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Downey G. Skill building in freediving as an example of embodied culture. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2024; 379:20230150. [PMID: 39155712 PMCID: PMC11391316 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0150] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2023] [Revised: 03/26/2024] [Accepted: 04/02/2024] [Indexed: 08/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Skilled activity is a complex mix of automatized action, changed attention patterns, cognitive strategies and physiological adaptations developed within a community of practice. Drawing on physiological and ethnographic research on freediving, this article argues that skill acquisition demonstrates the variety of mechanisms that link biological and cultural processes to produce culturally shaped forms of embodiment. In particular, apneists alter phenotypic expression through patterned practices that canalize development, exaggerating the dive response, developing resistance to elevated carbon dioxide levels (hypercapnia) and accommodating hydrostatic pressure at depth. The community of divers provides technical advice and helps to orient individuals' motivations. Some biological processes are phenomenologically accessible, but others are sub-aware and must be accessed indirectly through behaviour or altered interactions with the environment. The close analysis of embodied skills like freediving illustrates how phenotypic plasticity is inflected by culturally patterned behaviours. Divers do developmental work on bodily traits like the dive response to achieve more dramatic performance, even if they cannot directly control all elements of the neurological and physiological responses. The example of expert freediving illustrates the imbrication of biology and culture in embodiment. This article is part of the theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Greg Downey
- School of Social Science, Macquarie University , Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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Malafouris L, Röhricht F. Re-thinging Embodied and Enactive Psychiatry: A Material Engagement Approach. Cult Med Psychiatry 2024:10.1007/s11013-024-09872-6. [PMID: 39026131 DOI: 10.1007/s11013-024-09872-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/29/2024] [Indexed: 07/20/2024]
Abstract
Emerging consensus among enactivist philosophers and embodied mind theorists suggests that seeking to understand mental illness we need to look out of our skulls at the ecology of the brain. Still, the complex links between materiality (in broadest sense of material objects, habits, practices and environments) and mental health remain little understood. This paper discusses the benefits of adopting a material engagement approach to embodied and enactive psychiatry. We propose that the material engagement approach can change the geography of the debate over the nature of mental disorders and through that help to develop theoretical and practical insights that could improve management and treatment for various psychiatric conditions. We investigate the potential role of Material Engagement Theory (MET) in psychiatry using examples of aetiologically different mental illnesses (schizophrenia and dementia) in respect of their shared phenomenological manifestations, focusing particularly on issues of memory, self-awareness, embodiment and temporality. The effective study of socio-material relations allows better understanding of the semiotic significance and agency of specific materials, environments and technical mediations. There is unrealised potential here for creating new approaches to treatment that can broaden, challenge or complement existing interventions and practices of care.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lambros Malafouris
- Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Str, Oxford, OX1 2PG, UK.
- Hertford College, Oxford, OX1 3BW, UK.
| | - Frank Röhricht
- East London NHS Foundation Trust and Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
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Andersen RS, Høybye MT, Risør MB. Expanding Medical Semiotics. Med Anthropol 2024; 43:91-101. [PMID: 38437012 DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2024.2324892] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/05/2024]
Abstract
This special issue explores the evolving landscape of medical semiotics of conventional biomedicine. With expansion we refer to the range of phenomena considered signs or symptoms of underlying disease, but also the growing anthropological attention to the medical sign system in ways which reach beyond classic semiotic analysis. The articles testify to the expansion in terms of empirical foci and theoretical contributions. As part of the introduction, we discuss three modes of reading symptoms within medical anthropology: the hermeneutic, material, and critical readings, all highlighting the crucial role of medical anthropology in understanding the biosocial and cultural dimensions of medical semiotics.
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Affiliation(s)
- R S Andersen
- Department of Public Health, Family Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
- Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - M T Høybye
- Interacting Minds Centre, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Elective Surgery Center, Silkeborg Regional Hospital, Silkeborg, Denmark
| | - M B Risør
- Center for General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- The General Practice Research Unit, Department of Community Medicine, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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Bühler N. Precision public health in the making: examining the becoming of the "social" in a Swiss environmental health population-based cohort. FRONTIERS IN SOCIOLOGY 2023; 8:1219275. [PMID: 38162929 PMCID: PMC10754959 DOI: 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1219275] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2023] [Accepted: 11/21/2023] [Indexed: 01/03/2024]
Abstract
Expanding the concept of "precision" or "personalized" medicine, personalized health and precision public health designate the use of various kinds of data-genomic, other omics, clinical, or those produced by individuals themselves through self-tracking-to optimize health interventions benefiting the whole population. This paper draws on an ethnography of the implementation of a population-based environmental health cohort to shed light on the reconfigurations brought about by the "personalization" of public health in Switzerland. Combining human biomonitoring and molecular epidemiology, this cohort aims to advance the science of the exposome, a notion referring to the totality of exposures to which individuals are subjected over their lifecourse. Addressing the tension between holism and reductionism, this paper points to the important gap between the promissory horizon of the exposome and the realities of practices. Situations of reductionism are defined as moments of friction and negotiation between different rationales and values, exposing what makes the science of the exposome, including its material, economic, institutional, and methodological constraints, as well as its imaginaries and values. Rather than opposing holism and reductionism, I emphasize that they constitute two sides of the same coin, as they both pragmatically enable action and produce situated versions of the social. This empirical case shows how reductionism operates at the chemical, biological, and populational levels to produce public health scientific and social values. It thus contributes to contextualizing the pragmatic and strategic choices made by scientists, as well as the values they favor, in a research environment marked by the predominance of biomedicine over public health. It shows how the reductionism of the "social environment" was made for a better social integration of the cohort into the Swiss political and scientific landscape of public health. Bringing together actors involved in public health and questions of environmental exposures, this cohort can be interpreted as a biomedicalization of public health research, as well as an attempt to socialize it through the broad category of the exposome.
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Park S. Deadly secret: situating the unknowing and knowing of the source of the Ebola epidemic in Northern Uganda. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 2021. [DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.13488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Sung‐Joon Park
- Department of Anthropology Martin‐Luther‐University Halle‐Wittenberg Reichardtstraße 11, 06114 Halle (Saale) Germany
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Pathak G. Permeable persons and plastic packaging in India: from biomoral substance exchange to chemotoxic transmission. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.13365] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Gauri Pathak
- Department of Global Studies Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7, Building 1465, Room 328, 8000 Aarhus C Denmark
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Béhague DP, MacLeish K. The Global Psyche: Experiments in the Ethics and Politics of Mental Life. Med Anthropol Q 2020; 34:5-20. [PMID: 32311783 DOI: 10.1111/maq.12570] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2019] [Revised: 01/09/2020] [Accepted: 01/10/2020] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Dominique P Béhague
- Center for Medicine, Health & Society, Vanderbilt University Nashville, USA.,Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Kenneth MacLeish
- Center for Medicine, Health & Society, Vanderbilt University Nashville, USA
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Broom A, Kenny K, Prainsack B, Broom J. Antimicrobial resistance as a problem of values? Views from three continents. CRITICAL PUBLIC HEALTH 2020. [DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2020.1725444] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Alex Broom
- Department of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Katherine Kenny
- Department of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Barbara Prainsack
- Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Jennifer Broom
- Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast University Hospital, Queensland, Australia
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Abstract
What constitutes "human reproduction" is under negotiation as its biology, social nature, and cultural valences are increasingly perceived as bound up in environmental issues. This review maps the growing overlap between formerly rather separate domains of reproductive politics and environmental politics, examining three interrelated areas. The first is the emergence of an intersectional environmental reproductive justice framework in activism and environmental health science. The second is the biomedical delineation of the environment of reproduction and development as an object of growing research and intervention, as well as the marking off of early-life environments as an "exposed biology" consequential to the entire life span. Third is researchers' critical engagement with the reproductive subject of environmental politics and the lived experience of reproduction in environmentally dystopic times. Efforts to rethink the intersections of reproductive and environmental politics are found throughout these three areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martine Lappé
- Department of Social Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, California 93407-0329, USA
| | | | - Hannah Landecker
- Department of Sociology and Institute for Society and Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
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Pathak G, Nichter M. The Anthropology of Plastics: An Agenda for Local Studies of a Global Matter of Concern. Med Anthropol Q 2019; 33:307-326. [PMID: 30968437 DOI: 10.1111/maq.12514] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2018] [Revised: 02/03/2019] [Accepted: 02/15/2019] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Anthropology has largely ignored plastics, even as they have emerged as the paradigmatic material-and problem-of our times. In this article, we make the case for an anthropology of plastics as a priority for environmental and medical anthropological research. Drawing from exploratory fieldwork in India, we briefly highlight the benefits and risks of different types of plastics, identify areas for anthropological investigations of human-plastic entanglements, and unpack major debates about plastic control. We recommend analyses that take into account the social life of plastics and the life cycle of plastic production, consumption, circulation, disposal, retrieval, and decomposition. We propose a facilitator role for anthropologists in bringing environmental NGOs and the plastic industry to the table to reduce the human and environmental health risks related to widespread reliance on plastics. Overall, we argue that anthropological analyses are urgently needed to address environmental and global health concerns related to plastics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gauri Pathak
- Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Mark Nichter
- Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona
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