Psychoactive Agents: Drugs, Morality, and Responsibility
Special Section Introduction
Category: English
Pandemic and Politicisation in Argentina: Nursing Professional Trajectories in the Conurbano Bonaerense Region
The article analyses the politicisation of nursing personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, focusing on the trajectories of nurses trained in the public universities of the so-called ‘conurbano bonaerense’, especially in the youn…
Solace of Substance: Agency, Surrender, and Consolation in Addiction and Polydrug Use
Although preceding its association with substance use, early uses of the term ‘addiction’ signified intense attachment or ‘devotion’ to an activity or pursuit, indicating compromised autonomy, a necessary ‘culling’ of conflicting obligations…
UK Khat Prohibition and the Making of a Harmful Drug
This article delves into the complex dynamics of khat (Catha edulis) prohibition in the UK, with a particular focus on a Somali community in north-west London. Despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs finding no substantial eviden…
Hope and Haunting Images: The Imaginary in Danish Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation
Much in life is imagined: hoped for, dreamed about, or dreaded, as we engage with potential futures. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive and neuro-degenerative disease, currently incurable. During long-term fieldwork among Danish rehabilite…
Seeking Knowledge in and for Troubled Times: The Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, MAT, and a Shared Vision
Editorial for the September Issue, 2024
Mother of All Labour: Vulnerability and Immunity in Times of Ebola
Wonkifong Ebola treatment unit was unique at the time of the outbreak that hit the Guinea in 2014. Contrary to other infrastructures run by Western workers, Wonkifong mainly employed personnel from Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a…
Psychoactive Agents: Drugs, Morality, and Responsibility
Special Section Introduction
Labile Bodies: A Hospital Ethnography of Medical Professionals’ Struggles in Deceased Organ Donation
This article presents an ethnographic study of the donor body in deceased organ donation. Drawing on the science and technology studies’ incitement to study bodies being enacted and acted upon in situated practices, I explore the body being done and be…
Mother of All Labour: Vulnerability and Immunity in Times of Ebola
Wonkifong Ebola treatment unit was unique at the time of the outbreak that hit the Guinea in 2014. Contrary to other infrastructures run by Western workers, Wonkifong mainly employed personnel from Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a…
Pandemic and Politicisation in Argentina: Nursing Professional Trajectories in the Conurbano Bonaerense Region
The article analyses the politicisation of nursing personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, focusing on the trajectories of nurses trained in the public universities of the so-called ‘conurbano bonaerense’, especially in the youn…
The Glass Witness: Visual and Tactile Engagements with Online Medical Crowdfunding
Donation-based crowdfunding platforms invite people to tell stories of unmet health needs in a hybrid form—using both words and images—but research to date has not addressed the role of visual practice in this setting, in any detail. In this…
Making Homes in a Nursing Facility in Athens
This Photo Essay seeks to visualise the room-homes of the residents in one of the largest semi-public nursing homes in Athens, Greece. Unlike in other facilities, residents are given the opportunity to intervene in their individual rooms, to…
Hope and Haunting Images: The Imaginary in Danish Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation
Much in life is imagined: hoped for, dreamed about, or dreaded, as we engage with potential futures. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive and neuro-degenerative disease, currently incurable. During long-term fieldwork among Danish rehabilite…
The Glass Witness: Visual and Tactile Engagements with Online Medical Crowdfunding
Donation-based crowdfunding platforms invite people to tell stories of unmet health needs in a hybrid form—using both words and images—but research to date has not addressed the role of visual practice in this setting, in any detail. In this…
The Role of Affective Labour in Expertise: Bringing Emotions Back into Expert Practices
In recent years, a lot of scholarly attention has been devoted to how practices of digitalisation and datafication require medical professionals to work together with different stakeholders, and to how such collaborations shape expertise (St…
Seeking Knowledge in and for Troubled Times: The Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, MAT, and a Shared Vision
Editorial for the September Issue, 2024
Of Truths and Snakes: The Percussive Effects of Asylum Seeking in Australia
Australia’s border hardened stance has created a culture of asylum prevention, providing a rationale for the use of defence and security as the core argument to prevent asylum seeker protection. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken wi…
Of Truths and Snakes: The Percussive Effects of Asylum Seeking in Australia
Australia’s border hardened stance has created a culture of asylum prevention, providing a rationale for the use of defence and security as the core argument to prevent asylum seeker protection. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken wi…
Sugar, A Morally Ambiguous Substance: Responsibility, Social Class and Pleasure in Scotland’s State Primary Schools
Children’s sugar consumption has been marked out as an important area of public health policymaking in the UK, due to connections between sugar consumption, obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental decay. Yet unlike other regulated substances (al…
A Potent Chew?: Kenyan Khat and the Agency of Drugs
Few other categories of things appear so bound up with questions of agency, power and responsibility as that of ‘drugs’. With over a century of global treaties and prohibition of such substances, we are accustomed to thinking of them as pote…
Making Homes in a Nursing Facility in Athens
This Photo Essay seeks to visualise the room-homes of the residents in one of the largest semi-public nursing homes in Athens, Greece. Unlike in other facilities, residents are given the opportunity to intervene in their individual rooms, to…
UK Khat Prohibition and the Making of a Harmful Drug
This article delves into the complex dynamics of khat (Catha edulis) prohibition in the UK, with a particular focus on a Somali community in north-west London. Despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs finding no substantial eviden…
A Potent Chew?: Kenyan Khat and the Agency of Drugs
Few other categories of things appear so bound up with questions of agency, power and responsibility as that of ‘drugs’. With over a century of global treaties and prohibition of such substances, we are accustomed to thinking of them as pote…
The human-nature divide in European Union environmental policy
According to political ecologists, today’s major challenge in environmental policy revolves around rethinking the ontology of the human-nature divide, which assumes “humans” to be fundamentally different from and superior to “nature”, contributing to e…