Gods, Germs, and Petri Dishes: Toward a Nonsecular Medical Anthropology

Roberts, Elizabeth

doi:10.1080/01459740.2015.1118100

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Anthropologists of science and medicine have begun elaborating an allied perspective, in particular noting that "less attention has been paid to how the work of constructing political secularity has itself been achieved through [science] and medicine" (Whitmarsh and Roberts, 2016: 204;Roberts, 2016). Moreover, these scholars note that anthropological studies of science and medicine have largely proceeded in an unselfconsciously secularist fashion: they have generally deemed "natural" the distinctions between science and religion, and as result have treated the "religious" elements they encounter as epiphenomenal-"unreal"-rather than constitutive of the nature in question.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No such thing asaconcept: A radical tradition from Malinowski to Asad and Strathern

Lebner

2019

Anthropological Theory

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In light of renewed questions about the relationship between anthropology’s past and future, two radicalizations of the British tradition are particularly worth exploring: those of Talal Asad and Marilyn Strathern, arguably the most widely read anthropologists beyond the discipline, and the most regularly misunderstood. Asad and Strathern are rarely engaged together because the anthropologies that their works have inspired operate quite separately, their mutual implications left unexplored. And yet, tracing the development of Asad’s and Strathern’s respective work reveals a deep resonance, beginning with their training in the concern with translation, which owes more to Malinowski than anthropologists today are generally aware. The paper argues that reading Asad and Strathern together can help mitigate the over-cultivation of the “concept” in recent anthropology, multiply insights into the constitutive relations among anthropology, science and the secular, and refine perspectives on the legacy of British anthropology and on anthropology’s future politics.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No such thing asaconcept: A radical tradition from Malinowski to Asad and Strathern

Lebner

2019

Anthropological Theory

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“…The findings set out above suggest that investigative collaborations of epigeneticists working with social scientists, epidemiologists, public health researchers and historians could be very fruitful. In recent years, certain epidemiologists have entered into such collaborations (see, for example, Relton and Davey Smith 2012), and anthropologists are also becoming involved in both the design of research projects and the collection of data (Roberts 2016). The most effective of these projects are those in which 'environment' is explicitly delineated or contoured for the purposes of any given investigation, with full awareness that doing so is a device, with unavoidable limitations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biosocial Worlds

2020

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“…13 Ethnographies of nonsecular biomedicine move beyond likening biomedical practices to ritual, divination, or forms of righteous belief (Good, 1994;Lock, 1998). Instead, they focus on how health and medicine are made through material practices and the immaterial power of "gods, God, and godlessness" (Roberts, 2012(Roberts, , 2016Whitmarsh & Roberts, 2016). Yet Pentecostal genetics suggests that a nonsecular medical anthropology that levels all nonhuman actors to the same plane-that equates a benevolent God who explains the carrier with a satanic demon that explains the ghostdoes not go far enough in specifying which entities can act.…”

Section: The Genes We Carrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Realms unseen

Saffitz

2023

American Ethnologist

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Since 2006, albinism has emerged as both a subject and an object of contestation in Tanzania and beyond. An abiding global narrative purports that, as a recessively inherited condition, albinism is fetishized by Africans who falsely attribute otherworldly potentials to albino body parts and commodify them in a grisly market run by “traditional” healers and their patrons. In response, translocal albinism rights stakeholders have formed to cement a singular notion of albinism and, with “it,” a notion of unseen power that cancels the agency of particular nonhumans. Their work diverges from those who insist on multiple other instantiations of albinism and worlds unseen, some of which offer compelling explanations of recent violence rooted in entanglement and complicity, rather than an Indigenous cosmology. In this context, I argue for a conceptual and methodological approach to social movements and minority groups rooted in decolonizing unseen realms and embracing epistemic and ontological openness.

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Gods, Germs, and Petri Dishes: Toward a Nonsecular Medical Anthropology

Cited by 14 publications

References 30 publications

No such thing asaconcept: A radical tradition from Malinowski to Asad and Strathern

No such thing asaconcept: A radical tradition from Malinowski to Asad and Strathern

Biosocial Worlds

Realms unseen

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