Toward an Anthropology of Immunology: The Body as Nation State

作者：Emily Martin · 发表于：Medical Anthropology Quarterly · 年份：1990 · DOI：10.1525/maq.1990.4.4.02a00030 · 被引用次数：282 · 研究领域：Geographies of human-animal interactions、Global Security and Public Health、Race, Genetics, and Society

In this article I describe the main imagery currently used in popular and scientific descriptions of the immune system in the United States: the body as nation state at war over its external borders, containing internal surveillance systems to monitor foreign intruders. Although in some respects this is a boundary‐oriented, internally flat system, in other respects it contains suppressed hierarchies that draw on cultural concepts of race and gender. I suggest what kinds of ideological work such imagery may be doing and what uses people make of it. Other models of the body and immune responses that build on different imagery are described.