Nonsecular Medical Anthropology.

Gods, Germs, and Petri Dishes: Toward a Nonsecular Medical Anthropology.

This commentary calls on medical anthropology to become programmatically non-secular. Despite recent anthropological critiques of secularity, within and outside of anthropology, most contemporary medical anthropologists continue to leave deities and religiosity out of their examinations of healing practices, especially in their accounts of biomedicine. Through a critical, relational constructio...

The medical anthropology of political violence: a cultural and feminist agenda.

Medical anthropology against war.

In my 2006 presidential address on “Medical Anthropology at the Intersections,” I attempted to convey all of my high hopes for medical anthropology in the new millennium (Inhorn 2007). We are nearly 50 years old as a discipline, and we are on the verge of numerous, exciting intersections with multiple fields. At the 2007 meeting, I announced our plans for the first independent Society for Medic...

Alien origins: xenophilia and the rise of medical anthropology in the Netherlands.

The beginnings of medical anthropology in the Netherlands have a 'xenophile' character in two respects. First, those who started to call themselves medical anthropologists in the 1970s and 1980s were influenced and inspired not so much by anthropological colleagues, but by medical doctors working in tropical countries who had shown an interest in the role of culture during their medical work. S...

Changing Anthropology, Changing Society

Fifty years after the founding of the field of medical anthropology, the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association held its first independent meeting on September 24-27, 2009, at Yale University.