Why do people single out gold, sapphires, diamonds, and other minerals as particularly "precious"? What makes precious minerals "precious"? Drawing from ethnographic and cross-cultural research, this collection of anthropological essays and case studies answers these questions by exploring humans' multifaceted relationships with the minerals they deem "precious." The Anthropology of Precious Minerals addresses the entanglement of humans and minerals, with a particular focus on the practices of scrappers, miners, and hunters as they work to extract value. The editors draw from history, archaeology, and ethnography, and remind us that "preciousness" must always be understood in relation to complex cultural, political-economic, and semiotic systems of value.

The Domestication of Humans explains the alternative to the African Eve model by attributing human modernity, not to a speciation event in Africa, but to the unintended self-domestication of humans. This alternative account of human origins provides the reader with a comprehensive explanation of all features defining our species that is consistent with all the available evidence. These traits include, but are not limited to, massive neotenisation, numerous somatic changes, susceptibility to almost countless detrimental conditions and maladaptations, brain atrophy, loss of oestrus and thousands of genetic impairments. The teleological fantasy of replacement by a 'superior' species that has dominated the topic of modern human origins has never explained any of the many features that distinguish us from our robust ancestors. This book explains all of them in one consistent, elegant theory. It presents the most revolutionary proposal of human origins since Darwin. Although primarily intended for the academic market, this book is perfectly suitable for anyone interested in how and why we became the species that we are today.

Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. It proposes that care for vulnerable populations or individuals is inseparable from other political processes of recognition, welfare, healthcare and security, whilst also exploring vulnerability as a shared, generative condition that makes caring possible. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions - including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US - are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Brazil ranked second only to the United States in the number of reported cases of AIDS. Because Brazil's extensive poverty and inequality, its fragile economic situation, and its limited network of health services, the scarce prevention/intervention resources targeted only the most visible at risk populations -- gay men, sailors, prostitutes, and street children. Virtually forgotten were Brazil's hidden drug users, as well as the tens of millions of individuals living in the country's thousands of favelas, or shantytowns, which are a characteristic part of almost every Brazilian city. In Sex, Drugs, and HIV/AIDS in Brazil the authors examine the emergence of AIDS in Brazil, its linkages to drug use and the sexual culture, and its epidemiology in such populations as cocaine users, "street children," and male transvestite prostitutes. Special attention is focused on an HIV/AIDS community outreach program established in Rio de Janeiro, which represented the first such prevention/intervention program in all of Brazil targeting indigent cocaine users. This 6-year initiative was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, and carried out by the authors of this book. The research combines anthropological, sociological, and biological perspectives; all data were gathered through empirical and ethnographic techniques.

This book follows people living with dementia through their admission, shadowing hospital staff as they interact with them during and across shifts. In a major contribution to the tradition of hospital ethnography, it provides a valuable analysis of the organisation and delivery of routine care, and everyday interactions at the bedside, that reveal the powerful continuities and durability of ward cultures of care, and their impacts on people living with dementia.

Despite France and Belgium sharing and interacting constantly with similar culinary tastes, music and pop culture, access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies are strikingly different. Discrimination written into French law acutely contrasts with non-discriminatory access to ART in Belgium. The contributors of this volume are social scientists from France, Belgium, England and the United States, representing different disciplines: law, political science, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Each author has attempted, through the prism of their specialties, to demonstrate and analyse how and why this striking difference in access to ART exists.

How much influence does culture have on a mother's reactions to pregnancy loss? At what stage is a fetus attributed with human status? How does this affect the mother's reactions to the loss of a baby?
Contemporary, historical and oral-history accounts from regions as diverse as rural North India, urban America, South Africa and Northern Ireland, provide a fascinating insight into the experience and management of miscarriage across a number of different cultures. The authors explore how the social, technological and medical context in which miscarriages occur can affect the ways in which women experience such an event.
In the West, advances in medical technology, a low infant-mortality rate and a low birth rate have raised expectations as to the successful outcome of each pregnancy. In addition, the early confirmation of pregnancy makes consequent pregnancy loss -- which might have gone unnoticed or unconfirmed in the past -- all the more difficult for mothers in the West. Yet, mourning rituals and behaviour at a pregnancy loss, which may be elaborate in some societies, are generally considered to be inappropriate in many Western societies. Differing social beliefs regarding the causes of miscarriage, preventative measures and curative treatments are also examined.
Medical anthropologists, sociologists and health professionals will all find this book fascinating reading.

How much influence does culture have on a mother's reactions to pregnancy loss? At what stage is a fetus attributed with human status? How does this affect the mother's reactions to the loss of a baby?
Contemporary, historical and oral-history accounts from regions as diverse as rural North India, urban America, South Africa and Northern Ireland, provide a fascinating insight into the experience and management of miscarriage across a number of different cultures. The authors explore how the social, technological and medical context in which miscarriages occur can affect the ways in which women experience such an event.
In the West, advances in medical technology, a low infant-mortality rate and a low birth rate have raised expectations as to the successful outcome of each pregnancy. In addition, the early confirmation of pregnancy makes consequent pregnancy loss -- which might have gone unnoticed or unconfirmed in the past -- all the more difficult for mothers in the West. Yet, mourning rituals and behaviour at a pregnancy loss, which may be elaborate in some societies, are generally considered to be inappropriate in many Western societies. Differing social beliefs regarding the causes of miscarriage, preventative measures and curative treatments are also examined.
Medical anthropologists, sociologists and health professionals will all find this book fascinating reading.

This open access edited book brings together new research on the mechanisms by which maternal and reproductive health policies are formed and implemented in diverse locales around the world, from global policy spaces to sites of practice. The authors - both internationally respected anthropologists and new voices - demonstrate the value of ethnography and the utility of reproduction as a lens through which to generate rich insights into professionals' and lay people's intimate encounters with policy. Authors look closely at core policy debates in the history of global maternal health across six different continents, including: Women's use of misoprostol for abortion in Burkina Faso The place of traditional birth attendants in global maternal health Donor-driven maternal health programs in Tanzania Efforts to integrate qualitative evidence in WHO maternal and child health policy-making Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health will engage readers interested in critical conversations about global health policy today. The broad range of foci makes it a valuable resource for teaching in medical anthropology, anthropology of reproduction, and interdisciplinary global health programs. The book will also find readership amongst critical public health scholars, health policy and systems researchers, and global public health practitioners.

The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or postmodern ethnography.

This volume, written in a readable and enticing style, is based on a simple premise, which was to have several exceptional ethnographers write about their experiences in an evocative way in real time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than an edited volume with dedicated chapters, this book thus offers a new format wherein authors write several, distinct dispatches, each short and compact, allowing each writer's perspectives and stories to grow, in tandem with the pandemic itself, over the course of the book. Leaving behind the trope of the lonely anthropologist, these authors come together to form a collective of ethnographers to ask important questions, such as: What does it mean to live and write amid an unfolding and unstoppable global health and economic crisis? What are the intensities of the everyday? How do the isolated find connection in the face of catastrophe? Such first-person reflections touch on a plurality of themes brought on by the pandemic, forces and dynamics of pressing concern to many, such as contagion, safety, health inequalities, societal injustices, loss and separation, displacement, phantasmal imaginings and possibilities, the uncertain arts of calculating risk and protection, limits on movement and travel, and the biopolitical operations of sovereign powers. The various writings-spun from diverse situations and global locations-proceed within a temporal flow, starting in March 2020, with the first alerts and cases of viral infection, and then move on to various currents of caution, concern, infection, despair, hope, and connection that have unfolded since those early days. The writings then move into 2021, with events and moods associated with the global distribution of potentially effective vaccines and the promise and hope these immunizations bring. The written record of these multiform dispatches involves traces of a series of lives, as the authors of those lives tried to make do, and write, in trying times. A timely ethnography of an event that has changed all our lives, this book is critical reading for students and researchers of medical anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, contemporary anthropological theory, and ethnographic writing.

I am pleased to respond to the wish of the Editors, Drs A. Czeizel, H. G. Benk mann and H. W. Goedde and write the Foreword to this book "Genetics ofthe Hun garian population." This book represents the result of a fruitful international scientif ic cooperation, an endeavour that has been forged and sustained in the midst of a number of difficulties. It bears ample testimony to the fact that the pursuit of science transcends national boundaries and barriers and to what can be achieved through international cooperation. It has now become possible, among other things, to present a more meaningful characterization of the different ethnic groups than had been hitherto possible, thanks to the major advances in the study of human biology through the application of a wide variety of concepts and techniques. Several new disciplines, in particular, ecogenetics, pharmacogenetics and molecular biology have come into being and are flourishing. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is perhaps worth mentioning that the trends and place of migration and urbanization that we are witnessing today are such, that, before long, differences between different human gene pools may be substantially diminished, if not entirely obliterated. This book, therefore, is timely: it provides valuable information on who the Hungarians are, where they come from and where they are heading, in short, their past, present and future, in addition to presenting a broad perspective of some aspects of current research in biomedical sciences in Hungary."

The emergence of Zika virus in 2015 challenged conventional ideas of mosquito-borne diseases, tested the resilience of health systems and embedded itself within local sociocultural worlds, with major implications for environmental, sexual, reproductive and paediatric health. This book explores this complex viral epidemic and situates it within its broader social, epidemiological and historical context in Latin America and the Caribbean. The chapters include a diverse set of case studies from scholars and health practitioners working across the region, from Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, the United States and Haiti. The book explores how mosquito-borne disease epidemics (not only Zika but also chikungunya, dengue and malaria) intersect with social change and health governance. By doing so, the authors reflect on the ways in which situated knowledge and social science approaches can contribute to more effective health policy and practice for mosquito-borne disease threats in a changing world. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book examines the experiences of global healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shines a light on the experiences of healthcare workers during the pandemic, exploring their lived experiences of delivering care without losing sight of the emotional and symbolic nature of their work. Incorporating cutting-edge research from global experts in medical anthropology, medical sociology, medicine, psychology and nursing, it uniquely demonstrates the value of rapid qualitative research during infectious epidemics. Drawing on data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, the book explores global healthcare policies and healthcare workers' experiences across 20 countries.

This open access edited book brings together new research on the mechanisms by which maternal and reproductive health policies are formed and implemented in diverse locales around the world, from global policy spaces to sites of practice. The authors - both internationally respected anthropologists and new voices - demonstrate the value of ethnography and the utility of reproduction as a lens through which to generate rich insights into professionals' and lay people's intimate encounters with policy. Authors look closely at core policy debates in the history of global maternal health across six different continents, including: Women's use of misoprostol for abortion in Burkina Faso The place of traditional birth attendants in global maternal health Donor-driven maternal health programs in Tanzania Efforts to integrate qualitative evidence in WHO maternal and child health policy-making Anthropologies of Global Maternal and Reproductive Health will engage readers interested in critical conversations about global health policy today. The broad range of foci makes it a valuable resource for teaching in medical anthropology, anthropology of reproduction, and interdisciplinary global health programs. The book will also find readership amongst critical public health scholars, health policy and systems researchers, and global public health practitioners.

Now in its fourth edition, Exploring Medical Anthropology provides a concise and engaging introduction to medical anthropology. It presents competing theoretical perspectives in a balanced fashion, highlighting points of conflict and convergence. Concrete examples and the author's personal research experiences are utilized to explain some of the discipline's most important insights, such as that biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease and that medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering. The text has been thoroughly updated for the fourth edition, including fresh case studies and a new chapter on drugs. It contains a range of pedagogical features to support teaching and learning, including images, text boxes, a glossary, and suggested further reading.

The Trouble with Human Nature brings together biological and cross-cultural evidence to critically examine common preconceptions and challenge popular assumptions about human nature. It sets out to counter genetic and evolutionary myths about human variation and behavior, drawing on both biological and cultural anthropology, as well as from other disciplines including psychology, economics, and sociology. The chapters address the interrelated topics of health and disease, gender and other differences, and violence and conflict. The analysis calls into question the presumed natural foundation for social inequalities and sheds light on both the constraints and possibilities inherent in the human condition. This book provides students of human diversity and evolution with an excellent resource to better approach questions relating to human nature. It will also be of interest to those taking courses in social, cultural, and biological anthropology, as well as public health, medical anthropology, sociology, gender studies, psychology, and kinship studies.

Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience relates the intensifying effort of bioentrepreneurs to apply genetic engineering technologies to the human species and to extend the commercial reach of synthetic biology or "extreme genetic engineering." In 1980, legal developments concerning patenting laws transformed scientific researchers into bioentrepreneurs. Often motivated to create profit-driven biotech start-up companies or to serve on their advisory boards, university researchers now commonly operate under serious conflicts of interest. These conflicts stand in the way of giving full consideration to the social and ethical consequences of the technologies they seek to develop. Too often, bioentrepreneurs have worked to obscure how these technologies could alter human evolution and to hide the social costs of keeping on this path. Tracing the rise and cultural politics of biotechnology from a critical perspective, Biotech Juggernaut aims to correct the informational imbalance between producers of biotechnologies on the one hand, and the intended consumers of these technologies and general society, on the other. It explains how the converging vectors of economic, political, social, and cultural elements driving biotechnology's swift advance constitutes a juggernaut. It concludes with a reflection on whether it is possible for an informed public to halt what appears to be a runaway force.

The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement provides readers with a philosophically rich and scientifically grounded analysis of human enhancement and its ethical implications. A landmark in the academic literature, the volume covers human enhancement in genetic engineering, neuroscience, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and many other fields. The Handbook includes a diverse and multifaceted collection of 30 chapters—all appearing here in print for the first time— that reveal the fundamental ethical challenges related to human enhancement. The chapters have been written by internationally recognized leaders in the field and are organized into seven parts: Historical Background and Key Concepts Human Enhancement and Human Nature Physical Enhancement Cognitive Enhancement Mood Enhancement and Moral Enhancement Human Enhancement and Medicine Legal, Social, and Political Implications The depth and topical range of the Handbook makes it an essential resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in a broad variety of disciplinary areas. Furthermore, it is an authoritative reference for basic scientists, philosophers, engineers, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals who work on the topic of human enhancement.

The Archaeology of Human Bones provides an up to date account of the analysis of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites, introducing students to the anatomy of bones and teeth and the nature of the burial record. Drawing from studies around the world, this book illustrates how the scientific study of human remains can shed light upon important archaeological and historical questions. This new edition reflects the latest developments in scientific techniques and their application to burial archaeology. Current scientific methods are explained, alongside a critical consideration of their strengths and weaknesses. The book has also been thoroughly revised to reflect changes in the ways in which scientific studies of human remains have influenced our understanding of the past, and has been updated to reflect developments in ethical debates that surround the treatment of human remains. There is now a separate chapter devoted to archaeological fieldwork on burial grounds, and the chapters on DNA and ethics have been completely rewritten. This edition of The Archaeology of Human Bones provides not only a more up to date but also a more comprehensive overview of this crucial area of archaeology. Written in a clear style with technical jargon kept to a minimum, it continues to be a key work for archaeology students.

The Trouble with Human Nature brings together biological and cross-cultural evidence to critically examine common preconceptions and challenge popular assumptions about human nature. It sets out to counter genetic and evolutionary myths about human variation and behavior, drawing on both biological and cultural anthropology, as well as from other disciplines including psychology, economics, and sociology. The chapters address the interrelated topics of health and disease, gender and other differences, and violence and conflict. The analysis calls into question the presumed natural foundation for social inequalities and sheds light on both the constraints and possibilities inherent in the human condition. This book provides students of human diversity and evolution with an excellent resource to better approach questions relating to human nature. It will also be of interest to those taking courses in social, cultural, and biological anthropology, as well as public health, medical anthropology, sociology, gender studies, psychology, and kinship studies.

Health and Other Unassailable Values sets out to examine health as a core cultural value. Taking 'health', 'evidence' and 'ethics' as her primary themes, Bell explores the edifice that underpins contemporary conceptions of health and the transformations in how we understand it, assess it and enact it. Although health, evidence and ethics have always been important values, she demonstrates that the grounds upon which they are grasped today are radically different from how they were formulated in the past. Divided into three parts, Part I focuses on the rise of epidemiology, Part II examines the emergence of evidence-based medicine, and Part III explores the broader ethical turn in health and medicine. Through an examination of core concepts including health behaviour, the randomised controlled trial, informed consent and human rights, Bell illustrates the ways in which certain entrenched ideas and assumptions about how human beings think and act recur across a variety of settings. An array of topical case studies, including cigarette packaging legislation, the incorporation of male circumcision as an HIV prevention tool, cancer screening technologies and e-cigarettes, ground the arguments presented. Written in a clear and engaging style, this volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students, especially those in medical anthropology, medical sociology and public health. Clear chapter delineations make the work easy to engage with at the individual chapter level as well as a whole.

Since the 1970s, understanding of the effects of trauma, including flashbacks and withdrawal, has become widespread in the United States. As a result Americans can now claim that the phrase posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is familiar even if the American Psychiatric Association's criteria for diagnosis are not. As embedded as these ideas now are in the American mindset, however, they are more widely applicable, this volume attempts to show, than is generally recognized. The essays in Culture and PTSD trace how trauma and its effects vary across historical and cultural contexts. Culture and PTSD examines the applicability of PTSD to other cultural contexts and details local responses to trauma and the extent they vary from PTSD as defined in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Investigating responses in Peru, Indonesia, Haiti, and Native American communities as well as among combat veterans, domestic abuse victims, and adolescents, contributors attempt to address whether PTSD symptoms are present and, if so, whether they are a salient part of local responses to trauma. Moreover, the authors explore other important aspects of the local presentation and experience of trauma-related disorder, whether the Western concept of PTSD is known to lay members of society, and how the introduction of PTSD shapes local understandings and the course of trauma-related disorders. By attempting to determine whether treatments developed for those suffering PTSD in American and European contexts are effective in global settings of violence or disaster, Culture and PTSD questions the efficacy of international responses that focus on trauma. Contributors: Carmela Alcantara, Tom Ball, James K. Boehnlein, Naomi Breslau, Whitney Duncan, Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Jesse H. Grayman, Bridget M. Haas, Devon E. Hinton, Erica James, Janis H. Jenkins, Hanna Kienzler, Brandon Kohrt, Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, Richard J. McNally, Theresa D. O'Nell, Duncan Pedersen, Nawaraj Upadhaya, Carol M. Worthman, Allan Young.

This volume examines the biocultural dimensions of obesity from an anthropological perspective in an effort to broaden understanding of a growing public health concern. The United States of America currently has the highest rates of obesity among developed countries, with an alarming rise in prevalence in recent decades which promises to affect the nation for years to come. Bellisari helps students to grasp the complex nature of this obesity epidemic, demonstrating that it is the consequence of many interacting forces which range from individual genetic and physiological predispositions to national policies and American cultural beliefs and practices. As much a social problem as an individual one, the development of obesity is in fact encouraged by the pattern of high consumption and physical inactivity that is promoted by American economic, political, and ideological systems. With a range of up-to-date scientific and medical data, The Anthropology of Obesity in the United States provides students with a comprehensive picture of obesity, its multiple causes, and the need for society-wide action to address the issue.