Introducing this Summer School
“Social Sciences, Public Health and Medicine,”
Our Aiming to the Construction of an Interdisciplinary Field

Francis Zimmermann

 

We are attempting to address a multi-faceted world of social science issues related to Health and Medical Ressources, from the point of view of History, Sociology, Political Science, Economy, and Social and Cultural Anthropology. The field of research we are attempting to construct might be distributed over five main empirical domains of investigation, namely—

• Pharmaceuticals, Economy and Politics,
• Alternative Medical Products and Orphan Drugs,
• Emergent issues: Gender, Disaster, &c.,
• Social and Political History of Diseases,
• Ressources, our Knowledge of, and our Relationship to, the Natural Kingdom

 

A few preliminary readings

 

(A most imperfect and provisory point of departure. All suggestions are welcome, to elaborate upon this bibliography. We have been favouring texts that promote interdisciplinary approaches. Some of the following references might seem to be antiquated, but they are actually “classic texts” that represent landmarks in the field. Apologies for Zimmermann's personal bias towards what Jessica Muller called the “trilogy” of anthropology, bioethics and medicine.)

 

fox_advanced_technology.pdf — Renée C. Fox, Advanced Medical Technology—Social and Ethical Implications, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 2 (1976), pp. 231-268.

fox_swazey_leaving_field.pdf — Renée C. Fox; Judith P. Swazey, Leaving the Field, The Hastings Center Report, Volume 22, No. 5, September-October 1992, pp. 9-15.

hahn_kleinman.pdf — Robert A. Hahn; Arthur Kleinman, Biomedical Practice and Anthropological Theory: Frameworks and Directions, Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 12, 1983, pp. 305-333.

marshall_anthropology_bioethics.pdf — Patricia A. Marshall, Anthropology and Bioethics, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1992), pp. 49-73.

marshall_human_subjects.pdf — Patricia A. Marshall, Human Subjects Protections, Institutional Review Boards, and Cultural Anthropological Research, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Spring, 2003), pp. 269-285.

morgan_dependency_anthro_critique.pdf — Lynn M. Morgan, Dependency Theory in the Political Economy of Health: An Anthropological Critique, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Volume 1, Number 2, June 1987, pp. 131-154.

muller_trilogy.pdf — Jessica H. Muller, Anthropology, Bioethics, and Medicine: A Provocative Trilogy, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 8, No. 4, Conceptual Development in Medical Anthropology: A Tribute to M. Margaret Clark, December 1994, pp. 448-467.

scheper-hughes_lock_body.pdf — Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1987, pp. 6-41.

 

 

Francis Zimmermann's webpage

http://ehess.philosophindia.fr/inde/accueil/editorial/zimmermann.html