Anthropology 316DD - Special Topics in Anthropology: 'Drugs and Devices'

This seminar will explore anthropological approaches to political economy and materiality within the context of medical anthropology. Medical anthropologists have long been focused on the ways health and illness are reconceptualized in relation to the production and circulation of various organic and inorganic materials -- for example, drugs, devices, vaccines, organs, and stem cells, to name a few. Against the backdrop of these scholarly debates, this seminar will take up a series of ethnographies, each about a different type of "biocapital" broadly construed, to foster student discussions about the global transaction of biological materials.

Prereq: 8 credits in Anthropology.