Urban Mahabharata: Health care, ordinary, traditional, and contemporary ethics
Name
art-fischer-mat-v4_3.pdf
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394.96 KB
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Adobe PDF
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4a56624a6ee671766d52904d22a4e249
Author(s)
Fischer, Michael M. J.
Date Issued
September 2017
Journal
Medicine Anthropology Theory | An open-access journal in the anthropology of health, illness, and medicine
Publisher
Medicine Anthropology Theory
Citation
Fischer, Michael. “Urban Mahabharata: Health Care, Ordinary, Traditional, and Contemporary Ethics.” Medicine Anthropology Theory | An Open-Access Journal in the Anthropology of Health, Illness, and Medicine 4, 3 (September 28, 2017): 98 -129 © 2017 Fischer
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty (Fordham, 2015), we listen with Das to ordinary ethics in challenged lives of poverty, illness, and family relations; and in three registers of (a) advocacy, (b) moral engagement, and (c) acknowledgement of the inherent uncertainties in the very fabric of living these lives, including hers and ours. In this article, I take up the text of Affliction, and comment on moral engagements and sparks of references to the Mahabharata and other traditional, especially Muslim, modes of ethical thought. This commentary can be read as what in Islamic scholarship often are called ‘hashiye’, marginal notes on the main text. I conclude by discussing a mosaic of coverage and gaps in the contemporary ethics of Indian health care and its anthropologies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.17157/MAT.4.3.475
