Health, Care and the Body (UvA)

Redactie openresearch.amsterdam, Zahra Runderkamp, Jeske de Vries

This Programme Group aims to analyse:
-Changing experiences of health and well-being, sexual identities and body regimes
-Social and cultural factors that influence the use of scientific knowledge in clinical settings, care and self-help practices.
-The exercise of biomedical power and the patterns of resistance to and acceptance of medical regimes and scientific knowledge and technology.
They address a broad range of topics, including research on AIDS/HIV, the body and food, morality, reproductive health, children, crime, pharmaceuticals, genetics, medical technologies and practice.

The research cluster has an interdisciplinary character, including researchers working in the fields of medical anthropology and sociology, postcolonial, gender and sexuality studies, and the social studies of (bio)medical science and technology.

More information

The Programme Group is divided in 4 subprograms:

Globalization and the science and technologies of health policies and practices
Focussing on the production, distribution, deployment and consumption of biomedical knowledge and technologies; both in clinical and in everyday settings. This subprogram is conducted in close collaboration with the Center for Global Health and Inequality (hyperlink).
Young people's health and well-being
To develop the research field of child and youth health from an anthropological perspective, focussing on young persons as social actors and their understandings and actions concerning health and well-being.
Anthropology of crime and violence
Focussing on phenomena of crime and violence. Crime and violence are considered products of complex socio-cultural relations and scientific and medical interventions.
Postcolonial bodies and subjectivities
Comparative research is being conducted on embodied experiences, the diversity in the configurations of (dis)abled and ageing bodies and the technologies and practices affording them and in the construction of racial, sexual and gendered identities. Like the history of medicines, research on chronically ill patients, queer and gay research, studies of sexuality in relation to HIV transmission, research on trans-gender and trans-sexuality, research on crime and criminal identification and research on the biomedical production of the family.