Social Medicine and Social Change in Boston
Harvard Summer School
ANTH S-1666
Section 1
CRN 35774
No one wants someone they love to starve or go without medicine or shelter, but one in ten people go hungry every day, a record-high number are homeless every night, and nearly three million children live in extreme poverty in the United States, one of the wealthiest nations on earth. This course takes a social medicine approach to investigating problems of poverty and their interventions in Boston, Massachusetts. Social medicine is a discipline that examines how political, economic, and historic forces become embodied as pathologies and how the same forces that create uneven distribution of disease also create barriers to care. Some of the pathologies we examine are addiction, hunger, homelessness, mental illness, and homicide, all worsened by racism, sexism, and sometimes the very institutions that ought to help. In this course, we emphasize understanding the observations, judgements, and calls to action from people who endure the miseries of poverty. To do so, students read ethnographic research in medical anthropology and learn directly from community members during class visits. Students complete three group ethnographic exercises which take them to a jail, ask them to report on a program for the homeless, and create an act of service based on what they learn from their informants is a specific need for physical survival.
Registration Closes: June 19, 2024
Credits: 4
View Tuition Information Term
Summer Term 2024
Part of Term
4-week session
Format
On Campus
Credit Status
Graduate, Noncredit, Undergraduate
Section Status
Open