Showing papers by "Margaret Lock published in 1990"
TL;DR: It is shown how values which were central to female identity in Greece can become a liability after immigration and how the notion of Greek identity in Canada is a fluid category which is subject to repeated transformations.
Abstract: The creation of ethnically sensitive health care is a major federal and provincial government concern in Canada at present. The concept of multiculturalism is used to reinforce the notion of rights for minority groups and the Canadian mozaic is explicitly contrasted with the American melting pot. In this paper, the lives of Greek immigrant women in Montreal are used to illustrate how class and gender are as relevant to the immigrant experience as is ethnicity. It is shown how values which were central to female identify in Greece can become a liability after immigration and how the notion of Greek identity in Canada is a fluid category which is subject to repeated transformations. It is suggested that medical anthropologists who ignore the complexity of social categories and whose focus is limited to the cultural construction of illness and the expression of distress are in danger of reinforcing a notion of the "quaint ethnic," a stereotype to which the concept of multiculturalism is often reduced.
70 citations
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: A comparative analysis of how different societies respond to organ transplantation calls into question a universal event thought to be the most “natural” of all, and hence an increase in the number and further routinization of such operations.
Abstract: The performing of certain kinds of organ transplants calls into question a universal event thought to be the most “natural” of all: death. By tinkering with dying we start to make what is usually taken as an unassailable division between culture and nature rather fuzzy at the seams. A comparative analysis of how different societies respond to this situation can encourage a reflective re-examination of what we in North America and Europe have come to accept as inevitable in contemporary medical care, namely, a gradual refinement in the technology and drugs associated with organ transplantation, and hence an increase in the number and further routinization of such operations.
44 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, unqualified support for the incorporation of "alternative medicine" into the organizational system within which the dominant medical system is practiced is criticized because dominant medical systems are liable to be used to justify existing social and political relations in any given society.
Abstract: Anthropologists are in general supportive of pluralism in medical systems and of the integration of indigenous medical systems with biomedicine into medical practice. In this paper, unqualified support for the incorporation of "alternative medicine" into the organizational system within which the dominant medical system is practiced is criticized because dominant medical systems are liable to be used to justify existing social and political relations in any given society. Hence any inequalities of power and access to the necessities of life in a given society remain unquestioned. The incorporation of traditional herbal medicine into the biomedical system in Japan is described as an illustrative case study in orchestrated medical integration. Even though the "traditional" practitioners in this case are themselves MDs, the practice of herbal medicine is radically transformed upon its incorporation into socialized mainstream medicine in Japan. Rationalization of the traditional system has led to a transforma...
33 citations
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: The authorsUS scolaire des eleves du cycle inferieur du secondaire (7e-9e annees) is a form of revolte adolescente in Japan The authors.
Abstract: Les tresors perdusOrdre/desordre social et recits de revolte des adolescents japonaisII existe dans le Japon contemporain plusieurs formes de revolte adolescente. L'une d'elles est le refus scolaire des eleves du cycle inferieur du secondaire (7e-9e annees). Divers discours ont propose une explication de cette revolte, et ces discours ont oriente la facon de concevoir le probleme et ses solutions. En general, au Japon, la revolte des adolescents est percue comme une " maladie de la civilisation ", liee a la modernisation. Ses causes immediates seraient l'urbanisation et la transformation de la famille en famille nucleaire. Les remedes proposes sont pour la plupart fondes sur le retour a la morale traditionnelle japonaise. Quant au traitement des enfants qui refusent l'ecole, il a pour but de les amener a se conformer aux exigences du milieu scolaire.
2 citations