Серия "Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice"

How youth on the autism spectrum negotiate the contested meanings of neurodiversity Autism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, harming children and isolating them. To others, it is an asset and a distinctive aspect of an individual’s identity. How do young people on the spectrum make sense of this conflict, in the context of their own developing identity? While most of the research on Asperger’s and related autism conditions has been conducted with individuals...

Provides a detailed look at how war affects human life and health far beyond the battlefield Since 2010, a team of activists, social scientists, and physicians have monitored the lives lost as a result of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through an initiative called the Costs of War Project. Unlike most studies of war casualties, this research looks beyond lives lost in violence to consider those who have died as a result of illness, injuries, and malnutrition that would not have...

Examines why African care workers feel politically excluded from the United States Care for America’s growing elderly population is increasingly provided by migrants, and the demand for health care labor is only expected to grow. Because of this health care crunch and the low barriers to entry, new African immigrants have adopted elder care as a niche employment sector, funneling their friends and relatives into this occupation. However, elder care puts care workers into racialized,...

Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of “stratified reproduction”—the...

Finalist, 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American Publishers A troubling study of the role that medical racism plays in the lives of black women who have given birth to premature and low birth weight infants Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class...

The Affordable Care Act’s impact on coverage, access to care, and systematic exclusion in our health care system The Affordable Care Act set off an unprecedented wave of health insurance enrollment as the most sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health insurance system since 1965. In the years since its enactment, some 20 million uninsured Americans gained access to coverage. And yet, the law remained unpopular and politically vulnerable. While the ACA extended social protections to some groups,...