Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzing a longitudinal study of HPV occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Emily A. Wentzell explores how people can use individual health behaviors like participating in medical research to enhance group well-being amid crisis and change.
Trade Review“
Collective Biologies is an engaging, theoretically astute, and crisply written ethnography of research participation and shifting notions of gender and modernity in Mexico. Emily A. Wentzell captures a sense of the way biomedical research increasingly becomes enfolded into the experiences and projects of everyday life and particular understandings and aspirations of modernity in a way that is both emergent and urgent to understand. Her thoughtful, accessible, and illuminating examination makes crucial contributions to scholarship in science studies, medical anthropology, and Latin American studies.” -- Megan Crowley-Matoka, author of * Domesticating Organ Transplant: Familial Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico *
“Emily A. Wentzell's study challenges medicine's conception of ‘the body’ as a discrete entity and the way medical testing is done and the results understood. It is an excellent contribution to both medical anthropology and to public health.” -- Laura A. Lewis, author of * Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico *
"This solid contribution to medical anthropology reifies the concept that individuals enfold themselves into larger, collective, societal arenas. Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."
-- G. R. Campbell * Choice *
"Wentzell’s skill in describing these biological abstractions is impressive. She has the capacity to weave complex subjects together: class differences, Mexican gender norms, national stereotypes, history, the economy, racial stereotypes, sexual disease transmission, familial and educational concerns, perceptions of governmental function, and more." -- William Sorensen * The Latin Americanist *
Table of ContentsPreface: Collective Biologies in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Sexual Health Research, Relationships, and Social Change in Cuernavaca 1
2. Performing Modern Masculinities in Medical Research 35
3. HPV and Couples Biology 52
4. Cultivating Companionate Families 81
5. Creating a "Culture of Prevention" 106
6. Evangelicals Participating as Piety 130
7. From "Human Subjects" to "Collective Biologies" 155
Appendix: The Study Design 181
References 189
Index 213
