The introduction sets out two central ideas around which this collection of articles on hospital
ethnography has been organised. The first is that hospitals are not identical clones of a …

The focus of this book is medicines (swallowed, injected, rubbed on), as understood by
anthropologists concerned solely with their social uses. The text begins with examples of a …

▪ Abstract This review discusses pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena by following
their “life cycle” from production, marketing, and prescription to distribution, purchasing, …

This article raises the question to what extent health care as practised in biomedicine
includes care as a moral and existential value. The text is at the same time a ‘teaser’to draw …

The ready availability and extreme popularity of Western pharmaceuticals in developing
countries poses important general issues for medical anthropology. In attempting to explain why …

Self-care, though the most common of all forms of therapeutic action, has been little studied.
This paper describes the context of self-medication with western pharmaceuticals in an area …

Sjaak van der Geest is Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.
He has done fieldwork in Ghana and Cameroon. Presently he is involved in anthropological …

… (van der Geest and Finkler Citation2004; original italics) … van der Geest Citation2005). …
van der Geest Citation2006; Brysiewicz Citation2007). Horsley brings this fascination home, in an …

Background Successful aging is a worldwide aim, but it is less clear which indicators
characterize elderly persons as successfully aged. We explored the meaning of successful aging …

People in Kwahu-Tafo, a rural town in Southern Ghana, regard a peaceful death as a ‘good
death’. ‘Peaceful’ refers to the dying person having finished all business and made peace …