiate hospital discharge and discuss end-of-life care. I focus on listening to what is said and what remains unspoken in the embodied communicative practices about end-of-life care in family meetings to discuss hospital discharge. I show how palliative care professionals carefully navigate tensions between the hospital's need to discharge patients, family expectations of a cure, and the palliative care value of supporting patients and families. They do so by keeping the possibility of receiving treatment open while simultaneously using implicit language to suggest that end of life may be near.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41406324
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In this ethnographic research project involving disabled and non/disabled siblings in Canada, we have found that during major life-changing transitions, such as the death of a parent, siblings face many challenges, inclu...In this ethnographic research project involving disabled and non/disabled siblings in Canada, we have found that during major life-changing transitions, such as the death of a parent, siblings face many challenges, including structural and systemic inequalities, struggles with and within various service systems, and difficulties with emotions and mental health. In response to these challenges, siblings undertake "extraordinary measures" through co-creative "sibling disability worldmaking" to imagine livable futures. During times of major transition, worldmaking is a strategy siblings use to navigate these upheavals and attempt to co-create livable lives despite a lack of systemic support.
Brown VL, Kaufman L, Ruiz S
… +4 more, Romero CG, Njelesani J, Sutcliffe S, Hunleth J
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41406315
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While US cancer survival rates have improved in recent years, the rising incidence of early-onset cancers means cancer is shifting younger, imposing new generational challenges for survivors and their families. This arti...While US cancer survival rates have improved in recent years, the rising incidence of early-onset cancers means cancer is shifting younger, imposing new generational challenges for survivors and their families. This article explores the experience of a cancer diagnosis during one's re/productive years by analyzing how parents with dependent children maintain a future amid heightened economic precarity (e.g., loss of stable employment, downward mobility, and a degraded public sphere). By linking physical survival with the social conditions necessary for post-treatment quality of life, we develop a more collectivistic notion of survivorship, where parent-survivors' efforts to stay employed during treatment serve as an extension of family caregiving in austere times. Reflecting on how the lead authors' own experience of work and cancer emerged in interviews with 12 parent-survivors, we intervene on traditional team science methods, making space for the autoethnographic voices that underlie interpretations of illness.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Mar · PMID 41406303
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Drawing on ethnographic research with patients and therapists in post-stroke rehabilitation, this article explores how Guadeloupeans strive to exist on their own terms amid postcolonial health inequities, forms of margin...Drawing on ethnographic research with patients and therapists in post-stroke rehabilitation, this article explores how Guadeloupeans strive to exist on their own terms amid postcolonial health inequities, forms of marginalization and institutional disrepair. I argue that French territorial health inequities must be understood in relation to colonial health inequities and reveal the long history of socioracial stratification in the French Caribbean. I then turn to the experience of a patient to examine how she confronts the limitations of her life chances. As she and other Guadeloupean stroke survivors push back against the contours of life delineated by systemic issues, they exist in close engagement with the horizon of life, in a movement I propose to call enduring.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2026 Jun · PMID 41406060
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This article addresses healthcare experiences of Ukrainian refugee women with HIV in the EU. It shows that refugee expectations of healthcare starkly contrasted with their lived experiences. To explain this mismatch, I i...This article addresses healthcare experiences of Ukrainian refugee women with HIV in the EU. It shows that refugee expectations of healthcare starkly contrasted with their lived experiences. To explain this mismatch, I introduce the idea of therapeutic connections. Building upon the concepts of biosociality and the Imaginary West, I show that refugees' pursuit of HIV treatment in their host countries was about seeking both medicine and therapeutic connections with clinicians and other patients. Unable to find similar tight-knit communities (e.g., sex workers or women who use drugs) in their host countries and to forge relationships with clinicians that would go beyond patient-doctor encounters, many refugees decided to mobilize their therapeutic connections to Ukrainian vulnerable communities and clinicians to receive medicine and satisfy the need for belonging. In other cases, the mismatch between the expectations and experiences of healthcare led refugees to return home, even when it was not safe yet.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Nov · PMID 41320790
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This article draws on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles' (LA) jail mental health facility to describe the interrelated crises of rising numbers of people declared incompetent to stand trial and the recu...This article draws on four years of ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles' (LA) jail mental health facility to describe the interrelated crises of rising numbers of people declared incompetent to stand trial and the recurrent failure of managing madness in jail. It draws on the concept of a "spatial fix," which refers to provisional solutions that displace, without resolving, systemic problems while, in fact, creating new ones. Within LA's carceral system, psychiatry has offered one such "fix": institutional and extra-institutional actors have mobilized the personnel, discourses, and technologies of psychiatry to manage the carceral system's apparent excesses. However, such a mobilization of psychiatry deepens, rather than resolves, these crises, while ideologically and spatially securing the wider carceral social order. This psychiatric fix, thus, has important implications for understanding how psychiatric power sustains, reproduces, and extends the shape-shifting US carceral state.
Med Anthropol Q
· 2025 Nov · PMID 41319326
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Residential long-term care facilities, known in California as "board and care" homes, have been closing rapidly in the last decade. Proponents assert these provide vital forms of housing and care to the poor and must be...Residential long-term care facilities, known in California as "board and care" homes, have been closing rapidly in the last decade. Proponents assert these provide vital forms of housing and care to the poor and must be saved, while critics contend they perpetuate the institutionalization of people with disabilities and should be abolished. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Los Angeles, I demonstrate that board and cares offer residents much-needed shelter and sustenance while also trapping them in worsening conditions amid ongoing "slow abandonment" by the state. Residents are confined by neoliberal state policy and political-economic forces that leave them with "nowhere else to go," and articulate critiques of their predicament that far exceed reformist solutions intended to salvage this peculiar, struggling institution. Seen through the lens of slow abandonment, meaningfully addressing residents' concerns requires an abolitionist project of building life-affirming structures of support.