Medical Anthropology by Jean Jackson
Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body ... more Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body states. A typology of such behaviors and states, defined as observable and intentional "extreme" alterations to the body, is presented. Epistemological and methodological issues are discussed: limitations of observational data, and role of meaning, intentionality, and consciousness. Rapprochement between Western medicine and Indo-Tibetan medicine requires rethinking biomedicine's radical grounding in physicality and reliance on "evidence-based medicine," and guarding against an ethnocentric Western intellectual hegemony motivating medical science and clinical practice to colonize and subvert non-Western traditions like Indo-Tibetan Buddhist medicine.
Papers by Jean Jackson
INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA, 1992–2004: Controversies, Ironies, New Directions
Annual Review of Anthropology, Oct 1, 2005
This review examines literature on indigenous movements in Latin America from 1992 to 2004. It ad... more This review examines literature on indigenous movements in Latin America from 1992 to 2004. It addresses ethnic identity and ethnic activism, in particular the reindianization processes occurring in indigenous communities throughout the region. We explore the impact that states and indigenous mobilizing efforts have had on each other, as well as the role of transnational nongovernmental organizations and para-statal organizations, neoliberalism more broadly, and armed conflict. Shifts in ethnoracial, political, and cultural indigenous discourses are examined, special attention being paid to new deployments of rhetorics concerned with political imaginaries, customary law, culture, and identity. Self-representational strategies will be numerous and dynamic, identities themselves multiple, fluid, and abundantly positional. The challenges these dynamics present for anthropological field research and ethnographic writing are discussed, as is the dialogue between scholars, indigenous and not, and activists, indigenous and not. Conclusions suggest potentially fruitful research directions for the future.
Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America
University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2003
Copyright© 2002 by the University ofTexas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States ... more Copyright© 2002 by the University ofTexas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States ofAmerica First edition, 2002 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University ...
1. Introduction: Studying Indigenous Activism in Latin America
Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America, 2003
culture, genuine and spurious: the politics of Indianness in the Vaupés, Colombia
American Ethnologist, Feb 1, 1995
In this article I use Edward Sapir's (1924) famous phrase as a theme to explore how Tukanoans... more In this article I use Edward Sapir's (1924) famous phrase as a theme to explore how Tukanoans of Colombia's Northwest Amazon are learning to change their notions of their own history and culture to achieve a better fit with received wisdom about Indianness. Situated in a highly politicized context, this process involves local and national Indian rights organizations and sympathetic international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). I also briefly address the issue of ethnographic authority—the confrontation between anthropological and native visions of indigenous culture and history. [Northwest Amazon, indigenous mobilizing, identity politics, construction of culture, ethnic nationalism]
INTRODUCTION The topic of pain offers a treasure trove of anthropological research projects that ... more INTRODUCTION The topic of pain offers a treasure trove of anthropological research projects that pose intriguing intellectual challenges. To begin with an obvious point, pain, especially chronic pain, is a hugely important issue: 40 percent of patients seeking medical attention cite pain as the reason; approximately 45 percent of people will experience chronic pain at some point during their lives (Taylor 2006: 237); an estimated 86 million Americans have some form of chronic pain (Sullivan 2007: 263); and over US $100 billion is spent yearly in treatment-related costs and lost-work productivity due to chronic pain (Sullivan 2007: 268). Also, pain medicine intersects in complex, anthropologically fascinating ways with powerful institutions like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and government. Another reason to encourage more research is that new insights emerging from social science investigations can potentially ameliorate the distress experienced by pain sufferers and ...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Aug 1, 2009
Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body ... more Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body states. A typology of such behaviors and states, defined as observable and intentional "extreme" alterations to the body, is presented. Epistemological and methodological issues are discussed: limitations of observational data, and role of meaning, intentionality, and consciousness. Rapprochement between Western medicine and Indo-Tibetan medicine requires rethinking biomedicine's radical grounding in physicality and reliance on "evidence-based 2 medicine," and guarding against an ethnocentric western intellectual hegemony motivating medical science and clinical practice to colonize and subvert non-western traditions like Indo-Tibetan Buddhist medicine.
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, 2003
College, died on April 7, 2002 at the age of 90. He was one of Boas' last students, and Ruth Bene... more College, died on April 7, 2002 at the age of 90. He was one of Boas' last students, and Ruth Benedict sat on his Ph.D. committee. His first research, among Modoc Indians in Oregon and California, led to collaboration with Margaret Mead. He contributed four chapters to a book she edited, Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples (1936). In 1939 he carried out fieldwork among the Cubeo (Pamiwa) of the Vaupés region of Colombia, publishing The Cubeo: Indians of the Northwest Amazon in 1963. The first modern ethnography of Tukanoan peoples, the book is still considered a seminal contribution to Amazonian studies and a splendid example of ethnographic writing.
Various paradoxes coalesce around pain, "one of the most controversial areas in neuroscience… rif... more Various paradoxes coalesce around pain, "one of the most controversial areas in neuroscience… rife with philosophical problems" (Aydede and Guzeldere 2002: S266). For example, while pain is conventionally seen as aversive and unwanted, biologically speaking, pain is indispensable. Pain warns of injury or organ malfunction, and helps heal a wound by motivating the individual to tend to and protect the site. Many textbooks on pain begin by describing the extremely unhappy lives of those rare individuals born with a congenital inability to feel pain. Pain medicine plays with this contradiction: one book is titled Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants (Brand and Yancey 1993), and one article's title is "When good pain turns bad" . Both an aspect of mind (experience) and brain (produced by neurological structures and processes), pain illustrates some of the problems associated with mind-body dualism. Murat Aydede and Guven Guzeldere note that the "fundamental tension between what can be quantified as the 'objective' measure of pain as characterized in terms of tissue damage and the 'subjective' criterion of when to categorize a given experience as pain is in fact prevalent in pain research" (2002: S267). Medical science's traditional definition of pain as sensation provides an example. Francis Keefe and Christopher France's definition, "a sensory event warning of tissue damage or illness" (Keefe and France 1999: 137) nicely elides the nature of that warning; while pain is certainly a sensation, its bedrock meaning -and what distinguishes it from nonpainful sensations -is aversiveness, which, being an emotion, does not fit within biomedicine's underlying biologistic foundational premises (see Kleinman 1995: 27-34). Another example: although emotions are always embodied (this is precisely what distinguishes them from cognitions), because we tend to see emotions as an aspect of "the mind," the body's fundamental role in emotions is often obscured, phrases like "heartbroken" notwithstanding.
Universos Revista De Lenguas Indigenas Y Universos Culturales, 2011
The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you... more The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Jackson, Jean E. "Overview of the Colombian indigenous movement." UniverSOS: revista de lenguas indigenas y universos culturales, no.8 (2011): 99-114.
The Meaning and Message of Symbolic Sexual Violence in Tukanoan Ritual
Anthropological Quarterly, 1992
... type of political action and an expression of belief, and most of the time they ... Although ... more ... type of political action and an expression of belief, and most of the time they ... Although this paper focuses on only three kinds of ritual expressions of violence towards women ... made between plant and animal fertility, male maturity and strength, and symbolic expressions of group ...
Imani Mundo: estudios en la Amazonía colombiana
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Medical Anthropology by Jean Jackson
Papers by Jean Jackson