An Anthropology of Biomedicine

"By convincingly articulating critical medical anthropology and social studies of science, analyzing questions emerging from the most recent technologies in medicine and reflecting on public health issues in developing countries, this book will become a reference for social scientists and more broadly for all those interested in contemporary changes and challenges."

Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Ecole des Hautes Eludes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

"An Anthropology of Biomedicine is a magisterial review of the knowledge claims of biomedicine that establishes the salience of local biologies in the field of global health. Original and compelling - it is a stunning achievement."

Veena Das, Johns Hoplcins University

"Because Lock and Nguyen take seriously the ongoing co-constitution of diverse biological and social bodies-human, microbial, and more-they have written a timely, densely ethnographic, theoretically astute, and necessary book. This book proposes an anthropology of biomedicine as technology that can better contribute to actually realizing health as a basic human right globally."

Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa cruz

"An Anthropology of Biomedicine introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, medical anthropologist Margaret Lock and physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen advance the theory that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity that is the elusive product of nature and culture.

Tracking the historic global application of biomedical technologies, the authors reveal the intended and unintended local consequences and the exacerbation of global inequalities and health disparities that such technologies bring about.

An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down.

• Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics
• Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity
• Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic materials around the globe to illustrate the importance of this methodological approach
• Integrates key new research data with more classical material, covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth, by military doctors from colonial times on
• Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into domestic and intimate domains
• Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and Anthropology