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Why the world needs (medical) anthropologists: Lessons from a (more than just a) handbook 

on medical anthropology 

 

Review by Cristina Douglas  

 

The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology. 2016. Edited by Lenore Manderson, 

Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon. New York: Routledge. XXIX + 393p. ISBN 

9781138015630. 

 

Key words: medical anthropology; global health; structural violence; structural inequality. 

 

Medical anthropology is probably one of the fastest growing sub-disciplines of anthropology. 

Over only a few short decades, medical anthropologists have increasingly become officially 

involved in global health programs. Along with this they critically explore how biomedicine 

and its nomenclature are spread across the world, their benefits, and how they are resisted, 

negotiated or adapted by people into cultural, political or gendered norms. Medical 

anthropology has also succeeded, as a discipline, to quickly adapt to accelerated societal 

changes and to respond in a timely manner to huge challenges brought on by medical crises 

(such as Ebola) or biomedical technologies (such as genetic tests or assisted reproductive 

technologies). It is only sensible, then, that the discipline sets out more resources to illustrate 

its work foundation and its various approaches. 

 

The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology, edited by Lenore Manderson, Elizabeth 

Cartwright and Anita Hardon, in spite of its apparently bounding title, exceeds the limitations 

of an educational resource for scholars or members of the public interested in medical 

anthropology. The book covers great geographical and cultural areas, with a tremendous 

variety of topics directly related to medical conditions/diseases, or which overflow into larger 



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contexts that potentially influence health statuses (e.g., life cycle, kinship, war, structural 

violence, environment and climate change/the Anthropocene).  

 

The volume has a rather unusual format. Each chapter is led by one of the editors depending 

on the topic, and includes case studies authored by other scholars. The case studies are 

extremely rich ethnographic vignettes, illustrating how a similar medically related topic or 

condition becomes variegated when looked at in context, rather than symmetrically approached 

as generally presumed in biomedicine. As the authors highlight throughout the volume, this 

diversity is paramount in understanding that global health projects need a deep comprehension 

of their multiple localities, as well as their ingrained and individually embodied subjectivities. 

Manderson, Cartwright and Hardon introduce each chapter with a more general presentation 

and conclusion, sprinkling their observations between case studies. This relaxed format, while 

sometimes becoming slightly confusing for citation purposes, gives the book a more 

conversational character and adds coherence to each chapter by linking the different pieces 

together. Something of a novelty is also that each chapter is preceded by a photo accompanied 

by an explanation of approximately 150 words, selected following a call for photographic 

contribution. The photos beautifully convey the temporal suspension of photographic 

encounter as a window into the complex entanglement between a medical issue, its 

embodiment, and its context. Although the photos add value to the volume, they might, at the 

same time, feel unsettling as they are overwhelmingly from places generally associated with 

‘exoticism’ (with just one exception out of sixteen, depicting homeless people living in Oregon 

coming out of mobile showers; p. 260-261). This use of ‘exotic Other’ in ethnographic 

photography for illustrating anthropological textbooks has previously raised criticism, despite 

increasing efforts to decolonize the discipline.1  

 

One of the biggest merits of the volume, I believe, resides in introducing topics such as 

childhood to be explored in itself (some exceptions might be Rita Astutti’s (2011) research on 

how children learn about death in Madagascar, albeit not necessarily directly related to medical 

anthropology). In this regard, the authors acknowledge, on the one hand, the importance of 

children as valuable contributors to culture-making and ethnographic knowledge, while on the 

other, aligning medical anthropology’s interest with other disciplines: pediatric medicine and 

 
1 See Tunstall and Esperanza 2016 for a discussion on the use of photos for introductory 
anthropology textbooks. 



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psychiatry; development studies; cognitive and experimental psychology. The case study on 

children with diabetes (Christine Dedding chapter), for instance, epitomizes this attitude 

toward children as epistemic subjects of embodied disease, while the culturally specific 

expressions of the stress epidemic of children in Suriname and Swaziland (Ria Reis chapter) 

underscores the cultural way children articulate their struggles in a health/illness related 

manner. 

 

Another excellent value of the volume relates to its capacity for encompassing a great array of 

topics from diverse geographical, social, cultural or political backgrounds. It is this range, I 

believe, that showcases the stark inequalities in health status, distribution and access that raise 

much global concern. Take, for example, the case study on homosexual sex workers diagnosed 

with HIV in Kenya (Emmy Kageha Igonya and Eileen Moyer chapter), whose fight against the 

stigmas associated with HIV within their own community and their diagnosis, their sexual 

orientation and their occupation within society at large, becomes an everyday struggle of 

survival in unimaginably precarious conditions; or the case studies on the difficulties (if not 

impossibilities) of accessing health care when living in liminal immigration status on national 

borders (the case studies on Mexican undocumented immigrants from Mexico by Heide 

Castañeda, and on women war refugees from Burma/Myanmar in Thailand by Meagan 

Wilson). However, while these cases are speaking about extreme vulnerability, all case studies 

unveil both how vulnerability becomes ever so present in terms of health all over the world, 

and how people find creative and compassionate ways of creating supportive and empowering 

networks. 

 

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. 

 

 

 



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Works Cited  

 

Tunstall, E. and Esperanza, J. 2016. “Decolonizing Anthropology Textbook Covers” Savage 

Minds. (Available at https://savageminds.org/2016/06/20/decolonizing-anthropology-

textbook-covers/). 

 

Astuti, Rita 2011. “Death, Ancestors, and the Living Dead: Learning without Teaching in 

Madagascar”. In Children’s Understanding of Death: From Biological to Religious 

Conceptions edited by Victoria Talwar, Paul L. Harris and Michael Schleifer. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press. Pp. 1-18. 

 

Cristina Douglas is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, 

UK. Her research focuses on the relations between people living with a dementia diagnosis and 

therapy-animals. 

 

 

 

 

© 2018 Véronique Senécal-Lirette 

 


