This article reviews some of the current writing on medical anthropology, and is guided by political orientation/implication in the choice of its study targets, its analysis and its construction of solutions for the problems investigated. Starting from the narratives of anthropologists, it goes on to show the historical and socio-political bases characteristic of the subject in their countries of origin or migration. Within a general overview of the three principal contemporary trends – critical medical anthropology, the anthropology of suffering and the anthropology of biopower – the focus is on theoretical and thematic choices to meet the demand for “politicization” of the anthropological debate in the field of health, on the basis of which an “implied” medical anthropology is advocated.
medical anthropology; review of the literature; critical medical anthropology; social suffering; biopower