This review discusses pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena by following
their “life cycle” from production, marketing, and prescription to distribution,
purchasing, consumption, and finally their efficacy. Each phase has its
own particular context, actors, and transactions and is characterized by different
sets of values and ideas. The anthropology of pharmaceuticals is relevant to
medical anthropology and health policy. It also touches the heart of general anthropology
with its long-time interest in the concepts of culture vs nature, symbolization
and social transformation, and its more recent concerns with the cultural
construction of the body and processes of globalization and localization.
The study of transactions and meanings of pharmaceuticals in diverse social settings
provides a particularly appropriate empirical base for addressing these new
theoretical issues
This review discusses pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena by following
their “life cycle” from production, marketing, and prescription to distribution,
purchasing, consumption, and finally their efficacy. Each phase has its
own particular context, actors, and transactions and is characterized by different
sets of values and ideas. The anthropology of pharmaceuticals is relevant to
medical anthropology and health policy. It also touches the heart of general anthropology
with its long-time interest in the concepts of culture vs nature, symbolization
and social transformation, and its more recent concerns with the cultural
construction of the body and processes of globalization and localization.
The study of transactions and meanings of pharmaceuticals in diverse social settings
provides a particularly appropriate empirical base for addressing these new
theoretical issues
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