THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF PHARMACEUTICALS: A Biographical Approach

TLDR

Pharmaceuticals span production to consumption, each phase involving distinct actors and values, making their study central to medical anthropology, health policy, and broader anthropological debates on culture, nature, and globalization. The review examines pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena across their life cycle from production to efficacy. The authors trace the pharmaceutical life cycle—production, marketing, prescription, distribution, purchasing, consumption, and efficacy—to analyze social and cultural dynamics.

Abstract

▪ Abstract This review discusses pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena by following their “life cycle” from production, marketing, and prescription to distribution, purchasing, consumption, and finally their efficacy. Each phase has its own particular context, actors, and transactions and is characterized by different sets of values and ideas. The anthropology of pharmaceuticals is relevant to medical anthropology and health policy. It also touches the heart of general anthropology with its long-time interest in the concepts of culture vs nature, symbolization and social transformation, and its more recent concerns with the cultural construction of the body and processes of globalization and localization. The study of transactions and meanings of pharmaceuticals in diverse social settings provides a particularly appropriate empirical base for addressing these new theoretical issues.