ABSTRACT
This chapter links the framing and maturing of medical anthropology to social and political movements that gained momentum worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s. Medical anthropology has a critical role to play in giving voice to those negatively affected by these circumstances, in documenting illnesses associated with them, and in maintaining a critique of the exercise of power involved in their resolution, as Vincanne Adams illustrates in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the theories and ethnographic practices of twentieth-century medical anthropology remain important and compelling; other new questions and approaches have emerged to shape what we do, how and where; the combination of the two explain the vitality of the discipline today. Feminist activism and feminist anthropology in particular have had significant effect on the discipline, supporting both its directions of enquiry and its theory and analysis. Globally, gender hierarchies continue to disadvantage women. Women still lack the autonomy to make their own decisions about their health.
