Medical Activism

by

Christopher Colvin, Shenandoah Worrel

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 August 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0300

Introduction

The anthropology of health activism sits at the intersection of two very rich literatures—medical anthropology and the anthropology of activism. In this entry, activism is conceived of broadly, and includes a wide range of forms and strategies of collective action at a variety of scales. Much of the literature here focuses on patient-led and community-led activism around health but there is also important research on the activism of medical providers, volunteers, and relief workers. The “medical” in medical activism is also interpreted broadly here, and includes forms of public health-related activism rooted in and/or reacting to biomedical logics, practices, and institutions. The substantial literature that has accumulated since the 1980s about the broader relationships between anthropology and activism is not reviewed here unless it speaks more directly to questions of medical anthropology and/or medical activism (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology entries on Human Rights and Social Movements for a review of some of this broader literature).

General Overviews

These edited volumes, essays, and journal special issues examine questions of medical anthropology’s relationships to political activism and other forms of engagement. A cross-cutting theme in this body of work is a sense both of the inevitability of medical anthropology’s confrontation with questions of social and political action and of the complexity and diversity of the ways in which the field attempts to address these questions. Some pieces, like Scheper-Hughes 1995, take a very clear and, in its author’s own word, “militant” position on the question of anthropology’s obligation to act politically through our work. Others, like Butt 2002, are critical of the strategies that medical anthropologists have used to engage in political activism on behalf of the communities they work with. Singer and Baer 1995 works to identify productive integrations of applied anthropological methods and critical health perspectives. Willow and Yotebieng 2022 offers compelling case studies about how some of these issues play out in ethnographic research on health and other issues in North America. What is clear across the perspectives in this section, however, is a belief that medical anthropology cannot avoid addressing questions of the ethical obligations and political impacts of their work. Another cross-cutting theme in this work is the potential narrowness and cultural specificity of our conventional analytical categories of political activism. Campbell and Cornish 2021, the introduction to a two-part special issue, aims to identify broader frames for what counts as meaningful collective action in pursuit of better health and political change. Gamlin, et al. 2020 examines the ways critical medical anthropology in Latin America has taken a more consistently engaged approach rooted in the political economic analysis of health (as opposed to the more culturalist approach long dominant in the Global North). McGranahan 2020 uses three decades across multiple research projects with the Tibetan community in exile to show how activism can take on distinctive forms, rooted in practices of community care, even for those unable to engage in conventional forms of state-directed, citizenship-based claims-making. Finally, Inhorn and Wentzell 2012 highlights the productive tensions and collaborations at the intersections of medical anthropology and other disciplines and argues that these intersections offer new ways of thinking about and engaging in political action for health. This volume also highlights the important impact of feminist theory and activism on medical anthropology’s engagement with activism, an impact that can be seen in many of the sections below.

• Butt, Leslie. 2002. The suffering stranger: Medical anthropology and international morality. Medical Anthropology 21.1: 1–24.

  DOI: 10.1080/01459740210619

  This essay was written in response to Jim Yong Kim’s influential volume Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000) and critiques the ways ethnographic representations of “the suffering stranger” in medical anthropology have been used to advance broad human rights claims and theoretical arguments within the field. The essay is accompanied by a response from the volume’s editors and a follow-up response from the author.

• Campbell, Catherine, and Flora Cornish. 2021. Public health activism in changing times: Re-locating collective agency. In Special issue: Public health activism in changing times: Re-locating collective agency. Edited by Catherine Campbell and Flora Cornish. Critical Public Health 31.2: 125–133.

  DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2021.1878110

  This essay is an introduction to a two-volume special issue in the journal Critical Public Health on public health activism. The collection, which includes several ethnographic papers, highlights some of the successes and challenges of traditional forms of collective action while also challenging the conventional categories of activism, agency, and social change through rich case studies of other forms, scales, and tempos of mobilization for health and social change.

• Gamlin, Jennie, Sahra Gibbon, Paola M. Sesia, and Lina Berrio, eds. 2020. Critical medical anthropology: Perspectives in and from Latin America. London: UCL Press.

  This edited volume explores critical medical anthropology (CMA) in Latin America and highlights distinctive regional approaches and forms of engagement in the field. While there are chapters that explicitly focus on activism—in the context of the judicialization of obstetric violence and rare disease activism—the entire volume provides a thoughtful analysis of the different forms that “engagement” and activism might take in the practice of critical medical anthropology.

• Inhorn, Marcia Claire, and Emily A. Wentzell. 2012. Medical anthropology at the intersections: Histories, activisms, and futures. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.

  DOI: 10.1215/9780822395478

  This edited volume reflects on the evolution of the field of medical anthropology and examines its intersections with other disciplines and forms of knowledge production. The authors address how these intersections give rise to new tensions, opportunities, and forms of thought and action within medical anthropology. The final three chapters focus directly on activism, but the question of medical anthropology’s relationship to action is a cross-cutting theme in the book.

• McGranahan, Carole. 2020. Activism as care: Kathmandu, Paris, Toronto, New York City. Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology 3.1: 43–60.

  DOI: 10.33063/diva-419426

  This essay synthesizes ethnographic research with Tibetan communities in exile across three decades and three continents and brings together literatures on political activism and on care in medical anthropology. It argues for a broader conception of activism—one that encompasses daily acts of care and compassion—while also emphasizing the culturally and politically distinct forms of care and activism experienced by those deprived of citizenship and state-protected rights.

• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. The primacy of the ethical: Propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36.3: 409–440.

  DOI: 10.1086/204378

  This influential essay issued a call to medical anthropology—and anthropology more generally—to set moral and cultural relativism aside in favor of an ethically rooted and politically engaged anthropology. Reviewing her work on infant death in Brazil and political violence in South Africa, Scheper-Hughes argues for a “militant anthropology” that actively joins ethnography and political engagement. Useful exchanges with other anthropologists followed in later editions of this journal.

• Singer, Merrill, and Hans Baer. 1995. Critical medical anthropology. New York: Routledge.

  This foundational text consolidates over a decade’s worth of Singer and Baer’s writing about the emergence of critical medical anthropology, a perspective within medical anthropology rooted in an analysis both of lived experiences and of the sociopolitical contexts of health and illness. It outlines fundamental concepts in the sub-field, including the idea of “critical praxis,” a name for the creative integration of applied anthropology and critical theory.

• Willow, Anna J., and Kelly A. Yotebieng. 2022. Anthropology and activism: New contexts, new conversations. London: Routledge.

  This edited volume looks directly at anthropology’s evolving relationship to activism. While not limited to medical anthropology, there are relevant chapters on environmental justice, GMO-free campaigns, trauma-informed care and acupuncture, and disability. Its focus on anthropology and activism in North America is a useful counter-balance to the predominance of ethnographic work on activism in the rest of the world, emphasizing that the question of activism applies globally.