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79519-01 - Seminar: Health, Medicine and Care (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2026 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Piet Van Eeuwijk (peter.vaneeuwijk@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This seminar course represents a blend of ethnography and medical anthropology which enables us to better understand both the dialectic and mutuality between culture and biology against the backdrop of current communities in the Global South and the Global North. Such ‘local biologies’ are grounded on the contextualization of interpretations not only of the body, but also of the landscapes of past and contemporary modes of healthcare and medical systems/medical cultures (or simply of medicine). This will lead us to rich ethnographic descriptions of culture- and context-related knowledge (production), experiences and practices in reference to different specific African, Asian or Latin American as well as global health phenomena such as newly emerging zoonotic diseases (e.g., Covid-19, Ebola, Zika), HIV/AIDS or dengue fever. By this, we do not emphasize and repeat the biomedical-somatic appearance of ‘old tropical Global South’ infectious pathologies, but the interplay – and sometimes the disjunction – between biological-physical and cultural-social-economic processes plus political conditions in particular on household and community level. Current meaningful fields where this entanglement is well articulated are, for instance, mental illnesses, body weight, pain, long-term care and disabilities. Moreover, the Global South is moving, not least through significant recent social, economic, ecological and political changes that provoke radical shifts also in the manifold spheres of health in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. Our globalized world has a massive impact on health, medicine and finally on healthcare in these Global South societies; notwithstanding the Global South exerts manifold influence on our global health reality such as medical mobility, professional brain drains, eldercare resorts, clinical trial sites and organ trafficking. New health (and increasingly medicalized) phenomena such as chronic diseases (diabetes, hypertension, cancer), obesity and drug addictions come upon existing health disparities and inequalities such as poverty, violence, stress and exclusion which may themselves trigger conditions of illness. We may ask: how do existing social, cultural and economic structures think and articulate about and finally act on such entangled health phenomena, for example in a densely populated area in a rapidly growing African or Asian secondary city or in a remote pastoralist hamlet? Such immediate exposures produce and generate not only (health) vulnerabilities, but develop also modes of resilience and agency in health matters which lead to new opportunities, abilities and resources. These dynamics finally transform healthcare services, healing, care provision, health literacy, health policies and biopower – but embedded in the current African, Asian and Latin American context which is not least also influenced and shaped by historical processes, current practices and future challenges. The course of this seminar is structured as follows: we start with 4-5 sessions of an introduction into major theories and concepts of medical anthropology (or anthropology of health) in a chronological way. This part is followed by about 10 sessions in which each session addresses a current topic of medical anthropology. |
| Learning objectives | Three general objectives are set to tackle the fairly broad scope of this seminar: 1. The participants shall be capable to identify and see into the interrelations between 'culture, health and illness' in the light of current global contexts. 2. The participants shall have understood the manifold dynamics and processes which currently transform and rapidly change almost all societies and their health from an ethnographic perspective. 3. The participants shall be enabled to look behind the mist of ‘the Global South as an arena of pathologies’ from a critical gaze based on a decentring understanding and practice of health and medicine. |
| Bibliography | Encyclopedic Description: Lambert, Helen. 2005. Medical Anthropology. In: Barnard, Alan and Jonathan Spencer (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 540-545. Nichter, Mark and Sjaak van der Geest. 2026. Medical Anthropology. In: Cockerham, William C., Jonathan Gabe, Stella R. Quah and J. Michael Ryan (Eds.). The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, 2nd Edition. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1-15. Introductory Literature: Helman, Cecil G. 2007. Culture, Health and Illness, 5th Edition. London: Hodder Arnold. Keck, Frédéric, Ann H. Kelly and Christos Lynteris (Eds.). 2019. The Anthropology of Epidemics. New York, London: Routledge. Lock, Margaret and Vinh-Kim Nguyen. 2018. An Anthropology of Biomedicine. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell. Manderson, Lenore and Carolyn Smith-Morris (Eds.). 2010. Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. Manderson, Lenore, Elizabeth Cartwright and Anita Hardon (Eds.). 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology. New York, London: Routledge. Nichter, Mark. 2008. Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Singer, Merrill, Hans A. Baer, Debbi Long and Alex Pavlotski. 2026. Introducing Health Anthropology: A Discipline in Action. 4th Edition. Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield. |
| Comments | Methods: individual reading, discussion, written presentation, film, group work, (short) lecture as introduction into the seminar’s main topic Participants can write seminar papers (Seminararbeiten). |
| Admission requirements | The number of participants is limited to 25 people. The places are assigned according to date of enrollment and subject of study. Priority will be given to the subjects listed under "modules". |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Wednesday | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday 16.09.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 23.09.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 30.09.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 07.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 14.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 21.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 28.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 04.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 11.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 18.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 25.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 02.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 09.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Wednesday 16.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Modules |
Module: Advanced Social Anthropology (Bachelor's degree subject: Social Anthropology) Module: Advances in Epidemiology, Statistics and Global & Public Health (Master's Studies: Epidemiology) Module: Bodies, Objects, Circulation (Master's degree program: Changing Societies) Module: Migration, Mobility and Transnationalism (Master's degree program: Changing Societies: Migration – Conflicts – Resources (Start of studies before 01.08.2026)) Module: Theory and Themes of Social Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Social Anthropology) Specialization Module Global Europe: Global Ageing and Health (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | The participants will read one literature document in each semester week (as mandatory preparatory work), take part in an active way in the course (in discussion and group work) and deliver an oral presentation (individually or in group) by exploring and elaborating one of the given themes. |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Ethnologie |