-
A Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-17 Janet Perkins
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Ahead of Print, 2024)
-
Feeling social change in the gut: gyāstrik and the problematisation of domestic roles among Newar women in contemporary Nepal Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-12 Paola Tiné
Drawing upon 15 months of research conducted in 2018–2019 in Bhaktapur, Nepal, this paper examines how middle-class women experience and make sense of gyāstrik (an umbrella term for multiple gut di...
-
Anthropologies of health policy Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-02 Kaveri Qureshi, Marlee Tichenor
In this introduction to our special issue, we take a wide view of the history and epistemic stakes of anthropological and ethnographic approaches to health policy. Drawing on the history of critica...
-
Telecare that works: lessons on integrating digital technologies in elder care from Indian transnational families Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-30 Tanja Ahlin, Kasturi Sen, Jeannette Pols
In recent decades, policy makers around the world have been working on implementing various technologies into healthcare, and the Covid19 pandemic fueled this process. The specialized technological...
-
A matter of balance. Positioning of parents’ selves through negotiations of symptoms’ meaning at a pain clinic for children/young people Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-02 Sara Seerup Laursen
This paper traces how the meaning of symptoms and the positioning of selves are entangled and discursively constructed in therapeutic conversations between parents and therapists at a pain clinic f...
-
Interfacing legitimacy – health and social care integration in Scotland Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-30 Tamara Mulherin
As people, particularly those ageing and living with disabilities, struggle with how care is enacted, integrated care has gained policy purchase in the United Kingdom. Despite integration’s apparen...
-
Countering the logics of war in global health policy: fake drugs, antimicrobial resistance, and fugitive science Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-03 Laura A. Meek
Powerful pharmaceuticals are readily available for purchase throughout Tanzania and global health policy makers decry this situation as dangerous and disordered, as if no rules govern the use of dr...
-
Belly Woman: Birth, Blood & Ebola: The Untold Story Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Adrienne E. Strong
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Ahead of Print, 2024)
-
Gut Anthro: an experiment in thinking with microbes Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Rosie Mathers
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Ahead of Print, 2024)
-
Jointly enclosed in-between: the collective meaning of liminality in refugees’ and other migrants’ mental health care Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Laura Peter
People on the move are increasingly immobilised between and within state borders, having left ‘there’ but not allowed to be fully ‘here’. This paper presents a nuanced examination of this state of ...
-
Politics, law and a lack of sperm: single women and fertility treatment in the Swedish health system Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 Rachel Irwin
In 2016 Swedish law was amended to allow single women to access fertility treatment with donor sperm. In this paper, based on interviews, document analysis and autoethnographic insights, I examine ...
-
Negotiating un/sanitary citizenship: the reception of UK government COVID-19 public health messaging by racialised people highly exposed to infection Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Anna Dowrick, Kaveri Qureshi, Tanvi Rai
Governments across the world differently invoked citizen responsibility for responding to the risk of COVID-19 infection. Approaches which focused on changing social practices served to reinforce d...
-
Globalizing transit worker stress Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Mark D. Fleming
Health scientists have claimed that urban transit workers suffer from higher rates of stress-related disease than workers in most other occupations. This paper examines how a network of scientists ...
-
Broken bones and apple brandy: resilience and sensemaking of general practitioners and their at-risk patients during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Rebekah A. Hoeks, Michael J. Deml, Julie Dubois, Oliver Senn, Sven Streit, Yael Rachamin, Katharina Tabea Jungo
In early 2020, when the first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Switzerland, the federal government started implementing measures such as national stay-at-home recommendations and a strict limitatio...
-
Counter-Stories in the way of caste: towards an anti-casteist public health praxis in contemporary India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Nikhil Pandhi
How can ethnographic methods track implicit & explicit forms of structural casteism in Indian public health policy and praxis? How can a critical attention to ordinary stories and subjectivities of...
-
‘Having the card makes us feel worthless’: the negative value of government-funded health insurance in India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Stefan Ecks, Vani Kulkarni
Since the 2000s, hundreds of government-funded health insurance (GFHI) schemes were introduced in India. These schemes are meant to prevent poorer households from incurring catastrophic health expe...
-
Care without heart: kinship, chronic illness, and the emotion of care in Delhi Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Emilija Zabiliūtė
Drawing on ethnography of one family’s life with diabetes in a poor settlement in Delhi’s suburbs, this paper examines the relationship between emotional structures of care and kinship in the face ...
-
Isabella’s lion: circular care, kinship, and healing in Brazilian Candomblé Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Hannah McNeilly
This paper centers on Isabella, a Candomblé follower who struggled with severe rheumatoid arthritis from an early age, arguing that care and self-care practices in Candomblé are intertwined to such...
-
Relational chronicities: kinship, care, and ethics of responsibility Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Emilija Zabiliūtė, Hannah McNeilly
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Vol. 30, No. 3, 2023)
-
The family doctor: health, kin testing and primary care in Patna, India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Vaibhav Saria, Veena Das, Benjamin Daniels, Madhukar Pai, Jishnu Das
Private primary care providers are usually the first site where afflictions come under institutional view. In the context of poverty, the relationship between illness and care is more complex than ...
-
HIV prevention and public morality in Pakistan: the secular normativity of development Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Ayaz Qureshi
Religious leaders, development experts and state officials in Pakistan were brought together on shared platforms to negotiate a morally–appropriate but scientifically informed response to HIV. Inst...
-
Correction Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-31
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Ahead of Print, 2023)
-
Multi-sensorial perceptions of risk: the aesthetics behind (muco)cutaneous leishmaniasis-related stigma in Ecuador Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Veronica C. Vargas Roman, Jacob Bezemer, Manuel Calvopiña, Fernando Ortega, Noel B. Salazar, Henk D. F. H. Schallig, Henry J. C. de Vries
Previous research on the stigma associated with cutaneous leishmaniasis, a vector-transmitted parasitic disease, focuses on aesthetic appearance affectation as the leading cause of stigmatisation. ...
-
Illuminating the craft of policy: an anthropological approach to policy ethnography Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Joanna Mason
The ‘task to come’ in anthropological fieldwork is rarely discussed explicitly as a set of underpinning methodological, analytical, conceptual, and theoretical precepts and practices. Drawing on le...
-
Governing healthcare: the uses and limits of governmentality in the National Health Service in England Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Lorelei Jones
Using examples from the National Health Service in England, this paper illustrates key features of contemporary healthcare governance: the way decisions are hidden in places that are ‘in between’ a...
-
Patient patients: middle-aged British Pakistani women and the intuition of limits to care Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Kaveri Qureshi
This paper examines the affective inequalities underpinning the extensive responsibilities of care that are shouldered by chronically ill middle-aged British Pakistani women. In the context of eth...
-
When the clinic becomes home: on the limits of kinship care in an eating disorder treatment centre in Italy Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Giulia Sciolli
Drawing on fieldwork in a public residential facility for eating disorders in central Italy, the paper examines the relational temporalities of therapeutics by looking at how time affects treatment...
-
‘A factory of therapy’: accountability and the monitoring of psychological therapy in IAPT Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Mikkel Kenni Bruun
Abstract Since the introduction of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in NHS England, psychological therapy has gained traction as ‘evidence-based’ and ‘effective’ in both clinical and economic terms. In the process, psychotherapeutic care has been reconstituted as highly manualised, standardised, and quantifiable. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork with mental health
-
Narrating the caring fatigue: stories of the ambivalence of filial care in a caregivers’ self-help group in Italy Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Francesco Diodati
This article shows how, within a caregivers’ self-help group in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, the narrative of caring fatigue was mobilised to question and negotiate local normative discourses and social ...
-
Chronic relationships and mental health care: global pharmaceuticals in a local healing shrine in India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-05 Shubha Ranganathan
Abstract The paper explores how chronicities and chronic relationships are fostered at a state-sponsored community psychiatry clinic that has been affiliated with a Sufi shrine in western India. The clinic provides free psychotropic treatment to patients, most of whom are pilgrims visiting the shrine. While the clinic has been lauded for its collaborative approach of blending ‘medicine and prayer’
-
“Initially, medicines will be given, and then we need to study the case”: Medicalized perspectives about chronicity and mental health care in Kerala Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Sudarshan R. Kottai, Shubha Ranganathan
Abstract In response to the global call to upscale mental health services in low-income countries, mental health non-governmental organisations (MHNGOs) have sprung up in Kerala to address mental health needs by partnering with pre-existing locally grown, bottom-up, community-led pain and palliative clinics (PPCs) to increase access to mental health care through task-shifting. The MHNGOs mandate filtering
-
Chronic illness in South Asia: rethinking discourses of risk, evidence, and control Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Shubha Ranganathan
Abstract This special issue brings together five original research papers on chronic conditions in South Asian contexts with a view to rethink dominant discourses of risk, evidence and control surrounding the category of chronic conditions. Focusing on the multiple and contradictory (re)definitions of what counts as illness, specifically in the context of the rising burden of chronic illness, the papers
-
‘I do not feel well here as such. But it has become my home’: abandonment and care in healing shrines Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Shubha Ranganathan
In thinking about care, much research has focused on kin relations, family-related care, and formal (medical) or informal care providers. Yet, how do we understand care responsibilities in contexts...
-
Bodies and orientations. Perspectives and strategies among service users in psychosocial rehabilitation housing facilities in Denmark Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Anne Mia Steno
Abstract Recovery-orientated approaches have grown more and more common in psychosocial rehabilitation in Denmark, thus shifting the focus to the dynamic status of mental health issues that were historically regarded as chronic. This change has caused an important shift towards recognizing service users as humans with equal rights and possibilities. But the recovery-oriented approach is also complex
-
The unsanitary other and racism during the pandemic: analysis of purity discourses on social media in India, France and United States of America during the COVID-19 pandemic Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Christian Desmarais, Melissa Roy, Minh Thi Nguyen, Vivek Venkatesh, Cecile Rousseau
Abstract The global rise of populism and concomitant polarizations across disenfranchised and marginalized groups has been magnified by so-called echo chambers, and a major public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to fuel these intergroup tensions. Media institutions disseminating information on ways to prevent the propagation of the virus have reactivated a specific discursive
-
‘Only parents can understand the problems and needs of children with thalassaemia’: parental activism for thalassaemia care in Northern India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Maya Unnithan, Chhaya Pachauli, Sangeeta Chattoo, Karl Atkin
Abstract Evolving knowledge of genetics and improved clinical care have re-shaped life choices for those suffering from chronic, incurable conditions and their families. Yet the realisation of care requires complex navigation to access vital therapies which is often difficult for individuals or their family carers. In the article, we explore the struggles and strategies of parents of children with
-
‘Small’ data, isolated populations, and new categories of rare diseases in Finland and Poland Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Małgorzata Rajtar
Abstract Health policy and academic discourses on rare diseases and people with rare conditions frequently employ terms such as ‘low prevalence’ and ‘unique’ to characterize the smallness of the population under consideration and to justify targeted action toward these patient groups. This paper draws from recent anthropological scholarship on smallness and data, ethnographic research in Finland and
-
The double-edged sword of ‘community’ in community-based psychosocial care: reflections on task-shifting in rural Nepal Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Liana Chase
Research in the field of Global Mental Health has stoked hopes that ‘task-shifting’ to community workers can help fill treatment gaps in low-resource settings. The fact that community workers inhab...
-
Imaginaries of a laparoscope: power, convenience, and sterilization in rural India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Eva Fiks
Abstract Laparoscopic tubal ligation is the most prevalent method of contraception amongst India’s rural and urban poor. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Rajasthan in 2012–2013, this paper investigates how rural women’s perceptions of a biomedical instrument—the laparoscope—influence their perceptions of sterilization, a procedure often entrenched in coercive, target- and incentive-driven
-
The work of reform: a critical examination of health policy Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Na’amah Razon, Alissa Bernstein Sideman
Abstract Anthropologists have critically examined a range of reforms from education and land to finance and health. Yet the predominant way of looking at reforms has been through a lens focused on neoliberal governance. For example, prior studies of health reforms focus on insurance, financing, and access to care. Yet, seeing reform in this way fails to attend to other types of cultural work at play
-
Nature cure and public health: illness narratives, medical efficacy, and existential suffering Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-04 Joseph S. Alter
Abstract Nature cure is a globalized system of nineteenth century European medicine that developed synergistically in opposition to biomedicine, and that has become popular in India. This essay examines the question of how anthropologists should understand claims that all diseases can be cured with earth, air, sunlight, water and raw food. The question is complicated by a paradox of relativism deeply
-
Biomedical treatment and divine assistance: complementary reproductive itineraries among catholic women users of assisted reproduction technology in Argentina Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-23 Ana Lucia Olmos Alvarez, María Cecilia Johnson
Abstract This paper explores how Catholic women in Argentina use assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs), and particularly the way in which they resort to biomedicine and religion as complementary sources of knowledge, support and assistance during reproductive treatments. It is concerned about the role of the Catholic religion in local reproductive itineraries, seeing that Catholicism has such significant
-
The woman who chose the terreiro. Lay care and medical landscapes in mental health care in Rio de Janeiro Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-20 Manuela R. Müller, Francisco Ortega, Angel Martínez-Hernáez
Abstract Brazilian mental health care reform understands mental health as a complex social process. There is a large literature production within the country focused on deinstitutionalization policy, social determinants of mental health and human rights, however, with little recognition beyond Latin American borders. In addition, cultural dimensions of mental suffering have been neglected in Brazilian
-
Latinx immigrant experiences with chronic illness management in Central Texas: reframing agency and liminality through nepantla Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Scott J. Spivey Provencio
Abstract Immigrant rights have become increasingly contentious and partisan issues in the United States, and especially within the U.S. healthcare system. It is particularly essential to pay attention to Latinx immigrants—the largest immigrant and uninsured population in the United States. Latinx immigrants face many structural and legal challenges that may impact their biomedical healthcare access
-
Uterine fibroid: a socially malignant illness in Haiti Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-24 Christophe Millien, Arlene M. Katz, Joia Mukherjee, Anatole Manzi, Mary Clisbee, Mary Jo DelVecchio Good, Paul Farmer
Abstract This qualitative study documented the effects of uterine fibroids on the suffering of women in Haiti. It makes a unique contribution by re-socializing this disease, by making visible the social inequalities and what is at stake for the women, for their families, and for healthcare delivery. Uterine fibroid is a benign tumor of the uterus, common in gynecology, but profoundly malignant in how
-
Apophatic love, contagion, and surveillance: Orthodox Christian responses to the global pandemic Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Timothy Carroll, Nicholas Lackenby, Jenia Gorbanenko
Abstract As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Orthodox Christians globally reacted to the possibility of contagion and risk in dialogue with theological positions about materials, their own long history which includes surviving previous pandemics and plagues, governmental and civil expectations and edicts, and pious – but often unofficial – understandings about protection and the sacrality of religious artefacts
-
‘Aquí viene una Veneca más’: Venezuelan migrants and ‘the sexual question’ in Peru Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-13 Rebecca Irons
Abstract Migrant access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services has been highlighted as an urgent priority for the 800,000+ Venezuelans who have arrived in Peru in recent years due to political and economic crisis. Venezuelan migrants in Peru, however, negotiate their access to SRH services in what anthropologists term a ‘geography of blame’, and are accused and stigmatised for having imported
-
Deinstitutionalizing art of the nomadic museum: practicing and theorizing critical art therapy with adolescents Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 Daniel Stolfi
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Vol. 29, No. 4, 2022)
-
Good enough mothers: practicing nurture and motherhood in Chiapas, Mexico Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Rosamund Greiner
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Vol. 29, No. 4, 2022)
-
The friend within? The implantable cardioverter defibrillator between saving lives and chronically impairing them Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-12 Fausto Barlocco
Abstract This article considers the way in which a medical technology, the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), by preventing fatal outcomes, in this case sudden death, deriving from cardiac diseases, and specifically hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, contributes to the development of a particular type of chronicity. While biomedicine celebrates technological advances in treatments and naturalises
-
Anthropology of new chronicities: illness experiences under the promise of medical innovation as long-term treatment Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Cinzia Greco, Nils Graber
Abstract In the introduction to the special issue, Greco and Graber discuss the concept of chronicity and the ways it is used in the contributions to the special issue. Historians have shown that the concept of chronic disease has its origins in policy and has always been fluid and vague; however, the classic literature in sociology and nursing has focused on modelling the evolution of chronic disease
-
Vaccinal chronicity: immunotherapy, primary care, and the temporal remaking of lung cancer’s patienthood in Cuba Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-21 Nils Graber
Abstract The Cuban biotechnology industry is producing cancer immunotherapy, in particular, therapeutic vaccines that actively stimulate the immune system to stabilise the tumour. These products aim to transform metastatic malignancies into a chronic disease. Since 2010, this therapeutic concept has been integrated within a public health experiment, consisting of the large distribution of immunotherapies
-
Chronicity and the patient’s decision-making work. The case of an advanced cancer patient Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-21 Sylvain Besle, Aline Sarradon-Eck
Abstract This paper focuses on the particular situation of an advanced cancer patient whose condition has taken a chronic turn. We argue that chronicity of this kind sometimes falls at the frontier of Evidence Based Medicine because the uncertainty about the patient’s condition can lead physicians to resort to clinical trials or non-licensed drugs to prevent the disease from progressing. This situation
-
The nebula of chronicity: dealing with metastatic breast cancer in the UK Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-11 Cinzia Greco
Abstract In this article, I explore how the concept of chronicity is mobilised by different actors in reference to metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and the transformation of the condition as a consequence of medical innovations. I do so by using data collected in the UK between 2017 and 2019 through in-depth interviews with medical professionals involved in the treatment of MBC and with patients living
-
Antimicrobial prescribing matters: the irreconcilability in moral ranking systems Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-03-04 Katharina Rynkiewich
Abstract Antimicrobial resistance caused by widespread use of antimicrobials is a defining challenge of our time. This article presents antimicrobial prescribing among physicians as a morally irreconcilable endeavour. Particularly, the physician may have no good option when antimicrobial resistance is seen as both (1) a global threat to be addressed at the population level, and (2) a threat to the
-
Failing livers, anticipated futures and un/desired transplants Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-02-21 Julia Rehsmann
Abstract This article looks at liver transplants as life-prolonging treatment for chronic liver failure and examines the role anticipation plays in the context of chronic liver conditions. Based on anthropological fieldwork in Germany, this article draws on three exemplary patient accounts to show how the anticipatory experience of waiting for a liver transplant serves as an important period in transplant
-
Poverty and neglected tropical diseases in the American Rural South, by Christine Crudo Blackburn and Macey Lively, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2021 Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2022-02-04 Sarah Emily Smith, Baili Gall, Michael Smetana, Maegan McCane, Courtney Helfrecht
Published in Anthropology & Medicine (Vol. 29, No. 3, 2022)
-
When the trial ends: moral experiences of caregiving in a randomized controlled trial in Goa, India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Angela Leocata, Arthur Kleinman, Vikram Patel
Abstract This is an ethnographic study that examines the experiences of peer counsellors in the Thinking Healthy Programme Peer-delivered (THPP), a randomized controlled trial of a psychological intervention for perinatal depression in Goa, India. Based on nine months of fieldwork from 2015 to 2017 and through caregiving theories posited by one of us, we examine how caregiving is experienced by peer
-
Cultivating distress: cotton, caste and farmer suicides in India Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2021-11-03 Nanda Kishore Kannuri, Sushrut Jadhav
Abstract Nearly 4,00,000 farmers committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2018. This translates into approximately 48 suicides every day. The majority of suicides were those from ‘backwarded’ castes including Dalit farmers. This ethnographic study on cotton farmer suicide reports narratives of surviving Dalit families. The results reveal that financial and moral debt when accrued within a web of
-
‘COVID containers’ in pandemic mediascapes: discursive economies of health, bodies, and race in North America Anthropol. Med. (IF 1.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-21 Crystal (Cal) Biruk
Abstract Bringing an ethnographic sensibility to pandemic mediascapes, this article critically examines three media artifacts that assembled around COVID-19 – as an entity that is viral, social, and political – in the early months of the pandemic in North America. Focusing on the household, the cruise ship, and the body-with-underlying-conditions as ‘COVID containers’, the author argues that material