Medical Materialities: Toward a Material Culture of Medical Anthropology (Routledge Studies in Health and Medical Anthropology)

by Aaron Parkhurst (Editor), TimothyCarroll (Editor)

• New

  Hardcover
  2019

  $138.16

  Medical Materialities investigates possible points of cross-fertilisation between medical anthropology and material culture studies, and considers the successes and limitations of both sub-disciplines as they attempt to understand places, practices, methods, and cultures of healing. The editors present and expand upon a definition of `medical materiality', namely the social impact of the agency of often mundane, at times non-clinical, materials within contexts of health and illness, as caused by the properties and affordances of this material. The chapters address material culture in various clinical and biomedical contexts and in discussions that link the body and healing. The diverse range of ethnographic case studies provides valuable insight into the way cultures of medicine are understood and practiced.