Citation
Palmquist, Aunchalee E. L. (2018). Consuming Immunities: Milk Sharing and the Social Life of Passive Immunity.. Tomori, Cecília; Palmquist, Aunchalee E. L.; & Quinn, Elizabeth (Eds.) (pp. 40-54). London: Routledge.
Abstract
In 1990 Emily Martin published Toward an Anthropology of Immunology: The Body as Nation State, in which she unpacks the “social life of the immune system” (Wilce Jr. 2003) through a cultural critique of metaphors for human immunology. Martin examined scientific discourses of human immunology to gain insight into how culture and society make meaning of disease and resilience to disease. She argued that the metaphors used by scientists, the media, and the lay public to describe the human immune system emanate from a deeply engrained cultural ideology invested in the notion of self and other, the reification of boundaries that must be protected, and the mobilization of resources needed to defend self from that which is non-self (E. Martin 1990). Militaristic and nationalistic metaphors link biomedicine and the body by way of the immune system, to create an imagery of “bodies at war” (E. Martin 1990: 417). Perhaps one of the more striking examples of the influence of such imagery is Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors, demonstrating the influence of military metaphors in producing and reproducing HIV-related social stigma in the wake of “the war on AIDS” (Sontag 1989).
URL
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327653768_Consuming_Immunities_Milk_sharing_and_the_social_life_of_passive_immunityReference Type
Book Section
Year Published
2018
Author(s)
Palmquist, Aunchalee E. L.
ORCiD
Palmquist - 0000-0002-0848-6952
