Summer 2008

ANT f324L • Anthropology of Health and Illness

Course Description

The course seeks to make the students critical of dominant bio-medical assumptions of health and illness by exposing the historical, social, political, economic and cultural foundations of Western Medicine. The readings will critically discuss the historical construction of the modern medicalized body by looking at some nineteenth century debates on anatomy, physiology, psychiatry and anthropology. The issue of race and gender inherent in these debates will be explored by linking them to the expansion of the colonial enterprise and the rise of capitalism. Material will be introduced to help students evaluate the contemporary emphasis on the biomedical model of health and illness in relation to the plurality of health systems in the different parts of the world. The course seeks to further evaluate the linkage between modern medicine and the construction of modern subjectivity and personhood.

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