1. ANTHROPOLOGY OF MEDICINE AND THE BODY
Social Anthropology
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker
Spring 2012
Koç University

2. The field of medical anthropoloy
An interdisciplinary field that studies social and cultural aspects of health and illness The processes of naming an illness, describing it to others, determining its cause, and acting to remedy it are determined by cultural norms and expectations. “A health care system”: a system of symbolic meanings pertaining to health, illness and healing that is anchored in particular arrangements of social institutions and patterns of interpersonal interactions”

3. Health care systems A health care system is complex
Different choices, changing explanations, new healing methods, social criticism of individuals’ choices, ways to reject failed methods

4. Anthropology of the Body
Social scientific studies of corporeality
The body as the object of symbolic representations, discourse formations and disciplinary practices.
Constitutive, active and transforming capabilities of corporality in social life
The role of corporality in the practices of power, opposition, resistance and cultural creativity

5. Two case studies
Veterans (gazis) of the war in the Southeast Global organ trade and organ transplantations

6. Case study 1 “Sacrificial limbs of sovereignty” (Salih Can Açıksöz)
Duty disabled (muharip gazi)
Gazi
What are the meanings of these terms?
Who can become a gazi in Turkey?

7. Disabled veterans of the conflict between the army and the PKK What are their problems as disabled people? What is their political identity as disabled? From victims to “victim-heroes” Are they “disabled” or “gazis”?

8. Some figures about disabled people
According to a 2002 survey, 8.5 million people are disabled (12.3 percent of the population)
78 percent do not participate in the labor force
34 percent are not married
36 percent are illiterate

9. Case study 2
Global organ trade and organ transplantation

10. Global organ trade Transformation of the body under globalization
Human organs as commodities
Global spread of organ transplant technology creates a “scarcity” in human organs

11. Organ trade as a case of globalization
Flows of commodities (organs)
Flows of people (donors and recepients)
Flows of technology (organ transplantation technology)
Globalization: intensification of global flows of commodities, people, money, ideeas

12. As a result of the global trade in organs, meanings shift:
What is the meaning of death?
What does embodiment mean?
To whom does a dead body belong?
What does scarcity of organs mean?

13. Is organ trade against social justice and equity?
Should organ trade be banned or regulated?
What about transplantation of limbs?