Kuru Sorcery

Kuru Sorcery PDF Author: Shirley Lindenbaum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131726472X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.

Kuru Sorcery

Kuru Sorcery PDF Author: Shirley Lindenbaum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131726472X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.

Understanding Viruses

Understanding Viruses PDF Author: Teri Shors
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Learning
ISBN: 9780763729325
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
"Combining the molecular, clinical, and historical aspects of virology, Understanding Viruses is a textbook for the modern undergraduate virology course. The text provides an introduction to human viral diseases. Additional chapters on viral diseases of animals; the history of clinical trials, gene therapy, and xenotransplantation; prions and viroids; plant viruses; and bacteriophages add to the coverage."--Jacket.

The Collectors of Lost Souls

The Collectors of Lost Souls PDF Author: Warwick Anderson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421433613
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This riveting account of medical detective work traces the story of kuru, a fatal brain disease, and the pioneering scientists who spent decades searching for its cause and cure. Winner, William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine Winner, Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Winner, General History Award, New South Wales Premier's History Awards When whites first encountered the Fore people in the isolated highlands of colonial New Guinea during the 1940s and 1950s, they found a people in the grip of a bizarre epidemic. Women and children succumbed to muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, and lack of coordination, until death inevitably supervened. Facing extinction, the Fore attributed their unique and terrifying affliction to a particularly malign form of sorcery. In The Collectors of Lost Souls, Warwick Anderson tells the story of the resilience of the Fore through this devastating plague, their transformation into modern people, and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologists. Battling competing scientists and the colonial authorities, the brilliant and troubled American doctor D. Carleton Gajdusek determined that the cause of the epidemic—kuru—was a new and mysterious agent of infection, which he called a slow virus (now called a prion). Anthropologists and epidemiologists soon realized that the Fore practice of eating their loved ones after death had spread the slow virus. Though the Fore were never convinced, Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Now revised and updated, the book includes an extensive new afterword that situates its impact within the fields of science and technology studies and the history of science. Additionally, the author now reflects on his long engagement with the scientists and the people afflicted, describing what has happened to them since the end of kuru. This astonishing story links first-contact encounters in New Guinea with laboratory experiments in Bethesda, Maryland; sorcery with science; cannibalism with compassion; and slow viruses with infectious proteins, reshaping our understanding of what it means to do science.

Prions in Humans and Animals

Prions in Humans and Animals PDF Author: Beat Hörnlimann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110200171
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 743

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Book Description
This comprehensive work, aimed at both students and researchers alike, systematically covers all aspects of prion diseases (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies), from their history, microbiology and pathology to their transmissibility and prevention. The book describes diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru, mad cow disease (BSE), chronic wasting disease and scrapie, highlighting their biochemical, molecular biological, genetic, and clinical aspects. A detailed presentation of the impact of prion diseases in fields such as pharmaceutics, blood products, disinfection, surgical instruments and epidemiology concludes with a discussion of preventive measures. A renowned editorial team, representing the fields of medicine, veterinary medicine and molecular biology, brought together 80 internationally respected authors for this translation and new edition of the successful German publication, not only from relevant research fields, but also from industry and public health institutions. The book includes chapters by, among many other notable scientists, William J. Hadlow, who discovered the relationship between the human and animal forms of prion diseases and Michael P. Alpers, with 45 years of experience in Papua New Guinea investigating the first known human epidemic form, kuru, transmitted by endocannibalism. Further contributions from Gerald A. H. Wells, a veterinary pathologist who described BSE and recognised its similarity to scrapie, thus recording the first cases in 1986 of the most important animal epidemic of modern times, and Robert G. Will, a medical neurologist and epidemiologist who discovered the emergence of the variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in 1996, underscore the strength of this author team. Carefully edited with numerous illustrations, this work offers a systematic approach committed to a clear presentation of the current knowledge of prion diseases. It aims to inspire and stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation, innovative research ideas and effective prevention.

Knowledge, Power, and Practice

Knowledge, Power, and Practice PDF Author: Shirley Lindenbaum
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520077857
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Ranging in time and locale, these essays, which combine theoretical argument with empirical observation, are based on research in historical and cultural settings. The contributors accept the notion that all knowledge is socially and culturally constructed and examine the contexts in which that knowledge is produced and practiced in medicine, psychiatry, epidemiology, and anthropology. -- from publisher description.

Soul, Self, and Society

Soul, Self, and Society PDF Author: Michael Rynkiewich
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1606087738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Globalization and urbanization are twin forces that are powerfully shaping economics, politics, and religion in the world today. Traditional anthropological theories are inadequate to recognize and analyze trends such as global migration, diasporas, and transnationalism. New departures in anthropology and the social sciences seeking to address these and other phenomena can help us critique and reshape the theology and practice of Christian mission. Today most societies are no longer monocultural. In such multicultural contexts any given individual may be competent in several cultures, several languages, several social networks. What does it mean to be in mission with people on the move--people who present themselves in one social identity, language, and culture within a particular setting, and then in another setting, even on the very same day, present themselves in another social identity, language, and culture? In the face of widespread, rapid movement of peoples and their increasingly fluid and multifaceted identities, will the missionary settle down somewhere or be itinerant along with the people? How are perplexing new questions in particular contexts to be addressed, such as: In what ways is the Nigerian who is founding an AIC congregation near Houston a missionary too? How will Brazilians and Koreans be trained for cross-cultural ministry? The world is changing faster than missionaries can be retrained for service. And yet ethnographic tools are still crucial to missionary practice. This important work seeks to draw on recent developments in anthropology to bring valuable perspective and tools to bear on equipping missionaries for work amidst the rapid shifting and complex shaping of peoples by the forces of today's globalized world.

Making Sense of AIDS

Making Sense of AIDS PDF Author: Leslie Butt
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824832493
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In Melanesia, rates of HIV infection are among the highest in the Pacific and increasing rapidly, with grave humanitarian, development, and political implications. There is a great need for social research on HIV/AIDS in the region to provide better insights into the sensitive issues surrounding HIV transmission. This collection, the first book on HIV and AIDS in the Pacific region, gathers together stunning and original accounts of the often surprising ways that people make sense of the AIDS epidemic in various parts of Melanesia. The volume addresses substantive issues concerning AIDS and contemporary sexualities, relations of power, and moralities—themes that provide a powerful backdrop for twenty-first century understandings of the tensions between sexuality, religion, and politics in many parts of the world.

Female Power and Male Dominance

Female Power and Male Dominance PDF Author: Peggy Reeves Sanday
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521280754
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Applying data from over 150 tribal societies to scales developed to measure power and dominance, Sanday offers answers to basic questions regarding male and female power. The view that emerges conforms to no particular theoretical perspective.

Coevolution

Coevolution PDF Author: William H. Durham
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804721561
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
Charles Darwin's "On the Origins of Species" had two principal goals: to show that species had not been separately created and to show that natural selection had been the main force behind their proliferation and descent from common ancestors. In "Coevolution," the author proposes a powerful new theory of cultural evolution--that is, of the descent with modification of the shared conceptual systems we call "cultures"--that is parallel in many ways to Darwin's theory of organic evolution. The author suggests that a process of cultural selection, or preservation by preference, driven chiefly by choice or imposition depending on the circumstances, has been the main but not exclusive force of cultural change. He shows that this process gives rise to five major patterns or "modes" in which cultural change is at odds with genetic change. Each of the five modes is discussed in some detail and its existence confirmed through one or more case studies chosen for their heuristic value, the robustness of their data, and their broader implications. But "Coevolution" predicts not simply the existence of the five modes of gene-culture relations; it also predicts their relative importance in the ongoing dynamics of cultural change in particular cases. The case studies themselves are lucid and innovative reexaminations of an array of oft-pondered anthropological topics--plural marriage, sickle-cell anemia, basic color terms, adult lactose absorption, incest taboos, headhunting, and cannibalism. In a general case, the author's goal is to demonstrate that an evolutionary analysis of both genes and culture has much to contribute to our understanding of human diversity, particularly behavioral diversity, and thus to the resolution of age-old questions about nature and nurture, genes and culture.

Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing

Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing PDF Author: Cheryl Mattingly
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520218253
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
"A valuable collection. . . . The essays in the volume are all fresh, the result of recent work, and the opening chapter by Garro and Mattingly places the current trend in narrative analysis in historical context, explaining its diverse origins (and constructs) in a range of disciplines."—Shirley Lindenbaum, author of Kuru Sorcery "A good place to consult the narrative turn in medical anthropology. Thick with the richness and diversity and stubborn resistance to interpretations of human stories of illness. An anthropological antidote for too narrow a framing of the complex tangle of ways-of-being and ways-of-telling that make medicine a space of indelibly human experiences." —Arthur Kleinman, author of The Illness Narratives