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UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

School of Social & Political Science

Social Anthropology

2014-2015

Course Title: Magic, Science and Healing (SCAN10008)

Second Semester

Mondays 14:10-16:00, Seminar Room 5, Chrystal Macmillan Building

Course Convenors:

Lucy Lowe (lucy.lowe@ed.ac.uk)

Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-11am, 5.03 CMB

Stefan Ecks (Stefan.ecks@ed.ac.uk)

Office Hours: Mondays 10-12pm, 4.28 CMB

Course Secretary: Lisa Kilcullen (l.kilcullen@ed.ac.uk)

Undergraduate Teaching Office

AIMS

This is a course in medical anthropology, but with one which takes the body,

healing, and medicine to the limits of rationality and life itself. It looks

primarily at how a variety of actions that should only have a "symbolic" effect

can change the physical world. We start off with the problem of magic, which

has attracted great attention by anthropologists. Similar to science, magic

knows the world and tries to change it, but are its forms of knowing and

intervening commensurable to science? Drawing on insights from both

anthropology and science studies, we will ask: is it possible to distinguish

between rationality and belief? Does science also enchant? We will use

ethnographies of witchcraft and sorcery, scientific laboratories, anatomy and

immunology, and colonial science to engage with these debates. We will look

in great detail at rationality and its limits in health practices and consider

human bodies in everyday and extreme situations.

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TEACHING PLAN

12 January w1: Anthropologists and Their Magic

19 January w2: Meeting the Nonhumans

26 January w3: Irrational Patients

2 February w4: Invented Illnesses

9 February w5: Anti-Science: Conspiracy and Resistance

16-20 Feb w6: Innovative Teaching Week

23 February w7: Alchemical Bodies

2 March w8: Placebo Healing

9 March w9: Perilous Prescriptions

16 March w10: Take Care of Yourself

23 March w11: Extremely Alive, Almost Dead

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LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of the course, students will be critically engaged with debates

pertaining to the anthropology of magic and the anthropology of medical

science. They should be able to apply these ideas to think about different

systems of healing. In particular they will be expected to:

Familiarise themselves with the history of anthropological thinking

about science and magic

Appraise the contribution that science studies have made to theory in

anthropology

Critique the role that epistemological claims play in our understanding

of science and magic as ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘believing’

Readings

All the class readings are available electronically. The majority of the further

readings are available online. All students must read the class readings.

Further readings listed for each topic are intended to allow students to

explore and consolidate their knowledge of particular themes. If you are

intending to write an essay or examination answer on a particular topic, you

must demonstrate that you have read many, if not all, the different readings

suggested for that topic. Further readings are listed to help students explore

the wider literature if they so wish; students are not expected to read

everything.

Assessment

All Single and Combined Honours, BSc (Soc.Sci.), and non-graduating students will

be assessed by (i) assessed course work in the form of a short essay

(maximum 1000 words) and (ii) an assessed essay of 3000-3500 words. The

deadline for the assessed course work is Wednesday 11 February 2015. The

deadline for the assessed essay is Wednesday 15 April 2015. The assessed

course work carries a weighting of 20% towards the final overall mark and

the assessed essay carries a weighting of 80%. See the Honours Handbook for

more complete information about assessment procedures.

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Question for the Assessed Coursework (maximum 1000 words)

Do you agree that the ‘view of hospitals as unreligious places is based on a

misunderstanding of what religion and science are’ (van der Geest 2005: 135)?

Illustrate your answer with reference to AT LEAST TWO ethnographic

studies of healing.

Questions for the final essay will be posted to Learn in week 5.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Your overall mark for this course relies on two written essays submitted. You

are encouraged to draw on ideas from different weeks to answer these

questions. Good essays are those that set out to answer the question, and use

ethnography to support or critique analysis. Your essays will be assessed

according to a range of criteria, which are the following:

Does the assignment address the question set, and with sufficient

focus?

Does the assignment show a grasp of the relevant concepts and

knowledge?

Does the assignment demonstrate a logical and effective pattern of

argument?

Does the assignment, if appropriate, support arguments with relevant,

accurate and effective forms of evidence?

Does the assignment demonstrate reflexivity and critical thinking in

relation to arguments and evidence?

Is the assignment adequately presented in terms of: correct referencing

and quoting; spelling, grammar and style; layout and visual

presentation.

You might also want to have a look at Tom Boellstorff, "How to Get an Article

Accepted at American Anthropologist (or Anywhere)," American Anthropologist

110(3): 281-283 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-

1433.2008.00034.x/full). Of course I am not suggesting that undergraduate

coursework is expected to be publishable (at least not right away)! But

Boellstorff's criteria for excellent writing applies almost exactly to

anthropology essays, too.

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Week 1: Anthropologists and Their Magic

Anthropologists have been attracted to "magic" types of healing as long as the

discipline exists. The armchair scholar J.G. Frazer (1854-1941) argued in The

Golden Bough (1890) that there is an evolution from dabbling magical

manipulation to accurate scientific control; magic always comes before

science, and science is the exact opposite of magic. The tension between magic

and science that Frazer observed has never been resolved; and a wealth of

ethnographic studies argue that magic never went away, even in strongly

science-oriented societies. How have magic and science been defined from the

nineteenth century to present scholarship, and can magic even be found in

contemporary healing practices?

For class discussion:

Bailey, M.D. 2006. The meanings of magic. Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1(1): 1-

23.

van der Geest, S. 2005. ‘Sacraments in the hospital’: exploring the magic and

religion of recovery. Anthropology & Medicine 12(2): 135-150.

Further reading:

Evans-Pritchard, Edward. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the

Azande. Oxford : Clarendon Press.

Frazer, James George. 1890. The golden bough: a study in magic and religion.

[various editions] (Chapter III.1. 'The Principles of Magic')

Levi-Strauss, C. 1965. The sorcerer and his magic. In Structural anthropology 1.

Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1935. Coral gardens and their magic: a study of the

methods of tilling the soil and of agricultural rites in the Trobriand

Islands. Vol. 2, The language of magic and gardening. London: G.

Allen & Unwin.

Malinowski, B. 1954 [1925]. Magic, science and religion and other essays. London:

Souvenir Press.

Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. 1992. Occultism and the ethnographic "I": the

exoticising of magic from Durkheim to 'postmodern' anthropology.

Critique of Anthropology 12: 5-25.

Stark, R. 2001. Reconceptualizing religion, magic, and science. Review of

Religious Research 43(2): 101-120.

Tambiah, S.J. 1990. Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Turner, Victor W. 1967. The forest of symbols. Ithaka: Cornell University Press.

(pp. 299-358)

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Week 2: Meet the Nonhumans

Medical anthropology, as a subfield of socio-cultural anthropology, was

formed in the 1970s and 1980s. In that era, biomedicine was still seen as a

supremely scientific and rational approach to disease (with phenomenal

successes such as antibiotics to show for). Anthropologists put "science" in a

black box and restricted themselves to looking only at the exotic cultural

practices. At the interface with an emerging field of science and technology

studies, however, medical anthropology also started to explore the wondrous

"cultures of no culture" within biomedical science, and revised both its

suppositions about "objectivity" and its "objects" of inquiry.

For class discussion:

Cerulo, Karen A. 2009. Nonhumans in social interaction. Annual Review of

Sociology 35: 531-552.

Lowe, Celia. 2010. Viral clouds: becoming H5N1 in Indonesia. Cultural

Anthropology 25(4): 625-649.

Further reading:

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex." New

York and London: Routledge.

Cannell, Fenella. 2010. The anthropology of secularism. Annual Review of

Anthropology 39:85-100.

Edwards, J., P. Harvey & P. Wade (eds) 2007. Anthropology and science.

epistemologies in practice. Oxford, New York: Berg.

Fleck, Ludwik. 1979 [1935]. Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Eds. T.J.

Trenn and R.K. Merton. Trans. F. Bradley and T.J. Trenn. Foreword T.S.

Kuhn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Franklin, S. 2005. Stem Cells R Us: emergent life forms and the global

biological. In Global assemblages: technology, politics and ethics as

anthropological problems, eds. A. Ong & S.J. Collier. Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing.

Hacking, I. 1999. The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press (esp. Chapter 7)

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. New York:

Routledge.

Jones, Graham M. 2010. Modern magic and the war on miracles in French

colonial culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52: 66-99

Latour, Bruno. 2010. On the modern cult of the factish gods. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.

Lin, Patrick. 2011. Drone-ethics briefing: What a leading robot expert told the

CIA. The Atlantic, Dec. 15, 2011.

(http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/12/drone-ethics-

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briefing-what-a-leading-robot-expert-told-the-cia/250060/)

Mol, Annemarie. 2002. The body multiple: ontology in medical practice.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (Chapter 4)

Week 3: Irrational Patients

The standard anthropological rhetoric about patients is that they appear to

hold all kinds of irrational and superstitious beliefs about illness, but as soon

as one explores their point of view ethnographically, one could find that

everything makes sense within a deeper cultural context. In most cases, this

approach works extremely well, but there are also moments when references

to "culture" become disingenuous or even harmful. How should

anthropologists conceptualize apparently irrational beliefs among patients?

For class discussion:

Janes, C.R. 2006. Commentary: 'culture', cultural explanations, and causality.

International Journal of Epidemiology 35: 261-263.

Whitmarsh, I. 2009. Medical schismogenics: compliance and 'culture' in

Caribbean biomedicine. Anthropological Quarterly 82(2): 447-475.

Further reading:

Allmark, P. & Tod, A. 2006. How should public health professionals engage

with lay epidemiology? Journal of Medical Ethics 32: 460-463.

Bastien, Joseph W. 1985. Qollahuaya-Andean body concepts: a topographical-

hydraulic model of physiology. American Anthropologist 87(3): 595-611.

Bi, P., Tong, S. & Parton, K.A. 2000. Family self-medication and antibiotics

abuse for children and juveniles in a Chinese city. Social Science &

Medicine 50: 1445-1450.

Bierlich, B. 2000. Injections and the fear of death: an essay on the limits of

biomedicine among the Dagomba of northern Ghana. Social Science &

Medicine 50(5): 703-713.

Greenhalgh, Trisha. 1987. Drug prescription and self-medication in India: an

exploratory survey. Social Science & Medicine 25(3): 307-318.

Hausmann, Muela S. et al. 2003. Recipe knowledge: a tool for understanding

some apparently irrational behaviour. Anthropology & Medicine 10(1):

87-103.

Jadhav, Sushrut. 2007. Dhis and dhat: evidence of semen retention syndrome

amongst white Britons. Anthropology & Medicine 14(3): 229-239.

Kleinman, A., Eisenberg, L. & Good, B. 1978. Culture, illness, and care: clinical

lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research. Annals of

Internal Medicine 88: 251-258.

Leibing, Annette. 2010. Inverting compliance, increasing concerns: aging,

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mental health, and caring for a trustful patient. Anthropology & Medicine

17(2): 145-158.

Pylypa, J. 2007. Healing herbs and dangerous doctors: "fruit fever" and

community conflicts with biomedical care in northeast Thailand.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly 21(4): 349-368.

Yang, Lawrence Hsin et al. 2007. Culture and stigma: adding moral

experience to stigma theory. Social Science & Medicine 64(7): 1524-1535.

Week 4: Invented Illnesses

Humans are afflicted by innumerable diseases, so it seems perverse to argue

that some illnesses might be "invented." Yet many studies show that diseases

can be formulated to open up new markets for the pharmaceutical industry.

This often takes the form of expanding long-established diagnoses to

incorporate less severe forms, or the pathologizing of conditions that had

previously been seen as "normal." On the other hand, there are syndromes

that sufferers struggle to get recognized by biomedical authorities, e.g. Gulf

War Syndrome. Anthropologists have, so far, contributed far less to an

exploration of "invented" illnesses, but their engagement is growing.

For class discussion:

Metzl, Jonathan M. & Herzig, Rebecca M. 2007. Medicalisation in the 21st

century: an introduction. The Lancet 369: 696-397.

Rose, N. 2007. Beyond medicalisation. The Lancet 369: 700-701.

Kilshaw, S. 2008. Gulf War Syndrome: a reaction to psychiatry's invasion of

the military? Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 32: 219–237.

Further reading:

Angell, Marcia. 2005. The truth about the drug companies: how they deceive us and

what to do about it. New York: Random House.

Busfield, Joan. 2010. ‘A pill for every ill’: explaining the expansion in medicine

use. Social Science & Medicine 70(6): 934-941.

Dumit, Joseph. 2006. Illnesses you have to fight to get: facts as forces in

uncertain, emergent illnesses. Social Science & Medicine 62: 577-590.

Kilshaw, S. 2006. On being a gulf veteran: an anthropological perspective.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361: 697-706.

Kirmayer, L.J. 2006. Toward a medicine of the imagination. New Literary

History 37(3): 583-601.

Kirsch, Irving. 2009. The emperor's new drugs: exploding the antidepressant myth.

London: The Bodley Head.

Law, Jacky. 2006. Big pharma: how the world's biggest drug companies control

illness. London: Constable.

Moynihan, Ray et al. 2002. Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and

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disease mongering. British Medical Journal 324: 886-891.

Sutherland, Stuart. 2009 [1992]. Irrationality. London: Pinter and Martin.

Wanjek, Christopher. 2003. Bad medicine: misconceptions and misuses revealed,

from distance healing to vitamin O. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Watters, Ethan. 2010. Crazy like us: the globalization of the American psyche. New

York: Free Press.

Week 5: Anti-Science: Conspiracy & Resistance

When people encounter healing practices that they see as dangerous, they

often employ strategies against getting treated. Resistance to medicine usually

takes place on a small, individual level, e.g. when a "noncompliant" patient

does not take a drug prescribed. But there are many critical moments when

resistance to medicine arises in a stronger and more organized form (anti-

vaccination campaigns are examples of this). Within the persistent divide

between medical "experts" and the "lay population," most resistance

movements rely on rumours and conspiracy theories.

For class discussion:

Briggs, C.L. 2004. Theorizing modernity conspirationally: science, scale, and

the political economy of public discourse in explanations of a cholera

epidemic. American Ethnologist 31(2): 164-187.

Further readings:

Ashforth, A. 2005. Muthi, medicine and witchcraft: regulating ‚'African

Science' in post-apartheid South Africa. Social Dynamics 31: 211-242.

Biddle, L. et al. 2007. Illness behaviour among young adults with mental

distress: Explaining non-help-seeking amongst young adults with

mental distress: a dynamic interpretive model of illness behaviour.

Sociology of Health & Illness 29(7): 983-1002.

Fassin, D. 2008. The embodied past: from paranoid style to politics of memory

in South Africa. Social Anthropology 16(3): 312–328.

Geissler, P.W. 2005. 'Kachinja are coming!': encounters around a medical

research project in a Kenyan village. Africa 75: 173-202.

McMillen, Christian W. & Brimnes, Niels. 2009. Medical modernization and

medical nationalism: resistance to mass tuberculosis vaccination in

postcolonial India, 1948-1955. Comparative Studies in Society and History

52(1): 180-209.

Niehaus, I.A. & G. Jonsson. 2005. Dr. Wouter Basson, Americans, and wild

beasts: men's conspiracy theories of HIV/AIDS in the South African

lowveld. Medical Anthropology 24: 179-208.

Poltorack, M., M. Leach, J. Fairhead & J. Cassell. 2005. 'MMR talk' and

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vaccination choices: an ethnographic study in Brighton. Social Science &

Medicine 61: 709-719.

Pound, P. et al. 2005. Resisting medicines: a synthesis of qualitative studies of

medicine taking. Social Science & Medicine 61(1): 133-155.

White, L. 2000. Speaking with vampires: rumor and history in colonial Africa.

Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chpts. 3 & 6).

Yahya, M. 2007. Polio vaccines - 'no thank you!' barriers to polio eradication in

Northern Nigeria. African Affairs 106: 185-204.

WEEK 6: INNOVATIVE LEARNING WEEK

Week 7: Alchemical Bodies

"Chemistry" and "alchemy" are both derived from Arabic al-kimiya,

"transmutation." The usual story about the rise of scientific biomedicine is that

it gradually shed all earlier associations to occult and irrational practices –

that it kept chemistry but got rid of alchemy. While biomedicine disavows

alchemy, other healing forms affirm them. One of them is Indian Ayurveda,

the "knowledge of prolonging life." Ayurveda continues to conceptualize the

body in alchemical terms. Staying healthy or returning from sickness is about

rebalancing an internal process of "cooking." Discreet organs appear as

temporary receptacles of the various juices and fluids. As a medicine of

metamorphoses, Ayurveda emphasizes alchemical transformations and

enhancement.

For class discussion:

Alter, J.S. 1999. Heaps of health, metaphysical fitness: Ayurveda and the

ontology of good health in medical anthropology. Current Anthropology

40(Supplement): 43-66.

Naraindas, H. 2006. Of spineless babies and folic acid: evidence and efficacy

in biomedicine and Ayurvedic medicine. Social Science & Medicine 62:

2658-2669.

Further reading:

Alter, J.S. 2005. Modern Medical Yoga: struggling with a history of magic,

alchemy and sex. Asian Medicine 1(1): 119-146.

Cohen, L. 1998. No aging in India. Alzheimer’s, the bad family, and other modern

things. Berkeley: University of California Press

Gruman G.J. 2003. A history of ideas about the prolongation of life. Berlin:

Springer

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Halliburton, M. 2003. The importance of a pleasant process of treatment:

lessons on healing from South India. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

27: 161-186.

Langford, J.M. 1999. Medical mimesis: healing signs of a cosmopolitan

'quack'." American Ethnologist 26(1): 24-46.

Leslie, C. (Ed) 1976. Asian medical systems: a comparative study. Berkeley:

University of California Press

Leslie, C. & Young, A. (Eds) 1992. Paths to Asian medical knowledge.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mukharji, P.B. 2009. Nationalizing the body: the medical market, print, and daktari

medicine. London: Anthem Press. (Chpt. 6)

Nandy, Ashis. 1995. Modern medicine and its nonmodern critics: a study in

discourse. In A. Nandy, The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible

and Retrievable Selves, pp. 145-195. Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

Wolfgram, M. 2010. Truth claims and disputes in Ayurveda medical science.

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20(1): 149–165.

Wujastyk, D. 2009. Interpreting the image of the human body in premodern

India. International Journal of Hindu Studies 13(2): 189-228.

Week 8: Placebo Healing

"I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications…I

will walk before the LORD in the land of the living [placebo Domino in regione

vivorum]. I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted...I will

offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving" (Psalm 116). The biomedical term

"placebo" (a drug without active substance) is derived from Scripture and

religious practices. For long, the curative efficacy of placebos was ignored

because it could not be explained how blank pills could cure. Placebos

continue to mystify, but anthropologists have made great inroads into

cultural explanations for their therapeutic power.

For class discussion:

Hahn, R.A. & Kleinman, A. 1983. Belief as pathogen, belief as medicine:

"voodoo death" and the "placebo phenomenon" in anthropological

perspective. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14(4): 3+16-19.

Thompson, Jennifer Jo, Ritenbaugh, Cheryl, & Nichter, Mark. 2009.

Reconsidering the placebo response from a broad anthropological

perspective. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 33: 112-152.

Further reading:

Benedetti, Fabrizio. 2008. Placebo effects: understanding the mechanisms in health

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and disease. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Benson, Herbert & Friedman, Richard. 1996. Harnessing the power of the

placebo effect and renaming it "remembered wellness." Annual Review

of Medicine 47: 193-199.

Comaroff, Jean. 1976. A pill to swallow: placebo therapy in general practice.

Sociological Review 24(1): 79-96.

Evans, Dylan. 2004. Placebo: mind over matter in modern medicine. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Frenkel, Oron. 2008. A phenomenology of the 'placebo effect': taking meaning

from the mind to the body. Journal of Medicine & Philosophy 33(1): 58-79.

Harrington, A. 2006. The many meanings of the placebo effect: where they

came from, why they matter. BioSocieties 1(2):181-193.

Kaptchuk, Ted J. 2002. The placebo effect in medicine: can the performance of

a healing ritual have clinical significance? Annals of Internal Medicine

136(11): 817-828.

Kleinman, A., H. Guess, & J. Wilentz. 2002. An overview. In The science of the

placebo: toward an interdisciplinary research agenda, eds. H. Guess, A.

Kleinman, J. Kusek, & L. Engel. London: BMJ Books.

Kradin, Richard. 2008. The placebo response and the power of unconscious healing.

London: Routledge.

Moerman, Daniel E. 1983. General medical effectiveness and human biology:

placebo effects in the treatment of ulcer disease. Medical Anthropology

Quarterly 14(4): 3+16-19.

Moerman, D. 2002. Meaning, medicine and the 'placebo effect'. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Shapiro, Arthur K. & Shapiro, Elaine. 2000. The powerful placebo: from ancient

priest to modern physician. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University

Press.

Week 9: Perilous Prescriptions

Just as anthropologists tend to make sense of irrational practices among

patients, so they also see "healers" where hardnosed rationalists only see

quacks and frauds. Indeed, an anthropology of irrational treatments is still

little developed. There is, however, a growing number of ethnographic

studies that shed light on the darker sides of biomedicine. Unqualified

prescribers, such as local pharmacists, are an obvious group to look at, but

systematic malpractice can be encountered even among highly-trained

physicians.

For class discussion:

Das, Veena & Das, Ranendra K. 2005. Urban health and pharmaceutical

consumption in Delhi, India. Journal of Biosocial Science 38(1): 69 -82.

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Ecks, S. 2010. Spectacles of reason: An ethnography of Calcutta

gastroenterologists. In J. Edwards, P. Harvey & P. Wade (Eds.),

Technologized images, technologized bodies. Oxford: Berghahn.

Further readings:

Alubo, S. Ogoh. 1994. Death for sale: A study of drug poisoning and deaths in

Nigeria. Social Science & Medicine 38(1): 97-103.

Ecks, S. & Basu, S. 2009. The unlicensed lives of antidepressants in India:

generic drugs, unqualified practitioners, and floating prescriptions.

Transcultural Psychiatry 46(1): 86-106.

Elliott, Carl. 2010. White coat, black hat: adventures on the dark side of medicine.

Boston: Beacon Press.

Kamat, V. 2001. Private practitioners and the role in the resurgence of malaria

in Mumbai (Bombay) and Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), India: serving

the affected or a new epidemic? Social Science & Medicine 52: 885-909.

Liebert, Rachel & Gavey, Nicola. 2009. “There are always two sides to these

things”: Managing the dilemma of serious adverse effects from SSRIs.

Social Science & Medicine 68(10): 1882-1891.

McGoey, Linsey. 2007. On the will to ignorance in bureaucracy. Economy and

Society 36: 212-235.

Pearl, Daniel & Stecklow, Steve . 2001. Drug firms’ incentives fuel abuse by

pharmacists in India. Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2001.

Trostle, J. 1996. Inappropriate distribution of medicines by professionals in

developing countries. Social Science & Medicine 42(8): 1117-1120.

Wailoo, K. et al. (Eds). 2006. A death foretold: Jessica Santillan, the bungled

transplant, and paradoxes of medical citizenship. Chapel Hill, NC:

University of North Carolina Press.

Wootton, David. 2007. Bad medicine: doctors doing harm since Hippocrates.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Week 10: Take Care of Yourself

With so much bad medicine around, perhaps one should better resort to "self-

care"? Indeed it is widely acknowledged that more than more than half of all

illness episodes are never treated with any drug, let alone come to the

attention of a medical professional. But self-care occupies an ambiguous

position in anthropological studies. Self-care is sometimes defined as all

health practices unmediated by medical commodities. Sometimes it is taken to

mean irrational and dangerous forms of self-medication with over-the-

counter drugs. The bulk of anthropological writings on "self-care" interpret

them either as a strategy of poverty or as a shift of responsibility from the

public to the private individual (keyword: "neoliberalism"). Michel Foucault's

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notion of self-care as a practice of freedom has, to date, not been seriously

taken up by anthropologists.

For class discussion:

Nichter, M. & Thompson, J.J. 2006. For my wellness, not just my illness: North

Americans' use of dietary supplements. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

30: 175-222.

Schull, N.D. 2006. Machines, medication, modulation: circuits of dependency

and self-care in Las Vegas. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 30(2): 223-

247. (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH4ccu0WEsM)

Further reading:

Aujoulat, Isabelle et al. 2008. Reconsidering patient empowerment in chronic

illness: a critique of models of self-efficacy and bodily control. Social

Science & Medicine 66(5): 1228-1239.

Chen, Nancy N. 2003. Healing sects and anti-cult campaigns. The China

Quarterly 174: 505-520.

Clarke, A. E. et al. 2003. Biomedicalization: technoscientific transformations of

health, illness, and U.S. medicine. American Sociological Review 68(2):

161-194.

Ecks, Stefan. 2004. Bodily sovereignty as political sovereignty: 'self-care' in

Kolkata (India). Anthropology & Medicine 11(1): 75-89.

Farquhar, Judith & Zhang, Qicheng. 2005. Biopolitical Beijing: pleasure,

sovereignty, and self-cultivation in China’s capital. Current

Anthropology 20(3): 303-327.

Foucault, Michel. 1982a. The subject and power. In Hubert L. Dreyfus and

Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1982b. On the Genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in

progress. In Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault:

Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. 1997. Ethics: Subjectivity and truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York:

The New Press. (pages 223-252).

Geissler, P.W. et al. 2000. Children and medicines: self-treatment of common

illnesses among Luo schoolchildren in western Kenya. Social Science &

Medicine 50(12): 1771-1783.

Illich, Ivan. 1976. Limits to medicine. London: Marion Boyars.

McKinney, Kelly A. & Greenfield, Brian G. 2010. Self-compliance at 'Prozac

campus.' Anthropology & Medicine 17(2): 173-185.

Staples, J. 2004. Delineating disease: self-management of leprosy identities in

South India. Medical Anthropology 23: 69-88.

Vuckovic, N. 2000. Self-care among the uninsured: “You do what you can

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do.” Health Affairs 19(4), 197-199.

Week 11: Extremely Alive, Almost Dead

The final session of the course takes us to some of the final limits of human

life itself: nuclear wipe-out, extraterrestrial cultures, and extreme futures.

These are questions that anthropologists have hardly started to explore yet,

for obvious reasons: most people live in fairly moderate climates and with

both feet on the ground. There are no permanent habitations on the moon and

a nuclear war has not happened either. Hence the scope of what

anthropologists can sensibly do through their time-honoured research

methods, above all participant observation, is limited. Yet there is a small but

growing anthropological engagement with life under the most extreme

circumstances: beyond normal life and even beyond planet Earth.

For class discussion:

Battaglia, Debbora. 2012. Coming in at an unusual angle: Exo-surprise and the

fieldworking cosmonaut. Anthropological Quarterly 85(4): 1089-1106.

Masco, Joseph. 2008. 'Survival is your business': Engineering ruins and affect

in nuclear America. Cultural Anthropology 23(2): 361–398.

Further reading:

Battaglia, Debbora, ed. 2005. E.T. culture: Anthropology in outerspaces. Durham,

NC: Duke University Press.

Collins, Samuel Gerald. 2008. All tomorrow's cultures: Anthropological

engagements with the future. New York: Berghahn Books.

Farman, Abou. 2012. Re-enchantment cosmologies: Mastery and obsolescence

in an intelligent universe. Anthropological Quarterly 85(4): 1069-1088.

Helmreich, Stefan. 2012. Extraterrestrial relativism. Anthropological Quarterly

85(4): 1125-1139.

Hodgen, Margaret T. 1964. Early anthropology in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hoeppe, Goetz. 2012. Astronomers at the observatory: Place, visual practice,

traces. Anthropological Quarterly 85(4): 1161-1176.

Maruyama, Magoroh, and Arthur M. Harkins. 1978. Cultures of the future. The

Hague: Mouton.

Masco, Joseph. 2012. The end of ends. Anthropological Quarterly 85(4): 1107-

1124.

Olson, Valerie A. 2012. Political ecology in the extreme: Asteroid activism and

the making of an environmental solar system. Anthropological Quarterly

85(4): 1027-1044.

Petryna, Adriana. 2002. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl.

16

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Philips, Sarah. 2011. Chernobyl forever. Somatosphere, April 25, 2011.

[download at http://somatosphere.net/test/2011/04/chernobyl-

forever.html]

Roach, Mary. 2010. Packing for Mars: The curious science of life in the void. New

York: W.W. Norton.

Valentine, David. 2012. Exit strategy: Profit, cosmology, and the future of

humans in space. Anthropological Quarterly 85(4): 1045-1067.

Valentine, David, Valerie A. Olson & Debbora Battaglia. 2012. Extreme: Limits

and horizons in the once and future cosmos. Anthropological Quarterly

85(4): 1007-1026.

17

Appendix 1 – Submission and Assessment Information

ELMA: Submission and Return of Coursework

Coursework is submitted online using our electronic submission system,

ELMA. You will not be required to submit a paper copy of your work.

Marked coursework, grades and feedback will be returned to you via ELMA.

You will not receive a paper copy of your marked course work or feedback.

For information, help and advice on submitting coursework and accessing

feedback, please see the ELMA wiki at

https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/SPSITWiki/ELMA. Further detailed

guidance on the essay deadline and a link to the wiki and submission page

will be available on the course Learn page. The wiki is the primary source of

information on how to submit your work correctly and provides advice on

approved file formats, uploading cover sheets and how to name your files

correctly.

When you submit your work electronically, you will be asked to tick a box

confirming that your work complies with university regulations on

plagiarism. This confirms that the work you have submitted is your own.

Occasionally, there can be technical problems with a submission. We request

that you monitor your university student email account in the 24 hours

following the deadline for submitting your work. If there are any problems

with your submission the course secretary will email you at this stage.

We undertake to return all coursework within 15 working days of submission.

This time is needed for marking, moderation, second marking and input of

results. If there are any unanticipated delays, it is the course organiser’s

responsibility to inform you of the reasons.

All our coursework is assessed anonymously to ensure fairness: to facilitate

this process put your Examination number (on your student card), not your

name or student number, on your coursework or cover sheet.

Word Count Penalties

Your short essay should be between 1000 words (excluding bibliography)*.

Essays above 1000 words will be penalised using the Ordinary level criterion

of 1 mark for every 20 words over length: anything between (enter word limit

and word limit plus 20) words will lose one mark, between (enter word limit

and word limit plus 40) two marks, and so on.

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You will not be penalised for submitting work below the word limit.

However, you should note that shorter essays are unlikely to achieve the

required depth and that this will be reflected in your mark.

The Operation of Lateness Penalties

Note that all mentions of LPWs/Lateness Policies in handbooks, on Learn, etc.

MUST be amended to apply to calendar days instead of working days.

Unlike in Years 1 and 2, NO EXTENSIONS ARE GRANTED WITH RESPECT

TO THE SUBMISSION DEADLINES FOR ANY ASSESSED WORK At

HONOURS LEVEL.

Managing deadlines is a basic life-skill that you are expected to have acquired

by the time you reach Honours. Timely submission of all assessed items

(coursework, essays, project reports, etc.) is a vitally important responsibility

at this stage in your university career. Unexcused lateness can put at risk your

prospects of proceeding to Senior Honours and can damage your final degree

grade.

If you miss the submission deadline for any piece of assessed work 5 marks

will be deducted for each calendar day that work is late, up to a maximum of

five calendar days (25 marks). Thereafter, a mark of zero will be recorded.

There is no grace period for lateness and penalties begin to apply immediately

following the deadline. For example, if the deadline is Tuesday at 12 noon,

work submitted on Tuesday at 12.01pm will be marked as one day late, work

submitted at 12.01pm on Wednesday will be marked as two days late, and so

on.

Failure to submit an item of assessed work will result in a mark of zero, with

potentially very serious consequences for your overall degree class, or no

degree at all. It is therefore always in your interest to submit work, even if

very late.

Please be aware that all work submitted is returned to students with a

provisional mark and without applicable penalties in the first instance. The

mark you receive on ELMA is therefore subject to change following the

consideration of the Lateness Penalty Waiver Panel (please see below for

further information) and the Board of Examiners.

How to Submit a Lateness Penalty Waiver Form

If there are extenuating circumstances beyond your control which make it

essential for you to submit work after the deadline you must fill in a ‘Lateness

Penalty Waiver’ (LPW) form to state the reason for your lateness. This is a

19

request for any applicable penalties to be removed and will be considered by

the Lateness Penalty Waiver Panel.

Before submitting an LPW, please consider carefully whether your

circumstances are (or were) significant enough to justify the lateness. Such

circumstances should be serious and exceptional (e.g. not a common cold or a

heavy workload). Computer failures are not regarded as justifiable reason for

late submission. You are expected to regularly back-up your work and allow

sufficient time for uploading it to ELMA.

You should submit the LPW form and supply an expected date of submission

as soon as you are able to do so, and preferably before the deadline.

Depending on the circumstances, supporting documentation may be required,

so please be prepared to provide this where possible.

LPW forms can be found in a folder outside your SSO’s office, on online at:

http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/undergrad/on_course_students/assessment_and_reg

ulations/coursework_requirements/coursework_requirements_honours

Forms should be returned by email or, if possible, in person to your SSO.

They will sign the form to indicate receipt and will be able to advise you if

you would like further guidance or support.

Please Note: Signing the LPW form by either your SSO or Personal Tutor only

indicates acknowledgment of the request, not the waiving of lateness

penalties. Final decisions on all marks rest with Examination Boards.

There is a dedicated SSO for students in each subject area in SPS. To find out

who your SSO is, and how to contact them, please find your home subject

area on the table below:

Subject Area Name of

SSO Email Phone Office

Politics TBA 0131 650

4253

Room 1.11,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

International

Relations

Rebecca

Shade rebecca.shade@ed.ac.uk

0131 651

3896

Room 1.10,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

Social

Anthropology

Vanessa

Feldberg vanessa.feldberg@ed.ac.uk

0131 650

3933

Room 1.04,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

Social Policy Louise

Angus L.Angus@ed.ac.uk

0131 650

3923

Room 1.08,

Chrystal

20

MacMillan

Building

Social Work Jane

Marshall jane.marshall@ed.ac.uk

0131 650

3912

Room 1.07,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

Sociology Karen

Dargo Karen.Dargo@ed.ac.uk

0131 651

1306

Room 1.03,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

Sustainable

Development Sue Renton sue.renton@ed.ac.uk

0131 650

6958

Room 1.09,

Chrystal

MacMillan

Building

Procedure for Viewing Marked Exam Scripts

(This is for courses with centrally arranged exams only and should be inserted

where appropriate – you should check with the course convenor whether or

not this statement should be added)

If you would like to see your exam script after the final marks have been

published then you should contact the course secretary by email to arrange a

time to do this. Please note that there will be no feedback comments written

on the scripts, but you may find it useful to look at what you wrote, and see

the marks achieved for each individual question. You will not be permitted to

keep the exam script but you are welcome to take it away to read over or

make photocopies. If you wish to do this please bring a form of ID that can be

left at the office until you return the script. Please note that scripts cannot be

taken away overnight.

Return of Feedback

Feedback for coursework will be returned online via ELMA on 04/03/15*

Plagiarism Guidance for Students

Avoiding Plagiarism

Material you submit for assessment, such as your essays, must be your own

work. You can, and should, draw upon published work, ideas from lectures

and class discussions, and (if appropriate) even upon discussions with other

students, but you must always make clear that you are doing so. Passing off

anyone else’s work (including another student’s work or material from the

Web or a published author) as your own is plagiarism and will be punished

21

severely. When you upload your work to ELMA you will be asked to check a

box to confirm the work is your own. ELMA automatically runs all

submissions through ‘Turnitin’, our plagiarism detection software, and

compares every essay against a constantly-updated database, which

highlights all plagiarised work. Assessed work that contains plagiarised

material will be awarded a mark of zero, and serious cases of plagiarism will

also be reported to the College Academic Misconduct officer. In either case,

the actions taken will be noted permanently on the student's record. For

further details on plagiarism see the Academic Services’ website:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/academic-

services/students/undergraduate/discipline/plagiarism

Data Protection Guidance for Students

In most circumstances, students are responsible for ensuring that their work

with information about living, identifiable individuals complies with the

requirements of the Data Protection Act. The document, Personal Data

Processed by Students, provides an explanation of why this is the case. It can

be found, with advice on data protection compliance and ethical best practice

in the handling of information about living, identifiable individuals, on the

Records Management section of the University website at:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/records-management-section/data-

protection/guidance-policies/dpforstudents

22

Appendix 2 – General Information

Learning Resources for Undergraduates

The Study Development Team at the Institute for Academic Development

(IAD) provides resources and workshops aimed at helping all students to

enhance their learning skills and develop effective study techniques.

Resources and workshops cover a range of topics, such as managing your

own learning, reading, note making, essay and report writing, exam

preparation and exam techniques.

The study development resources are housed on 'LearnBetter'

(undergraduate), part of Learn, the University's virtual learning environment.

Follow the link from the IAD Study Development web page to enrol:

www.ed.ac.uk/iad/undergraduates

Workshops are interactive: they will give you the chance to take part in

activities, have discussions, exchange strategies, share ideas and ask

questions. They are 90 minutes long and held on Wednesday afternoons at

1.30pm or 3.30pm. The schedule is available from the IAD Undergraduate

web page (see above).

Workshops are open to all undergraduates but you need to book in advance,

using the MyEd booking system. Each workshop opens for booking 2 weeks

before the date of the workshop itself. If you book and then cannot attend,

please cancel in advance through MyEd so that another student can have your

place. (To be fair to all students, anyone who persistently books on workshops

and fails to attend may be barred from signing up for future events).

Study Development Advisors are also available for an individual consultation

if you have specific questions about your own approach to studying, working

more effectively, strategies for improving your learning and your academic

work. Please note, however, that Study Development Advisors are not subject

specialists so they cannot comment on the content of your work. They also do

not check or proof read students' work. To make an appointment with a

Study Development Advisor, email iad.study@ed.ac.uk

(For support with English Language, you should contact the English

Language Teaching Centre).

Discussing Sensitive Topics

The discipline of Magic, Science and Healing addresses a number of topics

that some might find sensitive or, in some cases, distressing. You should read

this handbook carefully and if there are any topics that you may feel

23

distressed by you should seek advice from the course convenor and/or your

Personal Tutor.

For more general issues you may consider seeking the advice of the Student

Counselling Service, http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-counselling