Roundtable

Reviewed by: Society for Medical Anthropology

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Students

Primary Theme: Health

Secondary Theme: Inequality

(3-0560) Theoretical Perspectives on Health and Social Justice: future directions

This roundtable will review the history, achievements and challenges of Critical Medical Anthropology as an anthropological approach to domestic and global health with the explicit aim of promoting social justice. The session asks what might be the most constructive directions for the future? As a theoretical framework which includes both engagement and critique, Critical Medical Anthropology is a crucial player in the development of a medical anthropology that traces the ethnographic intersections and real life dilemmas for people's health with respect to cities, labor, colonialism and the hidden injuries of class, race and gender. The effort is also to focus on the way people work to understand, resist and change these conditions over time and place. What are the crucial questions today in the face of increasing environmental disasters and global warming in addition to finance capitalism, ongoing inequalities and the growth of right-wing movements? How might medical anthropology best tackle these issues and contribute to progressive social change?

Organizer(s)

• Ida Susser

  CUNY, Graduate Center

Chair(s)

• Ida Susser

  CUNY, Graduate Center

Discussant(s)

• James Trostle

  Trinity College, Department of Anthropology

Presenter(s)

• Theodore Powers

  University of Iowa

• S. Christopher Alley

  Columbia University

• Jonathan Stillo

  Wayne State University

• Lisa Figueroa-Jahn

  CUNY, Graduate Center

Organizer(s)

• Jason Gerdes

  The Graduate Center, CUNY