Research program HEALTH, CARE AND THE BODY

Research topics

The theoretical climate in the program is strongly influenced by the idea of the socio-cultural construction of reality. Experiencing and defining illness, health and well-being, manifesting and attaching meaning to body and sexuality, and creating medical knowledge and practice are the outcome of social transactions and cultural transmissions. The research cluster has an interdisciplinary character, including researchers working in the fields of medical anthropology and sociology, sexuality, sociology of the body and food, and social studies of medical science and technology. Three general objectives of the program are:

Investigate in comparative perspective changing health experiences, sexual identities and body regimes,

Identify and analyze the social and cultural factors involved in the construction of scientific knowledge in medicine, and their influence in the way in which such knowledge is put to practice in clinical settings.

Identify the exercise of biomedical power and study the patterns of resistance to and acceptance of medical regimes. 

The program has in 2004 worked towards establishing itself as a separate research cluster in the ASSR by expanding its membership, as advised by the International Advisory Board. Prof. Dr. Annemiek Richters who leads the Culture, Health and Illness group of the Leiden University has joined the program with her PhD students. This collaboration will widen the scope of the program to include a new subprogram on Violence, trauma, health and human rights. The ASSR also has established a collaboration with the Social Health Department of the Amsterdam Medical Faculty and with the International Institute for Asia Studies (IIAS) with an aim of collaboration in the Socio-genetic marginalization in Asia program (SMAP).

The strength and sustainability of the cluster is reflected in an increased number of research projects, partner institutions and funding sources. External funding adds to the university support for the research program and strengthens the empirical and comparative scope of the research program. In seeking funds, the researchers set the agenda for research. We rarely get involved in contract-research, and then only if the study fits in our research program.

The sub-programmes.

At present research conducted in this cluster can be divided into six sub-programs, which are strongly interrelated and do not constitute autonomous units. Most researchers of the cluster take part in and feel affiliated to more than one sub-program. :

I. Diversity in health cultures and body regimes

The body, be it healthy or sick, is an intimate point of reference from which and through which people experience the world. These experiences are differentiated by cultural background, gender and socio-economic diversity. This program explores in comparative perspective embodied experiences and practices in the fields of illness, health care, sports, dance and food. Each of these domains has its own specific discourse and practice in relation to body and health.  

2. Child health and child agency 

The aim of this program is to develop the field of child health from an anthropological perspective. Central to the projects in this program is a focus on children as social actors and on children’s own health understandings and actions in the context of their lives. Theoretically the sub-program critically analyses the applicability of concepts and theories developed in adult-centred social science that relate to discussions on agency and structure, competence and the development of cognition, and issues of vulnerability, accountability and power. Methodologically, important themes in this sub-program are the development of cross-culturally applicable methods suitable for qualitative research with children of different ages. 

3. Social and cultural interpretations of ageing

This program is developing a new way of looking at ageing: older persons are not so much looked upon as individuals who need care, but rather as acting agents within their families and communities. Central to the research are perceptions of health among older persons, meanings of old age, social position, memory, reciprocity, respect, care, kin relations, successful ageing, gerotranscendence, agency, sexuality, violence, generational conflict, ill health and death.

4. Globalization and new technologies of health

The focus of this sub-program is on the production, distribution, deployment and consumption of biomedical knowledges and the technologies; both in clinical and in everyday settings. It also studies  related processes of change in health care, both over time and from culture to culture. The program takes as point of departure that developments in technoscience are bringing about radical transformations in contemporary health care and society at large. Health policy makers are seeking ways to assess the financial, organizational, and ethical implications of new medical technologies, which promise increased longevity, bodily perfection, of reduced risk of illness or impairment – and therefore capture mass media attention and are in high demand. These new technologies reinforce an increasingly dominant individualism, leading to higher demands on medicine. Medicine itself is thereby becoming both unsustainable and increasingly inequitable. The program at present focuses on three specific kinds of new technologies:, pharmaceuticals, vaccines and genetic information technologies.

5. Violence, trauma, health and human rights

This research program takes a point of departure that trauma should not be seen as a series of individual experiences of isolated victimsbut must be located within a particular social and political context, which determine to a large extent the nature and impact of the crisis. It aims to explore how individuals and communities endure, break apart under, or work through and transcend the effects of these traumatic experiences, with special attention for the gendered impact of traumatic events. Healing of the individual and social wounds are linked to (violent) events of the past, a changing demographic context and related gender relations, basic security and socio-economic development.

6. Gender, sexuality and culture

This final sub-program explores the mutually constitutive influences of ethnicity, class, age, nationality, and power structures on gender and sexual relations. Sexuality is seen as much a product of culture, pertaining to individual experience and shared ideas, as it is a product of nature. It is to be studied as a relational concept defined in relation to other axes of difference. The current program on gender, sexuality and culture, devotes particular attention to the study of the development of sexual and gender identities and cultures, bodily pleasures and expressions, and power relations affecting gender and sexual performances, and their consequences in terms of well-being and health.

 

Cluster director: Anita Hardon (UvA)

Cluster PhD coordinator: Ria Reis (UvA)

Cluster PhD student committee member: Maria Elena Planas Toledo (UvA)

 

Staffmembers and PhD Students in this Cluster