Family, kinship, memory and temporality in the age of the new genetics

The new genetics has now become an integral part of contemporary biomedicine, promising great advances in alleviating disease. Like any scientific endeavor, beliefs in the new genetics tend to give new meanings to people's lives and therefore have significant implications for people's lived experience. Drawing on fieldwork in the USA and research in various literatures, the aim of this article is to explore the role the new genetics plays in mainstream American society as revealed in people's narratives of their families' medical histories. An anthropological analysis of these narratives illuminates multilayered cultural meanings of genetic inheritance and the role biomedical conceptualizations play not only in explaining disease etiologies and treatment, but also in addressing concerns that bear on the postmodern experience of family, kinship, choice, memory, time-space, relatedness, sociality and immortality.New genetics Temporality Anthropology of medicine Family and kinship Narratives USA

Biomedicine globalized and localized: western medical practices in an outpatient clinic of a Mexican hospital

Following contemporary globalization, biomedicine and western style hospitals have penetrated most corners of the world. We must therefore ask, "How has the diffusion of biomedicine impacted biomedicine's core features of practice cross culturally? How do physicians in different countries make diagnoses, explain etiology and treat patients? To what degree does a physician's cultural understanding shape biomedicine?" Based on extensive fieldwork in a Mexican hospital (Physicians at work, patients in pain. Revised with new preface, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, 2001), this study analyzes the ways in which biomedicine becomes culturally reinterpreted as it moves from one cultural venue to another, and explores the theoretical and practical consequences of this reinterpretation. This analysis illuminates the relationship between biomedicine and the nature of social transformations and refines our understanding of globalization. From a practical perspective, the study is important because a nation's epidemiological profiles are based on statistics drawn from the diagnoses that physicians make. We must not assume that because the same medical nomenclature is used to make the diagnoses, these diagnoses are based on culturally neutral and uniform assessments.Biomedicine Globalization Social transformation Diagnosis Cultural reinterpretation Mexico

Factors influencing patient perceived recovery in Mexico

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to present empirical findings, using data drawn from a comprehensive two year study of biomedical practice and patients perceptions of treatment and recovery done in a Mexico City public hospital, identifying specific aspects of the doctor-patient relationship that impact on patient perceived recovery. Second, and flowing from the first, the objective is to consider broader theoretical issues relevant to the doctor-patient relationship, the role it plays in the healing process and in biomedical practice, especially in a developing nation such as Mexico. The paper is divided into two sections: in Section I, the problem is defined and the methodology and findings are described, employing statistical and qualitative analyses. While enormous importance has been given to the doctor-patient relationship in biomedicine, the results of the study using statistical analysis, reveal that only particular components of the physician-patient encounter significantly influence differential treatment outcomes. In Section II the significance of the findings are discussed and theoretical issues are addressed bearing on the physician-patient relationship, and patients' perceptions of treatment. To illuminate the differential perceptions of treatment outcomes by patients with non-life-threatening disorders, the concept of life's lesions is proposed.doctor-patient relationship perceived recovery treatment outcomes chronic sickness Mexico

Hospital ethnography: introduction

The introduction sets out two central ideas around which this collection of articles on hospital ethnography has been organised. The first is that hospitals are not identical clones of a global biomedical model. Hospitals take on different forms in different cultures and societies. Medical views and technical facilities may vary considerably leading to different diagnostic and therapeutic traditions. The second idea, related to the first, is that biomedicine and the hospital as its foremost institution is a domain where the core values and beliefs of a culture come into view. Hospitals both reflect and reinforce dominant social and cultural processes of their societies. The authors further discuss some methodological and ethical complexities of doing feildwork in a hospital setting and present brief summaries of the contributions, which deal with hospitals in Ghana, South Africa, Bangladesh, Mexico, Italy, The Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Egypt and Lebanon.Hospital Ethnography Globalization Localization Fieldwork

The new genetics and its consequences for family, kinship, medicine and medical genetics

In the past several decades there has been an explosion in our understanding of genetics. The new genetics is an integral part of contemporary biomedicine and promises great advances in alleviating disease, prolonging human life and leading us unto the medicine of the future. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which people make sense of the uncertainties that are associated with the new genetics, which by definition involve family and kinship relations. We explore the degree to which medical genetics places the patient in a double bind between the qualitative certainty and quantitative uncertainty of genetic inheritance that reinforce notions both of fear, and control of a person's future health. Second, we propose that the new genetics has medicalized family and kinship creating profound ethical and practical dilemmas for both the individual and for medicine as a whole.New genetics Kinship and family United States Anthropology of biomedicine Medicalization