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Being a girl with a rare disease: an anthropological investigation on Turner Syndrome
Journal Title: SALUTE E SOCIETÀ 
Author/s: Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz 
Year:  2019 Issue: 3 Language: English 
Pages:  13 Pg. 94-106 FullText PDF:  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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Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz, in "SALUTE E SOCIETÀ" 3/2019, pp. 94-106, DOI:10.3280/SES2019-003009

   

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