Theory and Practice in Medical Anthropology – Serie

Hariti is the ancient Indian goddess of childbirth and women healers, known at one time throughout South and Southeast Asia from India to Nepal and Bali. Daughters of Hariti looks at her 'daughters' today, female midwives and healers in many different cultures across the region. It also traces the transformation of childbirth in these cultures under the impact of Western biomedical technology, national and international health policies and the wider factors of social and economic change. The authors ask what can be done to improve the high rates of maternal and infant deaths and illnesses still associated with childbirth in most societies in this area and whether the wholesale replacement of indigenous knowledge by Western biomedical technology is necessarily a good thing.

Worlds of Psychotic People brings a fresh twenty-first century voice to the lives of those with serious psychological disorders, focusing on the manner in which psychiatric patients experience their subjective worlds. Based on ethnographic research gathered at the psychiatric hospital of Saint Anthony's in the Netherlands over a period of five years, it seeks to describe from the perspective of the mental patient some of the fears and hopes that mark an individual's encounter with the fixed reality-structures of a clinical mental ward.

Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with political significance. Bridging elements of psychology, sociology, body theory, immunology and medical anthropology, twelve papers from leading scholars explain some of the health-hazards of emotional and social pressure, whilst analysing the semiotic and social responses to the imagery of immunity.

Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with political significance. Bridging elements of psychology, sociology, body theory, immunology and medical anthropology, twelve papers from leading scholars explain some of the health-hazards of emotional and social pressure, whilst analysing the semiotic and social responses to the imagery of immunity.

Worlds of Psychotic People brings a fresh twenty-first century voice to the lives of those with serious psychological disorders, focusing on the manner in which psychiatric patients experience their subjective worlds. Based on ethnographic research gathered at the psychiatric hospital of Saint Anthony's in the Netherlands over a period of five years, it seeks to describe from the perspective of the mental patient some of the fears and hopes that mark an individual's encounter with the fixed reality-structures of a clinical mental ward.