Postgraduate Course: The Anthropology of Pharmaceuticals (SCAN11013)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Social and Political Science |
College |
College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
10 |
| Home subject area |
Social Anthropology |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None |
|
|
| Course description |
Pharmaceuticals are fascinating objects because they connect the practices of a global industry with subjective experiences of healing, transactions between prescribers and patients, contradictions between self-care and health commodification, shifting boundaries between the normal and the pathological, patents and intellectual property, legal and ethical claims to health as a human right, competing standards of "best evidence," and the regulatory policies of national and international institutions.
Anthropologists have long explored the uses of medicinal substances, but mostly with a focus on how non-biomedical healing traditions employ herbal remedies. An "anthropology of pharmaceuticals"$ûdefined as the ethnographic study of mass-manufactured medications$ûhas been emerging only since the late 1980s. This field of enquiry took shape when a limiting emphasis on patients' "irrational uses" of drugs was eschewed in favour of a broader engagement with their entire trajectory from manufacturing, marketing, distribution, prescription and consumption down to governmental regulations and evaluations of safety. This also brought new attention to how drugs beyond biomedicine are industrially produced or how multinational drug corporations draw on traditional pharmacological knowledge.
|
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites |
|
| Prohibited Combinations |
|
Other requirements |
None
|
| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will know anthropologists' key approaches to the social and cultural dimensions of pharmaceuticals. They will be able to locate the anthropology of pharmaceuticals in relation to medical anthropology, social anthropology and related social sciences. They will be familiar with the most influential anthropological analyses of pharmaceuticals and be able to reflect critically on them. They will have a better grasp of the global pharmaceutical industry and its practices.
|
Assessment Information
| Essay of 4,000 words. |
| Please see Visiting Student Prospectus website for Visiting Student Assessment information |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Stefan Ecks
Tel: (0131 6)50 6969
Email: Stefan.Ecks@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Miss Madina Howard
Tel:
Email: Madina.Howard@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:39 am
|
University Homepage