CMA Part 1: The 'C' in Critical Medical Anthropology stands for 'curious', 'confused', 'contemplative'...

Michaelmas term’s courses left me with more questions than answers. Twice a week from October-December, my class would come together to discuss readings primarily about Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). With “Medical Anthropology” already hard enough to define—often when asked what we study, we’d start with “ah funny you ask…’” followed by a pause and desperate glances at each other for support, and finally, “well, it kinda goes like this…”—adding the “Critical” doesn’t make it easier at all. How I’ve come to understand CMA is that it (critically) analyzes the biomedical model of care and its resulting medical system. It draws on the political economy of health, along with power dynamics that influence healthcare delivery and social determinants of health. Specifically, we examined concepts such as structural violence, overmedicalization, biopower, and what it means to suffer. Despite some dated terms, Baer et al. (1986) provides a succinct summary of what CMA entails—trust me, this

Michaelmas term’s courses left me with more questions than answers. Twice a week from October-December, my class would come together to discuss readings primarily about Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). With “Medical Anthropology” already hard enough to define—often when asked what we study, we’d start with “ah funny you ask…’” followed by a pause and desperate glances at each other for support, and finally, “well, it kinda goes like this…”—adding the “Critical” doesn’t make it easier at all. How I’ve come to understand CMA is that it (critically) analyzes the biomedical model of care and i