Abstract
Anthropologists and sociologists offer numerous critiques of bioethics. Social scientists criticize bioethicists for their arm-chair philosophizing and socially ungrounded pontificating, offering philosophical abstractions in response to particular instances of suffering, making all-encompassing universalistic claims that fail to acknowledge cultural differences, fostering individualism and neglecting the importance of families and communities, and insinuating themselves within the “belly” of biomedicine. Although numerous aspects of bioethics warrant critique and reform, all too frequently social scientists offer ungrounded, exaggerated criticisms of bioethics. Anthropological and sociological critiques of bioethics are hampered by the tendency to equate bioethics with clinical ethics and moral theory in bioethics with principlist bioethics. Also, social scientists neglect the role of bioethicists in addressing organizational ethics and other “macro-social” concerns. If anthropologists and sociologists want to provide informed critiques of bioethics they need to draw upon research methods from their own fields and develop richer, more informed analyses of what bioethicists say and do in particular social settings.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andre, J. 1997a. Speaking truth to employers. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 8(2):199–203.
Andre, J. 1997b. The week of November seventh: Bioethics as practice. In Philosophy of medicine and bioethics: A twenty-year retrospective and critical appraisal, eds. Ronald A. Carson and Chester R. Burns, 153–172. Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic.
Arras, J. 1991. Getting down to cases: the revival of casuistry in bioethics. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16(1):29–51.
Bayer, R., D. Callahan, A. Caplan, and B. Jennings. 1988. Toward justice in health care. American Journal of Public Health 78(5):583–588.
Baylis, F. 1996. Women and health research: working for change. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 7(3):229–242.
Beauchamp, D. 1985. Community: the neglected tradition of public health. The Hastings Center Report 15(6):28–36. doi:10.2307/3563066.
Becker, H. 1968. Whose side are we on? Social Problems 14:239–247. doi:10.1525/sp.1967.14.3.03a00010.
Benatar, S. 1997. Just healthcare beyond individualism: challenges for North American bioethics. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 6:397–415.
Berger, P. 1963. Invitation to sociology. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.
Bosk, C.L. 1985. The fieldworker as watcher and witness. The Hastings Center Report 15:10–14 (June) doi:10.2307/3560517.
Bosk, C.L. 1999. Professional ethicist available: logical, secular, friendly. Daedalus 128(4):47–67.
Bosk, C.L. 2001. Irony, ethnography, and informed consent. In Bioethics in social context, ed. Barry Hoffmaster, 199–220). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Callahan, D. 1984. Autonomy: a moral good, not a moral obsession. The Hastings Center Report 14(5):38–40. doi:10.2307/3561098.
Callahan, D. 1990. What kind of life: The limits of medical progress. New York: Simon & Shuster.
Callahan, D. 1999. The social sciences and the task of bioethics. Daedalus 128(4):275–293.
Carson, R. 1990. Interpretive bioethics: the way of discernment. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 11(1):51–59. doi:10.1007/BF00489238.
Carson, R. 1995. Thinking about cases as stories. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 5(4):347–348.
Childress, J. 1990. The place of autonomy in bioethics. The Hastings Center Report 20(1):12–17. doi:10.2307/3562967.
Churchill, L.R. 1987. Rationing health care in America: Perceptions and principles of justice. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Davis, D. 1991. Rich cases: the ethics of thick description. The Hastings Center Report 21:12–17 (July-August) doi:10.2307/3562994.
De Vries, Raymond 2003. How can we help? From ‘sociology in’ to ‘sociology of’ Bioethics. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32:279–292. doi:10.1111/j.1748-720X.2004.tb00475.x.
DeVries, R., and J. Subedi. (Eds.).1998. Bioethics and society: Constructing the ethical enterprise. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Emanuel, E. 1995. Medical ethics in the era of managed care: the need for institutional structures instead of principles for individual cases. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(4):335–338.
Farmer, P., and N.G. Campos. 2004. Rethinking medical ethics: a view from below. Developing World Bioethics 4(1):17–41. doi:10.1111/j.1471-8731.2004.00065.x.
Forrow, L., Robert M. Arnold, and Lisa S. Parker. 1993. Preventive ethics: expanding the horizons of clinical ethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 4(4):287–294.
Fox, R.C. 1994. The entry of U.S. bioethics into the 1990s: A sociological analysis. In A matter of principles? Ferment in U.S. bioethics, eds. Edwin R. DuBose, Ron Hamel and Laurence J. O’Connell, 21–71. Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International.
Fox, R.C. 1999. Is medical education asking too much of bioethics? Daedalus 128(4):1–25.
Fox, Renee C., and Judith P. Swazey. 1984. Medical morality is not bioethics – Medical ethics in China and the United States. Perspectives in biology and medicine 27(3):336–360 (Spring).
Freedman, B. 1996. Where are the heroes of bioethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 7(4):297–300.
Hoeyer, K. 2006. “Ethics wars”: reflections on the antagonism between bioethicists and social science observers of biomedicine. Human Studies 29:203–227. doi:10.1007/s10746-006-9022-9.
Hoffmaster, B. 1992. Can ethnography save the life of medical ethics? Social Science & Medicine 35(12):1421–1431. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(92)90045-R.
Honkasalo, M.-L., and J. Lindquist. 1997. An interview with Arthur Kleinman. Ethnos 62(3–4):107–126.
Hunter, M. Kathryn. 1991. Doctor’s stories: The narrative structure of medical knowledge. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Imber, J.B. 1998. Medical publicity before bioethics: Nineteenth-century illustrations of twentieth-century dilemmas. In R.DeVries, and S. Janardan (Eds.), Bioethics and society: Constructing the ethical enterprise (pp. 16–37). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Jecker, N.S., and A.R. Jonsen. 1997. Managed care: a house of mirrors. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 8(3):230–241.
Kelly, S.E., P.A. Marshall, L.M. Sanders, T.A. Raffin, and B.A. Koenig. 1997. Understanding the practice of ethics consultation: results of an ethnographic multi-site study. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 8(2):136–149.
Kleinman, A. 1995a. Anthropology of bioethics. In Writing at the margin: Discourse between anthropology and medicine ed. Arthur Kleinman, 41–67. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Kleinman, A. 1995b. Medicine, anthropology of. Encyclopedia of bioethics (revised edition), ed. Reich, W.T., (3):1667-1674. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan.
Kleinman, A. 1997. Everything that really matters: social suffering, subjectivity, and the remaking of human experience in a disordering world. The Harvard Theological Review 90(3):315–335.
Kleinman, A. 1999. Moral experience and ethical reflection: can ethnography reconcile them? A quandry for “The new bioethics.”. Daedalus 128(4):69–97.
Leder, D. 1990. The absent body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lock, M. 2001. The tempering of medical anthropology: troubling natural categories. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15(4):478–492. doi:10.1525/maq.2001.15.4.478.
Lopez, J. 2004. How sociology can save bioethics... maybe. Sociology of Health & Illness 26(7):875–896. doi:10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00421.x.
Mahowald, M.B. 1996. A feminist standpoint for genetics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 7(4):333–340.
Marcus, G., and M. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marshall, P.A. 1992. Anthropology and bioethics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 6(1):49–73. doi:10.1525/maq.1992.6.1.02a00040.
Miles, S.H. 1993. Clinical ethics and reform of access to health care. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 4(3):255–257.
Miles, S.H., and R. Koepp. 1995. Comments on the AMA Report ‘Ethical issues in managed care’. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(4):306–311.
Muller, J.H. 1994. Anthropology, bioethics, and medicine: a provocative trilogy. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8(4):448–467. doi:10.1525/maq.1994.8.4.02a00070.
Nelson, J. 2000. Moral teachings from unexpected quarters: lessons for bioethics from the social sciences and managed care. The Hastings Center Report 30:12–17. doi:10.2307/3527989.
Pellegrino, E.D. 1995. Interests, obligations, and justice: some notes toward an ethic of managed care. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(4):312–317.
Pellegrino, E.D., and D. Thomasma. 1988. For the patient’s good: The restoration of beneficence in health care. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rosenberg, C.E. 1999. Meanings, policies, and medicine: on the bioethical enterprise and history. Daedalus 128(4):27–46.
Rubin, S., and L. Zoloth-Dorfman. 1996. She said/he said: ethics consultation and the gendered discourse. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 7(4):321–332.
Scheper-Hughes, N. 1995. The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3):409–440. doi:10.1086/204378.
Sherwin, S. 1989. Feminist and medical ethics: two different approaches to contextual ethics. Hypatia 4(2):57–72.
Sherwin, S. 1992. No longer patient: Feminist ethics and health care. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Spielman, B. 1995. Futility and bargaining power. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(1):44–52.
Toulmin, S. 1981. The tyranny of principles. The Hastings Center Report 1(6):1–39. doi:10.2307/3560542.
Toulmin, S. 1982. How medicine saved the life of ethics. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 25(4):736–750.
Veatch, R. 1984. Autonomy’s temporary triumph. The Hastings Center Report 4(5):8–40. doi:10.2307/3561097.
Warren, V. 1989. Feminist directions in medical ethics. Hypatia (2):3–87.
Winslade, W.J. 1995. Ethics consultation: cases in context. Albany Law Review 7:79–691.
Winslade, W.J. 1997. Humanistic problem solving: the case of Mr. T. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 8(4):389–397.
Zoloth-Dorfman, L. 1995a. Face to face, not eye to eye: further conversations on Jewish medical ethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(3):222–231.
Zoloth-Dorfman, L. 1995b. One of these mornings I’m going to rise up singing: the necessity of the prophetic voice in Jewish bioethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 5(4):348–353.
Zoloth-Dorfman, L., and S. Rubin. 1995. The patient as commodity: managed care and the question of ethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 6(4):339–357.
Zussman, R. 2000. The contributions of sociology to medical ethics. The Hastings Center Report 30(1):7–11. doi:10.2307/3527988.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Turner, L. Anthropological and Sociological Critiques of Bioethics. Bioethical Inquiry 6, 83–98 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-008-9130-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-008-9130-5