Brotherton, P. Sean
(Ph.D. McGill University, 2004)
Assistant Professor - Joint appointment with the College of Human Medicine
brothe12@msu.edu

Anthropology & College of Human Medicine
Michigan State University
328 Baker Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Phone: 517-353-7174
Fax: 517-432-2363

P. SEAN BROTHERTON is a cultural anthropologist who focuses on the critical study of health, medicine, science, subjectivity, and the body. His current research examines the impact of public health policies on everyday lives, and the role of the state in mediating the impact of macroeconomic changes in the context of the Caribbean (and, more broadly, Latin America). Theoretically, this research explores the relation between medicine, morality, and power, and how these factors influence the formation of individual and collective subjectivities.

Dr. Brotherton's dissertation, The Pragmatic State: Socialist Health Policy, State Power, and Individual Bodily Practices in Havana, Cuba, examines how the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the strengthening of the US embargo are changing the relationship between socialist health-policies and individual practices. Drawing on recent theoretical work on the anthropology of the state and governmentality, the dissertation examines the multiple on-the-ground social processes that shape and influence Cuba's contemporary primary health care system.

Dr. Brotherton recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This research documents how individual citizens with access to US dollars, in contemporary Cuba, are increasingly -- and ironically --becoming active health consumers in a climate of scarce resources. Dr. Brotherton has also carried out ethnographic research on the politics of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Kingston, Jamaica.

He teaches courses on the anthropology of medicine, science, and the body, social theory, and health policy.

A few recent publications include:

Articles:

2005 Macroeconomic Change and the Biopolitics of Health in Cuba's Special Period. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 10(2): 339–369.

1998 Culture, Health Care Delivery and HIV/AIDS: Voices from People of Colour. Canadian AIDS News Vol. X (2): 13-14

Works-in-progress:

Forthcoming - Anthropologie et mondes socialistes et (post-)/socialistes. Editor of Special Issue of Anthropologie et sociétés (with Sabrina Doyon and Vintila Mihailescu).

Forthcoming - Vivre la révolution cubaine: les politiques des pratiques individuelles et étatiques à l'ère du post-socialisme. Anthropologie et sociétés (with Sabrina Doyon).

Under review - "We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists": Emergent Capital, Shifting Ideologies, and Cuba's Changing Health Sector. American Ethnologist.

Book:

In preparation The Pragmatic State: Macroeconomic Change, Emergent Capital, and the Biopolitics of Health in Cuba's Special Period.

Conference Presentations:

2006 Shifting State Ideologies, Incipient Capitalism, and Cuba's Changing Therapeutic Itineraries in Cuba's "Special Period," paper to be present at the American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Jose, California, to be held November 15-19.

2006 Shifting State Ideologies, Incipient Capitalism, and Cuba's Changing Therapeutic Itinerary, paper presented at Cuba: In Transition? Pathways to Renewal, Long-Term Development and Global Reintegration, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, held March 30-31.

2005 Salud Internacional: Cambios Marcoeconómicos y Biopolíticas de la Salud en Cuba, paper presented at the Jornadas Hispano-Lusas de Antropología de la Salud-Enfermedad – I Curso Internacional de Perfeccionamiento, Universidad de Extremadura, Complejo Cultural San Francisco, Cáceres, España, held March 3-5.

2005 Cambios Macroeconómicos y Biopolíticas de la Salud en Cuba (Macroeconomic Change and the Biopolitics of Health in Cuba), paper presented at the I Jornada Anual de REDAM: Salud, Políticas Publicas y Diversidad Cultural América Latina-Europa, Aula Magna, Universitat de Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, España, held February 23.

2002 Políticas de Salud y Prácticas Individuales en La Habana, Cuba (Health Policy and Individual Practices in Havana, Cuba), poster presented at the XIIth Congress of the International Association of Health Policy, Palma de Mallorca, Aula Magna Pueblo Español, held May 21-24.

2000 "Contagious Bodies:" The Politics of HIV/AIDS in Kingston, Jamaica, paper presented at the 8th Latin-American Congress of Social Medicine, Havana, Cuba, held July 3-7.

1999 The Technologies of Colonialism(s): (Re)Imagining the "Post-colonial" Body?, paper presented at the Canadian Anthropological Society, Quebec City, Quebec, held May 12-15.

1998 "Contagious Bodies:" Multiple Discourses from a Jamaican HIV/AIDS Hospice, paper presented at the British Sociological Association, Edinburgh, Scotland, held April 6-9.

1997 Colonialism, Medicine, and Representation: AIDS and the "Black Body" in Western Biomedical Discourses, paper presented at the Canadian Anthropological Society, St. John's, Newfoundland, held June 12-15.