Welcome to UNC Medical Anthropology!
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Medical Anthropology at UNC is vibrant and growing!
Our freshly updated website includes several exciting new features that we invite you to explore, including an alumni blog, exclusive interviews with faculty about their new books, upcoming workshops, course offerings, and new profiles.
Check it all out, and let us know what you think! Read more...
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Nikolas Rose, professor of sociology and head of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College London, visited Carolina for a week in April to deliver a lecture, meet with faculty, staff and students to discuss his areas of scholarship and to explore collaborations. Read more...
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Read an interview with Peter Redfield from the UNC Department of Anthropology on his latest book, “Life In Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders,” published on February 2013. Read more...
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Read an interview with Mara Buchbinder from the UNC Department of Social Medicine on her latest book, “Saving Babies? The Consequences of Newborn Genetic Screening," published on December 4, 2012. Read more...
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On October 4-6, 2013, the Medical Anthropology Program and Center for Bioethics will host a 1 ½ day workshop examining disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to health inequalities and justice. The workshop will begin with a Keynote Address by Professor Ruth Faden from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and will continue with conference participants presenting on a range of topics. Read more...
Medical Anthropology addresses the biological, cultural, and political-economic dimensions of health, illness, and healing historically and at present. Research includes attention to the body as a site of symbols and evolutionary processes, suffering and healing as interpretive processes, and the multiple facets of affliction at individual and collective levels.
Biomedicine and a range of other healing systems come under scrutiny as social phenomena shaped by the impact of history, social organization, and dynamic relations of power. Thus, health issues are considered in relation to broader, intersecting systems of environment and ecology, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, nation, and class subjectivities. A central contribution of medical anthropology is the critical analysis of how knowledge about health is constructed, deployed, and contested in various social arenas and for various purposes.
