WGSS 371
Medicine, Pathology, and Power: An Ethnographic View Fall 2019
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ANTH 371 / STS 370
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

How do medical anthropologists examine and interpret health, disease, and illness today, in order to elucidate the biosocial determinants of health and health-seeking behaviors? We are particularly interested in how medical anthropologists employ ethnographic techniques including interviewing, surveys, and observant participation/participant observation–also known as as ‘deep hanging out.’ Through experiential inquiries, we investigate the systemic health inequalities that are produced by socio-economic hierarchies, while paying particular attention to the most marginalized and vulnerable groups. Through the semester, students pursue their own individual, fieldwork-based projects on campus with students & staff. Our goal is a better understanding of the limits and strengths of ethnographic inquiry as we explore the challenges of collaborative research into health and inequality in a local world structured by diverse forces, actors, and motives. We consider how medical anthropologists: tell stories that describe and influence the ways that patients and providers respond to a dialogic quest for health and well-being within a world structured by social inequality and suffering; interpret the biological, socio-cultural, and behavioural determinants of health at individual and population levels and seeks to mitigate the ways that health inequities are produced by social inequality and unequal access to health resources; understand biomedicine and other medical systems as scientific and cultural discourses that project their own rationalities and biases even as they try to improve health outcomes.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1067
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: four fieldnotes, weekly class discussion and writing exercises, final presentation on ethnographic project
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: Anthropology, Sociology, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies majors; Public Health, Science and Technology Studies concentrators
Distributions: Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ANTH 371 Division II WGSS 371 Division II STS 370 Division II
DPE Notes: This class examines the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality in structuring health outcomes and access to health resources. It theorizes the dynamics of race, gender, and class in shaping patient/provider encounters and efforts to 'improve' health outcomes within contexts of structural violence (poverty, racism, and sexism) and social suffering.
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses
PHLH Methods in Public Health

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