An Anthropology of Biomedicine

The concept of a universal, standardizable body that can best be technologically manipulated in isolation from its context has become a foundation of biomedicine. 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 develop and integrate the theory that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity - the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down. Tracking the historic global application of biomedical technologies -- including the management of epidemics as part of colonial medicine, the control of populations, organ transplants, assisted reproductions, genetic testing and screening, and other technologies -- the authors reveal the intended and unintended local consequences and the exacerbation of global inequalities and health disparities that such technologies bring about. The argument is put forward that in addition to focusing on the massive impact of poverty and social inequality on health and illness, attention must be given to local biologies, culture, and politics; as well as to the culture of biomedicine and the unexamined assumptions embedded in it. An Anthropology of Biomedicine serves as an important new introduction to the global implications of the implementation of biomedicine.