Neuroethics conference podcasts
The Dalhousie University-based Novel Tech Ethics group recently hosted a conference called Brain Matters: New Directions in Neuroethics.  You can read descriptions of the conference at the Dana Foundation's website and in the neuroethics newsletter.  They've also made six plenary talks available as video podcasts.  Here's the list of speakers along with the titles and abst

Psychoanalytic metaphors and mythical medical realities in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s contribution to
There are few subject areas in anthropology untouched by the seminal thought of the late Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss. Though he published only two or three essays concerned expressly with medical subject matter, his theorization in those places of the role of myth and shamanistic authority in symbolic/magical healing opened up questions with lasting significance. I would like to briefly review his ideas with the aim of proposing an alternative reading of them, particularly as they may be applied to contemporary debates in psychiatric anthropology.“The Effectiveness of Symbols” and the often-anthologized essay, “The Sorcerer and His Magic”, both published in 1949

Peter Benson on “Safe Cigarettes” and FDA regulation of tobacco products
In an upcoming issue of Dialectical Anthropology – already available online – Peter Benson has a very interesting article in which he

Epistemological frameworks and the 'feminization' of the HIV/AIDS pandemic
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) recently set up a new blog site called "The Fourth Wave: Violence, Gender, Culture & HIV in the 21st Century."  The site is a counterpart to a forthcoming book edited by Jennifer F. Klot and Vinh-Kim Nguyen, and it makes the chapters of that book publicly-available free-of-charge.  In addition to pdf and Flash versions of the complete papers, the s

Videos of plenary presentations from the SMA conference
The videos of the plenary presentations from the Society for Medical Anthropology's September conference are now available online.  As we've mentioned before, this was a very impressive line-up of speakers.  Videos of most of the talks, as well as Marcia Inhorn's introductions of the speakers, are available at the conference website.  Here's the list: A conference introduction by Marcia Inhorn Keynote address by Paul Farmer (an autobiographical talk about his mentors and influences) Didier