Critical medical anthropology: Perspectives in and from Latin America

Diana Bueno‐Gutiérrez,Nerli Paredes‐Ruvalcaba,Carlye Chaney,Martha Alicia Ruiz Velasco Muñoz,Federico Dickinson,Sofia Irene Olmedo,Emily Wolfe‐Sherrie,Karla Ivanna Hernández‐Gámiz,Alejandra Núñez‐De La Mora,Aimé López‐González,Anahí Ruderman,Alanna E F Rudzik

doi:10.1002/ajhb.23727

Abstract

Critical medical anthropology: Perspectives in and from <scp>Latin America</scp>

Highlights

As we describe in the following pages, the manner in which the structure of biomedicine has come to dictate social practices is colonial in nature, in that indigenous people are subjected to its biopolitical practices and processes, while indigenous medical systems are devalued
The co-production of anti-colonial knowledge. These case studies demonstrate some of the outstanding theoretical contributions of indigenous communities to critical medical anthropology (CMA), exploring the anti-colonial perspective that sets Latin American critical theory apart from its northern counterparts, and emphasising the role of indigenous agency in collaborative research to define this as a process of knowledge co-production
Drawing on examples of collaborations around maternal and infant health, we have demonstrated the multidisciplinary processes through which public health, long-term ethnography, medical anthropology and community organisations intersect to improve maternal health, from an anti-colonial positionality

Summary

Introduction

As we outline in this volume, Latin American critical theory has been influential at the intersection of medicine, epidemiology and anthropology, leading to the development of whole fields of study. These have been pivotal in the development of Latin American social sciences since the mid-twentieth century. Martínez Hernáez (2008), for his part, argues that there are multiple ironies to this obliteration This includes Anglo-American anthropologies’ and CMA’s claim to ownership of political economy and neo-Marxist theoretical approaches that originated in Latin American critical thought (such as dependency or under-development theories) or in southern Europe (Gramsci’s theory of hegemony), while they ignore social science production that builds upon these traditions in Portuguese, Spanish or Italian.. This includes Anglo-American anthropologies’ and CMA’s claim to ownership of political economy and neo-Marxist theoretical approaches that originated in Latin American critical thought (such as dependency or under-development theories) or in southern Europe (Gramsci’s theory of hegemony), while they ignore social science production that builds upon these traditions in Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. Other progressive theories such as collective health and social medicine have been marginalised and colonised, while the epistemic hierarchy of scientific knowledge production and the hegemony of the anglophone academic systems of ranking and qualification remain unchallenged (Santos 2014)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion