Anthropology of Biomedicine and Biotechnologies

Recommended Prerequisites

Working knowledge of the English language (reading skills).

Teaching Methods

The students have to write a review of a book that is relevant to the field. The choice will be made between two references (see bibliography). The work can not exceed 6 pages in 1 ½ spaces (12 caracter). The Exam access is conditionated by the delivery of the review. The final evaluation will be the result of the weighted average of the two evaluative moments (written essay and Exam).

Learning Outcomes

The student must be able to question critically health and sickness in its biological, cultural, social, political and ecological dimensions.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

The course unit of Anthropology of Biomedicine and Biotechnologies, aims to explore with the students  a set of topics concerned with one of the forefront domains in the anthropological knowledge. Mainly, it is concerned with an investigation which elects as questioning space the “western” medicine – biomedicine, precisely -, in other words, the medical theory and practice of Euro-american societies, theory and practice which are largely widespread. What is the place of anthropological knowledge in the post-human condition that is, eventually, so close to us? This will be the great question to highlight during our semester.

Head Lecturer(s)

Cristina Maria Proença Padez

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Written essay + exam: 100.0%

Bibliography

Dumit, Joseph, 2004, Picturing Personhood: brain scans and biomedical identity, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Leitura integral e ficha de leitura./Full reading and reading record.

Fleck, Ludwik, 1991 (1979), Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Chicago & Londres, The University of Chicago Press, pp.20-51.

Foucault, Michel, 1994 (1976), A Vontade de Saber História da Sexualidade I, Lisboa, Relógio d’ Água, pp. 135-61.

 

Franklin, Sarah, 1995, “Science as Culture, Cultures of Science”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, pp.163-84.

 

Gonzalez, Roberto J., Laura Nader, e C. Jay Ou, 1995, “Between Two Poles: Bronislaw Malinowski, Ludwik Fleck, and the Anthropology of Science”, Current Anthropology, 36, 5, pp.866-869.

Good, Byron J., 1995 (1994), Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: an anthropological perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.1-24 e pp.65-87.

Hahn, Robert A., 1983, “Biomedical Practice and Anthropological Theory: frameworks and directions”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 12, pp.305-333.

Haraway, Donna J., 1991, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the reinvention of nature, Londres, Free Association Books Ltd, pp.149-181.

Kleinman, Arthur, 1995, “What is specific to biomedicine”, in Writing at the Margin: discourse between anthropology and medicine, Berkeley, LA, e Londres: University of California Press, pp. 21-40.

Lambert, Helen, 1996, “Medical Anthropology”, in Barnard, Allan & Jonathan Spencer (ed.), Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Londres e Nova Iorque, Routledge, pp.358-361.

Latour, Bruno, 1986 (1979), Laboratory Life: the construction of scientific facts, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, pp. 15- 90.

Mol, Annemarie, 2002, The body Multiple: ontology in medical practice, Durham & Londres: Duke University Press. Leitura integral e ficha de leitura./Full reading and reading record.

Rabinow, Paul, 1996, “Artificiality and Enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality”, in Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp.91-111.