DOCSLIB.ORG

On Suffering and Structural Violence: a View from Below Author(S): Paul Farmer Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
On Suffering and Structural Violence: a View from Below Author(S): Paul Farmer Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below Author(s): Paul Farmer Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol. 3, No. 1, Race and the Global Politics of Health Inequity (Autumn, 2009), pp. 11-28 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595022 . Accessed: 10/04/2014 03:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 133.30.212.149 on Thu, 10 Apr 2014 03:16:53 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below Paul Farmer j veryone knows that suffering exists. The question is a I how to define it.Given that each person's pain has or J?mmmi degree of reality for him her that the pain of others never on can surely approach, iswidespread agreement the sub us ject possible? Almost all of would agree that premature and painful illness, torture, and rape constitute extreme suffering. on as Most would also agree that insidious assaults dignity, such institutionalized racism and sexism, also cause great and unjust injury. our consensus on some more Given of the conspicuous forms a of suffering, number of corollary questions come to the fore. Can we identify those most at risk of great suffering? Among those whose suffering is not mortal, is it possible to identify those most likely to sustain permanent and disabling damage? as or more Are certain "event" assaults, such torture rape, likely are to lead to late sequelae than sustained and insidious suffer as or ing, such the pain born of deep poverty of racism? Under this latter rubric, are certain forms of discrimination demonstra more bly noxious than others? as Anthropologists who take these research questions study both individual experience and the larger social matrix inwhich see it is embedded in order to how various large-scale social forces come to be translated into personal distress and disease. By what mechanisms do social forces ranging from poverty to as racism become embodied individual experience? This has been most own the focus of of my research inHaiti, where political and economic forces have structured risk forAIDS, tuberculosis, and, indeed, most other infectious and parasitic diseases. Social forces at work there have also structured risk formost forms of extreme suffering, from hunger to torture and rape. From Daedalus, 125:1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 251-283. @1996 by theAmeri can Academy of Arts and Sciences. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, MIT Press Journals. ? 2009 The Ohio State Office autumn 2009 11 University / ofMinority Affairs/The Kirwan Institute This content downloaded from 133.30.212.149 on Thu, 10 Apr 2014 03:16:53 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PAUL FARMER Working in contemporary Haiti, where in recent years polit ical violence has been added to the worst poverty in the hemi one a coun sphere, learns great deal about suffering. In fact, the a sort tryhas long constituted of living laboratory for the study of affliction, no matter how it is defined. "Life for the Haitian some peasant of today/' observed anthropologist Jean Weise a twenty-five years ago, "is abject misery and rank familiarity with death."1 The situation has since worsened. When in 1991 a international health and population experts devised "human measures suffering index" by examining of human welfare ranging from life expectancy to political freedom, 27 of 141 countries were characterized by "extreme human suffering." one was Only of them, Haiti, located in the Western hemi was sphere. In only three countries in the world suffering more judged to be extreme than that endured inHaiti; each of an these three countries is currently in the midst of internation war. ally recognized civil a Suffering is certainly recurrent and expected condition in war. Haiti's Central Plateau, where everyday life has felt like one "You get up in the morning," observed young widow with four children, "and it's the fight for food and wood and water." If initially struck by the austere beauty of the region's steep come mountains and clement weather, long-term visitors to see the Central Plateau inmuch the same manner as its inhabitants: a chalky and arid land hostile to the best efforts of the peasant farmers who live here. Landlessness iswidespread and so, con measures sequently, is hunger. All the standard reveal how ten on uous the peasantry's hold survival is. Life expectancy at as as birth is less than fiftyyears, in large part because many two of every ten infants die before their first birthday. Tubercu cause losis is the leading of death among adults; among chil dren, diarrheal disease, measles, and tetanus ravage the under nourished. is not But the experience of suffering, it is often noted, effec or tively conveyed by statistics graphs. The "texture" of dire af fliction is perhaps best felt in the gritty details of biography, and so I introduce the stories of Ac?phie Joseph and Chouchou are Louis.2 The stories of Ac?phie and Chouchou anything but as as ana "anecdotal." For the epidemiologist well the political in fashion. of lyst, they suffered and died exemplary Millions circumstances can tomeet simi people living in similar expect lar fates. What these victims, past and present, share are not or do not share personal psychological attributes?they culture, or race. share is the of language, Rather, what they experience in occupying the bottom rung of the social ladder inegalitarian societies.3 stories Ac?phie Joseph's and Chouchou Louis's illustrate some of themechanisms through which large-scale social forces of individual crystallize into the sharp, hard surfaces suffering. often eco Such suffering is structured by historically given (and nomically driven) processes and forces that conspire?whether as more the through routine, ritual, or, is commonly case, these RACE/ETHNICITY VOL. 3 /NO. I 12 This content downloaded from 133.30.212.149 on Thu, 10 Apr 2014 03:16:53 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions on suffering and structural violence: a view from below hard surfaces?to constrain agency4 For many, including most are of my patients and informants, life choices structured by racism, sexism, political violence, and grinding poverty. Ac?phie's Story For thewound of the daughter ofmy people ismy heart wounded, me. I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of Is there no balm inGilead? Is thereno physician there? Why thenhas thehealth of thedaughter of my peoplenot been restored? a 0 thatmy head were waters, and my eyes fountain of tears, that 1might weep day and nightfor theslain of thedaughter of my people! ?Jeremiah 8:22-9.1 a Kay, community of fewer than fifteen hundred people, east stretches along an unpaved road that cuts north and into Haiti's Central Plateau. Striking out from Port-au-Prince, the can capital, it take several hours to reach Kay The journey gives one an impression of isolation, insularity. The impression is as owes a con misleading, the village its existence to project ceived in the Haitian capital and drafted inWashington, D.C.: a Kay is settlement of refugees, substantially composed of peas more ant farmers displaced than thirty years ago by Haiti's largest dam. was a Before 1956, the village of Kay situated in fertile valley, ran and through it the Riviere Artibonite. For generations, thou sands of families had farmed the broad and gently sloping banks of the river, selling rice, bananas, millet, corn, and sugar cane in regional markets. Harvests were, by all reports, bounti now as was ful; life there is recalled idyllic. When the valley flooded with the building of the dam, the majority of the local was on population forced up into the stony hills either side of new the reservoir. By all the standard measures, the "water refugees" became exceedingly poor; the older people often blame their poverty on the massive buttress dam a few miles note away, and bitterly that it brought them neither electricity nor water. In 1983, when I began working in the Central Plateau, AIDS, an although already afflicting increasing number of city dwell was areas as as ers, unknown inmost rural Kay. Ac?phie Joseph was one new of the first villagers to die of the syndrome. But was a her illness, which ended in 1991, merely the latest in string of tragedies that she and her parents readily linked together in a now long lamentation, by familiar to those who tend the re gion's sick. The litany begins, usually, down in the valley hidden under came the still surface of the lake. Ac?phie's parents from fami a liesmaking decent living by farming fertile tracts of land?their "ancestors' gardens"?and selling much of their produce. M. Jos a eph tilled the soil, and his wife, tall and wearily elegant wom an as not nearly as old she looked, was a "Madame Sarah," a autumn 2009 13 This content downloaded from 133.30.212.149 on Thu, 10 Apr 2014 03:16:53 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PAUL FARMER market woman. "If itweren't for the dam," M.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Structural Violence Against Children in South Asia © Unicef Rosa 2018
    STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN SOUTH ASIA © UNICEF ROSA 2018 Cover Photo: Bangladesh, Jamalpur: Children and other community members watching an anti-child marriage drama performed by members of an Adolescent Club. © UNICEF/South Asia 2016/Bronstein The material in this report has been commissioned by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) regional office in South Asia. UNICEF accepts no responsibility for errors. The designations in this work do not imply an opinion on the legal status of any country or territory, or of its authorities, or the delimitation of frontiers. Permission to copy, disseminate or otherwise use information from this publication is granted so long as appropriate acknowledgement is given. The suggested citation is: United Nations Children’s Fund, Structural Violence against Children in South Asia, UNICEF, Kathmandu, 2018. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN SOUTH ASIA ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS UNICEF would like to acknowledge Parveen from the University of Sheffield, Drs. Taveeshi Gupta with Fiona Samuels Ramya Subrahmanian of Know Violence in for their work in developing this report. The Childhood, and Enakshi Ganguly Thukral report was prepared under the guidance of of HAQ (Centre for Child Rights India). Kendra Gregson with Sheeba Harma of the From UNICEF, staff members representing United Nations Children's Fund Regional the fields of child protection, gender Office in South Asia. and research, provided important inputs informed by specific South Asia country This report benefited from the contribution contexts, programming and current violence of a distinguished reference group: research. In particular, from UNICEF we Susan Bissell of the Global Partnership would like to thank: Ann Rosemary Arnott, to End Violence against Children, Ingrid Roshni Basu, Ramiz Behbudov, Sarah Fitzgerald of United Nations Population Coleman, Shreyasi Jha, Aniruddha Kulkarni, Fund Asia and the Pacific region, Shireen Mary Catherine Maternowska and Eri Jejeebhoy of the Population Council, Ali Mathers Suzuki.
    [Show full text]
  • Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology Eddie Hartmann, Potsdam University
    DOI: 10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.623 IJCV: Vol. 11/2017 Violence: Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology Eddie Hartmann, Potsdam University Vol. 11/2017 The IJCV provides a forum for scientific exchange and public dissemination of up-to-date scientific knowledge on conflict and violence. The IJCV is independent, peer reviewed, open access, and included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) as well as other relevant databases (e.g., SCOPUS, EBSCO, ProQuest, DNB). The topics on which we concentrate—conflict and violence—have always been central to various disciplines. Con- sequently, the journal encompasses contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including criminology, econom- ics, education, ethnology, history, political science, psychology, social anthropology, sociology, the study of reli- gions, and urban studies. All articles are gathered in yearly volumes, identified by a DOI with article-wise pagination. For more information please visit www.ijcv.org Author Information: Eddie Hartmann, Potsdam University [email protected] Suggested Citation: APA: Hartmann, E. (2017). Violence: Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 11, 1-9. doi: 10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.623 Harvard: Hartmann, Eddie. 2017. Violence: Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 11:1-9. doi: 10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.623 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License. ISSN: 1864–1385 IJCV: Vol. 11/2017 Hartmann: Violence: Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology 1 Violence: Constructing an Emerging Field of Sociology Eddie Hartmann, Potsdam University @ Recent research in the social sciences has explicitly addressed the challenge of bringing violence back into the center of attention.
    [Show full text]
  • Medical-Anthropology-2015.Pdf
    Princeton University Department of Anthropology Spring 2015 MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ANT 335 M/W 11:00 am- 12:20 pm Lewis Library 120 Instructor: Professor João Biehl ([email protected]) Lecturer: Bridget Purcell ([email protected]) Graduate Student Assistants: Kessie Alexandre ([email protected] Thalia Gigerenzer ([email protected]) Course Description Medical Anthropology is a critical and people-centered investigation of affliction and therapeutics. It draws from approaches in anthropology and the medical humanities to understand the body- environment-medicine interface in a cross-cultural perspective. How do social processes determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How does culture surface in the seeking of treatment and the provision of medical care? What role do medical technologies and public interventions play in health outcomes? Which values inform medical theory and practice, and how might the humanities deepen our understanding of the realities of disease and care? In the first half of the course, we will discuss topics such as: the relation of illness, subjectivity, and social experience; the logic of witchcraft; the healing efficacy of symbols and rituals; the art of caregiving and moral sensibility. We will also probe the reach and relevance of concepts such as the normal and the pathological, body techniques, discipline and normalization, medicalization, the nocebo and placebo effects, the mindful body, and the body politic. In the second half of the course, we will explore how scientific
    [Show full text]
  • INVISIBLE WOUNDS: RETHINKING RECOGNITON in DECOLONIAL NARRATIVES of ILLNESS and DISABILITY by CAROLYN MARGARET UREÑA a Dissert
    INVISIBLE WOUNDS: RETHINKING RECOGNITON IN DECOLONIAL NARRATIVES OF ILLNESS AND DISABILITY By CAROLYN MARGARET UREÑA A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Comparative Literature Written under the direction of Ann Jurecic And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2017 © 2017 Carolyn Margaret Ureña ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Invisible Wounds: Rethinking Recognition in Decolonial Narratives of Illness and Disability By CAROLYN MARGARET UREÑA Dissertation Director: Ann Jurecic Working at the interface of literary studies, decolonial theory, and disability studies, my dissertation draws on literature and film across a variety of genres, including fiction by Ralph Ellison, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, and Junot Díaz, to demonstrate how literary narratives about illness and disability contribute to understanding racial formations and ameliorating colonial wounds. The dissertation develops a critical framework for understanding the ways in which a sustained encounter between critical race studies, disability studies, and the medical humanities can generate new conceptions of health and healing. I accomplish this through a reassessment of the writings of decolonial theorist Frantz Fanon, a physician who used narrative case studies and ethnography to illuminate the imbrication of race, illness, and disability. By introducing a decolonial perspective to the study of narratives of illness and disability, this project not only challenges the medical humanities and disability studies to consider the experience of race and the effects of colonialism, but also foregrounds questions of disability and illness within the fields of race theory and postcolonial studies, where they have until now received minimal scholarly attention.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Farmer Is One of the Most Extraordinary People I Have Ever Met
    “Paul Farmer is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. A brilliant doctor and teacher, he tirelessly works for the poorest of the poor, insisting that they deserve the very best care that is available. He not only changes individual lives, but massive systems, proving against overwhelming objections that his methods are not only what Christian compassion demands, but that they bring about effective cures. Jennie Weiss Block will make you fall in love not only with Paul, but with the beloved people to whom he is so passionately committed. This is not a book you can put back on the shelf after reading; it will move you to take the next step in your own commitment to accompany the poorest in our world.” — Barbara Reid, OP Professor of New Testament Studies Catholic Theological Union “It is rare that readers get to explore the lives of legendary people while they are still with us making this book a precious gift. One of the greatest physician-scholar-activist servants in American history, Paul Farmer is a powerful model of service to the poor. The world has much to learn from his life and witness. For anyone with a heart for the vulnerable, the poor, and the underserved, this thoughtful new text about an extraordinary human being is an inspiration and must-read.” — Bryan Stevenson Director of Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy “Some say that the devil is in the details, but in the life of Paul Farmer, there’s grace in those details! Whether he’s living in Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, or Cambridge, channeling the corporal works into weapons of mass salvation, or running with the preferential option for the poor, Paul’s life exudes the call that’s so tangible in these pages.
    [Show full text]
  • In His Compelling Book, Farmer Captures the Central Dilemma of Our Times—The Increasing Disparities of Health and Well-Being Within and Among Societies
    PRAISE FOR PAUL FARMER’S PATHOLOGIES OF POWER “In his compelling book, Farmer captures the central dilemma of our times—the increasing disparities of health and well-being within and among societies. While all member countries of the United Nations denounce the gross viola- tions of human rights perpetrated by those who torture, murder, or imprison without due process, the insidious violations of human rights due to structural violence involving the denial of economic opportunity, decent housing, or ac- cess to health care and education are commonly ignored. Pathologies of Power makes a powerful case that our very humanity is threatened by our collective failure to end these abuses.” ROBERT S. LAWRENCE, President of Physicians for Human Rights and Professor of Preventive Medicine, Johns Hopkins University “Pathologies of Power is a passionate critique of conventional biomedical ethics by one of the world’s leading physician-anthropologists and public intellectu- als. Farmer’s on-the-ground analysis of the relentless march of the AIDS epi- demic and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis among the imprisoned and the sick- poor of the world illuminates the pathologies of a world economy that has lost its soul.” NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES, author of Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil “Wedding medicine and anthropology, painstaking clinical and field observation with rigorous conceptual elaboration, Farmer gives us that most rare of books: one that opens both our minds and hearts. Pathologies of Power uses the prism of public health to illuminate the structural forces that decide the ‘right to sur- vive’ on the global stage.
    [Show full text]
  • Bridget Hanna
    BRIDGET HANNA Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute Asia Center Department of Sociology and Anthropology Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Northeastern University Harvard University [email protected] [email protected] EDUCATION Ph.D Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, MA Social Anthropology, 2014 Dissertation Toxic Relief: Science, Uncertainty, and Medicine after Bhopal Committee: Arthur Kleinman, Ajantha Subramanian, Sheila Jasanoff Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA Courses Environmental Health, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, 2009-10 A.M. Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Social Anthropology, 2008 B.A. Bard College, Annandale, NY Cultural Anthropology, 2004 Thesis The School of the Future: The Social Construction of an Environmental Hazard in the Post-industrial Fringe POSTDOCTORAL AFFILIATIONS & OTHER RESEARCH POSITIONS Postdoctoral Research Associate, Social Science & Environmental Health Research Institute, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Northeastern University, 2014-2015; 2016. Designed survey and research materials for environmental health data privacy project with Silent Spring Institute; developed socio-exposome research project; participated in SSEHRI research group, STS training program, and sociological research training. Visiting Scholar, Asia Center, Harvard University, 2014-2016. Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, 2012-2014 Research Assistant to Professor Arthur Kleinman, Harvard Department of Social Medicine 2008;
    [Show full text]
  • Anthropologie Et Santé En Asie Du Sud-Est Dynamiques Et Courants De Recherche
    Anthropologie et santé en Asie du Sud-Est Dynamiques et courants de recherche Anne Yvonne GUILLOU*, Evelyne MICOLLIER** Les premières études anthropologiques 1 de la santé, de la maladie et des soins remontent aux années 1920, si l’on en attribue la paternité, comme il est d’usage, à William H. Rivers dans son ouvrage Medicine, Magic and Religion publié en 1924. On peut sché- matiser l’évolution de ces travaux en plusieurs étapes plus ou moins chronologiques. Jusqu’aux années 1970-1980, les chercheurs se sont concentrés sur ce qu’ils appelaient alors les systèmes étiologico-thérapeutiques, c’est-à-dire les systèmes de pensées, insérés dans une vision globale du monde, que chaque société invente pour expliquer les causes du dysfonctionnement du corps humain et les moyens d’y remédier. Dans les décennies suivantes (1980-1990), les études de terrain ont surtout traité des modes de coexistence de médecines différentes, en particulier de la médecine scientifique d’origine occidentale et des médecines et thérapeutiques locales, c’est-à-dire des formes * Anne Yvonne Guillou est chargée de recherche au CNRS, anthropologue, attachée au Centre Asie du Sud-Est (EHESS-CNRS, Paris). Elle a travaillé pendant de nombreuses années sur des questions liées à la santé et la médecine tant au Cambodge que dans des situations migratoires. Depuis 2007, elle a entamé un nouveau programme de recherche intitulé « Ruptures sociales et construction des mémoires au Cambodge ». ** Evelyne Micollier est chargée de recherche à l’IRD, anthropologue, attachée à l’UMR 145, IRD- université de Montpellier I. Depuis 2006, elle coordonne un programme de recherche franco-chinois à Beijing (IRD-PUMC/CAMS Peking Union Medical College/Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences) intitulé « Réponses sociales, impact du genre et mobilisation de savoirs scientifiques/traditionnels dans le contexte de la recherche et de la prise en charge du VIH/sida en Chine ».
    [Show full text]
  • I STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE and BIO-POWER a THESIS
    STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND BIO-POWER A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY ELİF DEMİRBAŞ IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION JANUARY 2019 i Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences ________________________ Prof. Dr. Tülin Gençöz Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. ______________________ Prof. Dr. Ayşe Ayata Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. ________________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Ömür Birler Supervisor Examining Committee Members Assist. Prof. Dr. James Alexander (Bilkent Uni.,POLS) ___________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Ömür Birler (METU,SBKY) ___________________ Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cem Deveci (METU,SBKY) ___________________ ii I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name: Elif Demirbaş Signature: iii ABSTRACT STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND BIO-POWER Demirbaş, Elif MSc, Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Assitant Prof. Ömür Birler January 2019, 134 pages In this thesis the concept of structural violence has been elaborated along with its position vis-à-vis Foucault's theory of bio-power.
    [Show full text]
  • ANT 764 Seminar in Critical Medical Anthropology Seminar
    ANT 764 Seminar in Critical Medical Anthropology Seminar Description: In the broadest sense, the subject matter of medical anthropology is as old as the discipline of anthropology itself. As long as anthropologists have been engaged in ethnographic fieldwork, they have been collecting data relating to health, including ‘local’ theories of disease causation, the practices and techniques of healers, and the medicinal properties of plants and animals, among other related topics. With the burgeoning interest in international public health after WW II, however, many anthropologists began to focus their research efforts specifically on global public health – especially those ‘cultural barriers” to health as identified by such newly formed international bodies as the World Health Organization. Although medical anthropology today is divided and subdivided into many specialties, the time depth and geographic breadth of its interests remains distinctly anthropological; the study of human health, illness, and healing from the Paleolithic past to the present, and across cultures around the globe. As such, medical anthropology today encompasses interests in the evolution of human health (e.g., paleopathology/ bioarchaeology, Darwinian medicine) and biological adaptability (e.g., medical ecology, the anthropology of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease [DOHaD]), as well as ethnomedical, interpretive, and political- economy oriented approaches to issues associated with health and disease. This seminar will explore a single orienting perspective
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of Anthropological Ideas
    PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY SECOND EDITION Nina Brown, Thomas McIlwraith, Laura Tubelle de González 2020 American Anthropological Association 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 Arlington, VA 22201 ISBN Print: 978-1-931303-67-5 ISBN Digital: 978-1-931303-66-8 http://perspectives.americananthro.org/ This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.americananthro.org/ and our parent organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Please refer to the website for a complete table of contents and more information about the book. Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology by Nina Brown, Thomas McIlwraith, Laura Tubelle de González is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Under this CC BY-NC 4.0 copyright license you are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. 1313 THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL IDEAS Laura Nader, The University of California, Berkeley Learning Objectives • Identify the central concepts of cultural anthropology and describe how each of these concepts contributed to the development of the discipline. • Describe the role anthropologists play in examining cultural assumptions and explain how the anthropological perspective differs from both ethnocentrism and American exceptionalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Addressing Structural Violence: Reforming Our Perspectives
    IAPT – 01/2019 typoscript [AK] – 05.03.2019 – Seite 53 – 2. SL Addressing structural violence: Reforming our perspectives Raymond J. Webb Structural violence is a condition in which groups of persons are harmed by general and persist- ing situations not of their own choosing; from which most have no real way of escaping. Great harm, including death, and limits on the actualization of potential are the result. Three frequently contributing major causes of structural violence to be reviewed in this chapter are poverty (with resource inequality), sexism, and racism. El Salvador is used as an example. The practical theolog- ical strategy suggested here is: 1) in any context under study, raise the question of whether struc- tural violence might be involved and give consideration of the effects of structural violence a priority even in the midst of other negative causes; 2) seek remedies against structural violence; and 3) augment the agency of the persons negatively affected. Reforming our perspectives is required to move us from focusing on small but deadly brushfires while missing the firestorm of structural violence, which deadens our social landscapes. Introduction and definition Raymond J. Webb is Professor and Chair of Pastoral The- ology, University of Saint Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, In this chapter, I will introduce and elaborate on the Illinois, U. S. A. concept of structural violence and examine some contributions to the concept’s development. Then I will look at the relationship of structural violence to have no real way of escaping. It is like having one’s poverty, sexism, and racism. Afterwards, I will de- foot stuck in a tar pit; one can be fed but one cannot scribe and discuss the situation of the Central escape.
    [Show full text]