Culture, Health and Inequality

The Culture, Health and Inequality theme recognizes the significance of understanding the role of social inequality and cultural interpretations in shaping human experience and addressing pressing global issues.

A concern with inequality brings together scholars across anthropology's subfields whose research highlights the social, cultural, and historical construction of inequalities of age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, racialization, and wealth in contexts of colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization.

With extensive faculty expertise in medical anthropology and the political economy of social inequality, a prominent focus in this thematic area of research is the critical analysis of meaning, suffering and agency among marginalized and vulnerable populations.

Take a look at the ongoing research page for more information about current research projects related to this theme.

Recent publications

  • 2020 - Butt, L. Beyond the government document: migrant family experiences of birth registration in Lombok, Indonesia. The Anthropological Demography of Health, (editors P. Kreager, Q. Kureshi). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, in press.

  • 2019 - Winarnita, M., C. Chan and L. Butt. Narratives of exile twenty years on: long-term impacts of Indonesia’s 1998 violence on transnational Indonesian Chinese women. Identities, https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1537639.
  • 2018 - Butt, L. Affects of unease: mother–infant separation among professional Indonesian women working in Singapore. Global Networks, 18(1). DOI: 10.1111/glob.12175
  • 2018 - Butt, Leslie and J. Ball. Strategic actions of transnational migrant parents regarding birth registration for stay-behind children in Lombok, Indonesia. Population, Space and Place, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/psp.2152

  • 2018 - Thayne Werdal and Lisa M. Mitchell, “Looking out for each other”: Street Involved Youth’s Perspectives on Friendship. Anthropologica. 60: 1-13

  • Roth, E., Cui, Z., Rich, A., Lachowsky, N., Card, K., Armstrong, H., Sereda, P., Moore, D. & Hogg, R. 2018.  Substance use patterns of gay and bisexual men in the Momentum Health Study. American Journal of Men's Health, 12(5):1759-1773.

  • Roth, E., Cui, Z., Rich, A., Lachowsky, N., Card, K., Armstrong, H., Sereda, P., Moore, D. & Hogg, R. (2018). Repeated measures analysis of hazardous drinking among gay and bisexual men in the Momentum Health Study. Substance Use and Misuse, 53(5):816-827.

  • 2018 - Rudnyckyj, Daromir. “Crisis Effects,” Cultural Anthropology. 33(4).

  • 2017 - Rudnyckyj, Daromir and Filippo Osella. Religion and the Morality of the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.