Perhaps 'medical anthropology' has not yet become a household term. Although anthropologists still go to Papua New Guinea, Mayotte, or the headwaters of the Amazon, many now work closer to home, on the border between Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, or in a venture capital company that does gene-sequencing. Nevertheless, the core themes of myth, death and reproduction draw even these new anthropologists back into the traditional fold. Medical anthropologists do birth, sickness, decay and death, just as their predecessors did in Papua New Guinea.

LRB 14 December 2006 | PDF Download