Medical Anthropology in the West and in Russia

Abstract

The article is an introduction to the issue’s special section on “Medical Anthropology: History, Theory, and Practice”. It briefly discusses the meaning, content, and reach of “medical anthropology” in the Western academic tradition (as opposed to the Russian one where until recently medical anthropology was taken to mean a rubric of physical anthropology), as well as surveys the major disciplinary research centers, periodicals, professional organizations, and introduces some of the practitioners. It presents the contributions collected in the special section and provides an outline of the situation of medical anthropology in contemporary Russia. The author points to the fact that the research direction taken in the West is also beginning to develop in the Russia of nowadays. At the same time the related field of anthropology of consciousness is beginning to draw substantial interest, as well as bioethics which has been well developed in its philosophical and medical but not yet anthropological vein.