Social Lives of Medicines

An anthropological study of the social functions and meanings of medicines in different cultures.

Susan Reynolds Whyte (Author), Sjaak van der Geest (Author), Anita Hardon (Author)

9780521804691, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 January 2003

212 pages, 12 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.338 kg

'It is difficult to do justice to a book that is full of so many different ethnographic studies and details. The plethora of ethnographic material is the book's big strength.' Journal of Social Anthropology

Medicines are the core of treatment in biomedicine, as in many other medical traditions. As material things, they have social as well as pharmacological lives, with people and between people. They are tokens of healing and hope, as well as valuable commodities. Each chapter of this book shows drugs in the hands of particular actors: mothers in Manila, villagers in Burkina Faso, women in the Netherlands, consumers in London, market traders in Cameroon, pharmacists in Mexico, injectionists in Uganda, doctors in Sri Lanka, industrialists in India, and policymakers in Geneva. Each example is used to explore a different problem in the study of medicines, such as social efficacy, experiences of control, skepticism and cultural politics, commodification of health, the attraction of technology and the marketing of images and values. The book shows how anthropologists deal with the sociality of medicines, through their ethnography, their theorizing, and their uses of knowledge.

Part I. Introduction: 1. An anthropology of materia medica
Part II. The Consumers: 2. Mothers and children: the efficacies of drugs
3. Villagers and local remedies: the symbolic nature of medicines
4. Women in distress: medicines for control
5. Sceptical consumers: doubts about medicines
Part III. The Providers: 6. Drug vendors and their market: the commodification of health
7. Pharmacists as doctors: bridging the sectors of health care
8. Injectionists: the attraction of technology
9. Prescribing physicians: medicines as communication
Part IV. The Strategists: 10. Manufacturers: scientific claims, commercial aims
11. Health planners: making and contesting drug policy
Part V. Conclusion: 12. Anthropologists and the sociality of medicines.

Subject Areas: Medical anthropology [PSXM], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]