ANTH/HSERV 475 Perspectives in Medical Anthropology University of WashingtonAlejandro Cerón Office: Denny Hall 417 Office hours: Wed 11 am -13 pm Week 7: Mon, 11/8/2010

Outline Goal: Intro to lifecourse perspective and personhood Feedback Website Project 2 Student presentations Readings Organize class discussion for Wednesday

Student presentations Sujata Bijou, Melinda Nguyen, Jaison Briar First (starting at 40:00, link)link Second (starting at 13:25, link)link

Changes in Assignments Check out changes: week 10 and 11 are not as in syllabus Worried about exam – Eliminate exam – Substitute with three 500-word COMMENTS to other student’s posts One paragraph summarizing your classmate’s point One paragraph – Explaining what you disagree with and why – Explaining what you found useful and why

Grades for posts 1 and 2 Grades Students

Suggestions for improvement Identifying medical anthropology concepts Applying medical anthropology concepts Using the image Linking it all Med. Anth. concept Image Outside reading 1 (Video) (Outside reading 2)

Free Markets and Dead Mothers: The Social Ecology of Maternal Mortality in Post-Socialist Mongolia Looking at links between – Neoliberal economic reform – Consequent transformations to rural economic system – Differential impact on groups of poor, rural women Importance of context Different levels of risk (p. 242) – Individual, household, labor, community, regional, country Mediated by gender roles

Stuckler D, King LP, Basu S, 2008 International Monetary Fund Programs and Tuberculosis Outcomes in Post-Communist Countries. PLoS Med 5(7): e143. doi: /journal.pmed

What is neoliberalism? Market fundamentalism UTOPIA OF ENDLESS EXPLOITATION “A program for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic” Pierre Bourdieu’s articlePierre Bourdieu’s article ”[policies aiming at turning] the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there..." and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico.” (citing EZLN leader S.C. Marcos) Globalexchange.orgGlobalexchange.org

Janzen Ch5. The Lifecourse perspective Study of human life with en emphasis on the stages of growth, on transitions, and crises Emphasis on the life of an individual, as defined by society’s patterns of the rhythms of life, constraints and opportunities Mediated by gender

From Neal Halfon Health Influences Over the Life Course

From Neal Halfon

Model of a health profile over a life course

Life course: Emphasis on individual, shaped by society’s patterns, constraints and opportunities Life cycle: typical life course + family or household cycle Life span: focus on the entire span of the life of an individual

Rites of passage: Transitions between life’s stages and through crises “threshold” 3 rites: Separation Transition Reintegration

Liminality: Transition phase of a rite of passage during which an individual or group is ‘outside’ conventional social roles and statuses; Ambiguous status that is neither/nor, expression of paradoxical, contradictory, painful, and chronic conditions

Metaphors in Disrupted Lives: Infertility and Cultural Constructions of Continuity Metaphors: – conduit for locating new meaning – Help people to make sense of disruptions in life – Mediate efforts to create continuity in the face of change – Do not reorganize thinking Continuity is a cultural construct in U.S. society Infertility is experienced as a disruption to the ‘normal’ life course Perception of disruption mediated by gender

Janzen Ch6. Personhood, Liminality, Identity Individual: single human being Person: social characterization of the individual human being Self: conscious ‘self-concept’ of an individual Personhood: – social characterization of the individual human being in a society, – society’s understandings and laws of how and individual will be represented and treated, given autonomy, how life will be defined