Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION: SIGN POSTS
Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon

2. CHANGING CHILDHOODS
Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon

2.1 Children with diabetes (Christine Dedding)
2.2 Rare diseases in children in Italy (Alice Larotonda)
2.3 Autism spectrum disorder in Vietnam (Vu Song Ha)
2.4 Children’s idioms of distress (Ria Reis)

3. SEXUALITY AND TECHNOLOGY
Anita Hardon, Lenore Manderson and Elizabeth Cartwright

3.1 Feminizing the body (Panoopat Poompruek, Pimpawun Boonmongkon and Thomas E. Guadamuz)
3.2 Body, sex, and diet in Mozambique (Arianna Huhn)
3.3 Empowerment and the use of vaginal microbicides (Robert Pool)
3.4 Donating semen in Denmark (Sebastian Mohr)

4. THE SOCIALITIES OF HIV
Anita Hardon, Lenore Manderson and Elizabeth Cartwright

4.1 Freedom Corner (Emmy Kageha Igonya and Eileen Moyer)
4.2 Chronicle of a Mosotho boy (Ellen Block)
4.3 Coming of age on the streets (Thomas Stodulka)

5. STRESSES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Anita Hardon, Elizabeth Cartwright and Lenore Manderson

5.1 A cold of the soul (Junko Kitanaka)
5.2 Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires (P. Sean Brotherton)
5.3 Promoting smoking in Indonesia (Mark Nichter and Mimi Nichter)

6. BODILY RESISTANCES
Elizabeth Cartwright, Anita Hardon, and Lenore Manderson

6.1 Rebellion and co-morbidity (Megan Wainwright)
6.2 Relatedness in anorexia (Megan Warin)
6.3 Governing by complaint (Jessica Mulligan)

7. THE CHRONICITY OF ILLNESS AND DISEASE
Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon

7.1 Mass drug administration for neglected tropical diseases (Tim Allen and Melissa Parker)
7.2 Diagnosis and the punctuated life-course (Carolyn Smith-Morris)
7.3 Amputated identity (Narelle Warren)
7.4 Facing up to breathlessness (Marjolein Gysels and Irene J. Higginson)

8. WAYS OF CARING
Elizabeth Cartwright, Anita Hardon and Lenore Manderson

8.1 Care, self-management and the webcam (Hilde Thygesen and Jeanette Pols)
8.2 E-care in Kerala (Tanja Ahlin)
8.3 Illnesses without a cause (Gesine Kuspert Hearn)

9. ENDINGS
Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon

9.1 Becoming old and frail in coastal Tanzania (Piet van Eeuwijk and Brigit Obrist)
9.2 Alzheimer’s disease in urban Brazil (Annette Leibing)
9.3 Caring for corpses in Singapore (Ruth E. Toulson)

10. MARKETING MEDICINE
Anita Hardon, Lenore Manderson and Elizabeth Cartwright

10.1 The compounding pharmacy in Brazil (Emilia Sanabria)
10.2 Policing ‘counterfeit medication’ (Julia Hornberger)
10.3 How a lifestyle product became a pharmaceutical specialty (Laurent Pordié)
10.4 Cosmopolitan phytoremedies in Senegal (Alice Desclaux)

11. THE ANTHROPOCENE
Elizabeth Cartwright, Lenore Manderson and Anita Hardon

11.1 Inuit health in a changing Arctic (Noor Johnson)
11.2 Environmental pollution and allergies (Roberta Raffaetá)
11.3 Reading the environment (Ben McMahan)
11.4 Disastrous recovery (Vincanne Adams)

12. GLOBAL VULNERABILITIES
Elizabeth Cartwright, Lenore Manderson and Anita Hardon

12.1 Medical travel (Andrea Whittaker and Chee Heng Leng)
12.2 Health care along the US/Mexico border (Heide Castañeda)
12.3 “I haven’t paid this karma yet” (Susann Huschke)

13. WAR, VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL RESPONSE
Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon

13.1 Honduras: Practicing wartime healing (Adrienne Pine)
13.2 Does Sgt Pearson have PTSD? (Alexander Edmonds)
13.3 Life in a state of fear (Meagan Wilson)
13.4 Exhuming the disappeared (Rachel Carmen Ceasar)

14. GENES, KINSHIP AND RISK
Anita Hardon, Lenore Manderson and Elizabeth Cartwright

14.1 Direct-to-consumer genetic testing in China (Suli Sui and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner)
14.2 Harvesting umbilical cord blood (Simonetta Cengarle)
14.3 Genetics, childhood development and kinship (Janice McLaughlin)
14.4 Suicide and the epigenetic turn (Stephanie Lloyd)
14.5 Techno-benefits and social risks (Barbara Herr Harthorn)

15. HOW THE LOGICS OF BIOMEDICAL PRACTICE TRAVEL
Elizabeth Cartwright, Anita Hardon and Lenore Manderson

15.1 Humanistic obstetrics in Brazil (Eugenia Georges and Robbie Davis-Floyd)
15.2 Entrepreneuring barren grounds (Trudie Gerrits and Viola Hörbst)
15.3 Surgery and the cultural politics of global health (Adia Benton)
15.4 ‘Safe burials’ and the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone (Raphael Frankfurter)
15.5 Doctors Without Borders and the global emergency (Peter Redfield)

VITAL SIGNS: MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Lenore Manderson, Anita Hardon and Elizabeth Cartwright

About the Author

LENORE MANDERSON is Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology at the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and Professor of Anthropology at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, USA.





ELIZABETH CARTWRIGHT is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Hispanic Health Projects and the Latino Studies Program at Idaho State University, USA.





ANITA HARDON is Professor of Health and Social Care at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Dean of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Reviews

"The international scope of its authorship, both of editors and contributors, is something else that sets this book apart from others. It represents intellectual institutional homes in Western Europe, Australia, North America, and Southern Africa. Theories emanating from the University of Amsterdam and other Western European schools are well represented throughout, like Annemarie Mol’s writings on ontology and technology. Manderson’s vast professional archive on gender, health and the environment supports the volume as a whole, as does Hardon’s work on pharmaceuticals and HIV/AIDS and Cartwright’s on structural vulnerabilities, indigeneity, and immigration." - Casey Golomski, Somatosphere "The volume offers very enjoyable and accessible reading. Given its richly ethnographic case studies, the central conclusion of the book is then the necessity of paying attention to the particular contexts of health and illness across the globe and communities, and of understanding the complex entanglements in which they emerge and materialize. In other words, the volume speaks undeniably about the invaluable input that medical anthropologists may bring into important discussions on health and illness and their potential contribution to global health policy making. Thus, the volume goes well beyond what a handbook entails, becoming a fabulous resource for addressing health (in)justices across the globe."-Cristina Doughlas- Anthropology Books Forum