Physician Anthropologists

Abstract

Physician anthropologists have contributed extensively to the anthropology of biomedicine, as well as to other aspects of medical anthropology. Their use of detailed clinical case narratives allows elucidation of what is at stake for individuals and communities in the course of any given illness. Biomedically informed observations of bodies illustrate the connections between microscopic harm and macrosocial arrangements, while observations of clinical spaces and medical knowledge production contribute to current debates over evidence, metrics, migration, and humanitarianism. In moving away from culturalist explanations for illness, physician anthropologists have drawn attention to the manifold workings of structural violence—and have often sacrificed the possibility of deep epistemological challenges to biomedicine. While raising a note of caution about the moral authority of physician anthropologists, I recognize that much of this scholarship has laid the intellectual groundwork for a movement toward equity that refuses to justify poor-quality health care for poor people.