Being a girl with a rare disease: an anthropological investigation on Turner Syndrome

Journal title SALUTE E SOCIETÀ
Author/s Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/3
Language English Pages 13 P. 94-106 File size 150 KB
DOI 10.3280/SES2019-003009
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Turner Syndrome (TS) is a condition that affects only girls and women and involves a partial or complete absence of an X chromosome. Some characteristics of TS include short stature and ovari-an failure. Girls with TS are put on estrogen replacement therapy and growth hormone treatment. On the one hand TS is a well-recognized medical condition, on the other - a multi-dimensional cultural fact that makes its appearance in a specific historical, social and geographical context. In this text I focus on TS as a kind of a social mirror. I argue that TS is a social lens, through which one can look at various social phenomena, such as girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, medicaliza-tion. TS also challenges anthropology and its key dichotomies, including nature-culture, essential-ism-constructivism, nature-nurture and body-mind.

Keywords: Turner syndrome; Girlhood; Medical anthropology; Motherhood; Disability; Hormones.

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  • ‘Should I Buy Her a Doll’? Motherhood and Turner Syndrome in Poland Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz, Ewa Maciejewska-Mroczek, in Medical Anthropology /2023 pp.177
    DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2170797

Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz, Being a girl with a rare disease: an anthropological investigation on Turner Syndrome in "SALUTE E SOCIETÀ" 3/2019, pp 94-106, DOI: 10.3280/SES2019-003009