Medical anthropology: essays and reflections from an Amsterdam graduate programme

This volume is a collection of twenty articles by graduates of the Amsterdam Master’s in Medical Anthropology (AMMA) at the University of Amsterdam. The university is known for outstanding and innovative work in the field of medical anthropology and teaching combines a strong ethnographic basis with thorough theoretical grounding.

More than two hundred students from across the world graduated from the AMMA programme over fifteen years, which resulted in a global network of medical anthropologists working in a wide range of positions in their respective societies. When the AMMA programme ended in 2012, some staff and alumni decided to mark the occasion by publishing a book with essays and information about the AMMA programme, which resulted in this thought-provoking edited volume.
All contributions are based on the authors’ exemplary master theses and provide a glimpse of the diversity of the students’ backgrounds, interests, fieldwork and theoretical approaches.

The articles address experiences of health and illness, sexuality, violence, drug use, local healing, body and embodiment, children’s perspectives on health and body, self-harm, gender, obesity, autism, older people, nurses and homecare, reproductive decision-making, parenthood, HIV/AIDS, treatment choices, hospital ethnography, meditation, body techniques, intersubjectivity, illness vocabularies, and hygiene and dirt.
The essays are organized in seven themes: Wellness and Illness, Treatment and Efficacy, Gender and Parenthood, Care and Autonomy, Children’s Worlds, Body and Subjectivity, and Research and Theory.