Professor Emerita
Ph.D University of California, Berkeley, 1976
margaret.lock [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
Please note: Dr. Lock is no longer accepting new graduate students. Applicants interested in the medical anthropology program should contact Professors Hyde, Rees, Stevenson, or Young.
Research Interests
Anthropology of postgenomics, anthropology of bioscience technologies, comparative medical systems, life cycle, gender, Japan.
Biography
Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in Social Studies in Medicine, and is affiliated with the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at ƻԺ. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officier de L’Ordre national du Québec. Lock was awarded the Prix Du Québec, domaine Sciences Humaines in 1997 and in the same year the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain. In 2002 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize and in 2005 the Canada Council for the Arts Killam Prize. In 2005 she was also awarded a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship and was named a Grande Montréalaise, Secteur Social. In 2008 Lock received the Career Achievement Award of the Society of Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Margaret Lock’s research focuses on a comparative anthropology of medicine and biomedical technologies. Lock initially researched the 20th century revival of the indigenous Japanese medical system that continues to proliferate to the present day. She has also carried out ethnographic inquiries into adolescence, female mid life, and old age. Her book Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America, published in 1993 by the University of California Press, won six prizes including the Staley Prize of the School of American Research, the Canada-Japan Book Prize, and the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In 2002 the University of California Press published Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, also an award-winning book. This volume documents professional and public disputes about the recognition of brain death as the end of human life in order that organs can be legally procured for transplant. A book written together with Vinh-Kim Nguyen entitled An Anthropology of Medicine, that examines the global impact of biomedical technologies is in press with Wiley/Blackwells. Lock is currently investigating the contribution of postgenomic knowledge and new imaging technologies to the destabilization of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Representative Publications
Books:
2009 Handbook of Genetics and Society: Mapping the New Genomic Era. Edited with Paul Atkinson and Peter Glasner. New York: Routledge.
2007 Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life. Co-edited with Judith Farquhar. Duke University Press.
2005 Kônenki: Nihon josei ga kataru rokaru baioroji. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo (Japanese translation of Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America).
2004 Nooshi to Zooki Ishoku no Iryoo Jinruigaku. Tokyo Misuzu Shobo (Japanese translation of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. UC Press, 2002).
2003 Remaking Life and Death: Towards an Anthropology of the Biosciences, edited with Sarah Franklin. Santa Fe: School of American Research.
2002 New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: A Festschrift in Honor of Charles Leslie, edited with Mark Nichter. New York: Routledge.
2002 Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2001 Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery, edited with Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele and Pamela Reynolds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2000 Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies: Intersections of Inquiry, edited with Allan Young and Alberto Cambrosio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1998 Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, edited with Patricia Kaufert, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1997 Social Suffering, co-edited with Arthur Kleinman and Veena Das. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1993 Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1993 Knowledge, Power and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life, edited with Shirley Lindenbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1992 La santé mentale et ses visages: Un Québec pluriethnique au quotidien, with Gilles Bibeau, A. M. Chan-Yip, Cécile Rousseau and Carlos Sterlin, edited by Gaëtan Morin. Le Comité de la santé mentale du Québec.
1990 Toshi Bunka to Tôyôigaku. Kyoto: Shibunkaku (Japanese translation of East Asian Medicine: Varieties of Medical Experience. University of California Press, 1980).
1988 Biomedicine Examined, edited with Deborah R. Gordon. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
1987 Health and Medical Care in Japan: Cultural and Social Dimensions, edited with Edward Norbeck. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1980 East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan: Varieties of Medical Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Articles and Chapters in Books:
In press Seduced by Plaques and Tangels: Alzheimer's Disease and the Cerebral Subject. In, F. Vidal and F. Ortega eds., The Neurosciences in Comtemporary Society. Routledge.
In press Learning Again to Live with Uncertainty: Postgenomic Knowledge and Genetic Testing. In, Rod MacDonald and Louis Maheu eds., The Postgenomic Era and its Social Repercussions. ƻԺ Queen’s University Press
2009 Testing for Susceptibility Genes: A Cautionary Tale. In, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter and Hans Jakop Müller eds., Disclosure Dilemmas: Ethics of Genetic Prognosis after the 'Right to Know/Not to Know Debate. Basel, Switzerland pp. 65-84.
2009 Social Ramifications of Testing for Susceptibility Genes, with Adam Hedgecoe, in J. Bollinger et al. eds., Do We Have a Pill for That? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Development, Use, and Evaluation of Drugs in the Treatment of Dementia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
2009 Demoting the Genetic Body, Anthropologica. 51:159-172.
2008 Are Genes Us? In Ruth Kutalek, Armin Prinz eds., Essays in Medical Anthropology. The Austrian Ethnomedical Society after Thirty Years. Wiener Ethnomedizinische Reihe Volume 6. Wien Muenster: LIT Verlag. Pp 111-135.
2008 Biosociality and Susceptibility Genes: A Cautionary Tale. In, Sarah Gibbon and Carlos Novas eds., Biosocialities,Genetics and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge pp. 56-78.
2008 Situating the practice of organ donation in familial, cultural, and political context, Megan Crowley-Matoka. Transplant Reviews 22:154-157.
2008 Preface to Tibetan Medicine in the Contemporary World: Global Politics of Medical Knowledge and Practice, Laurent Pordié ed., New York: Routledge pp. xi-xii.
2007 The Final Disruption? Biopolitics of Post-Reproductive Life. In Marca Inhorn ed., Reprodcutive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium. New York: Berghahn Books pp. 200-224.
2007 Biomedical Technologies and Everyday Life: Cultural Horizons and Contested Boundaries. In Encyclopedia of Science Studies, 2nd Edition. Co-editors, Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch and Judy Wajcman. Cambridge Mass.:MIT Press pp. 875-900.
2007 Susceptibility Genes and Embodied Identity, with Julia Freeman, Gillian Chilibeck, Miriam Padowsky and Briony Beveridge. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 21(3): 256-276.
2007 The Future is Now: Locating Biomarkers for Dementia. In Regula Valérie Burri and Joseph Dumit, Biomedicine as Culture: Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life. New York: Routledge. pp. 61-85.
2007 Genomics, Laissez Faire Eugenics, and Disability. In B. Ingstaad and S. Reynolds-White eds., Disability in Local and Global Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press pp. 189-211.
2007 Biosociality and Susceptibility Genes: A Cautionary Tale. In, Sahra Gibbon and Carlos Novas eds., Revisiting Biosociality. London: Routledge pp. 56-78.
2007 On Dying Twice: Culture, Technology, and the Determination of Death. In T. S. Jost ed., Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics. Second edition. Carolina Academic Press pp. 93-98.
2006 Postmodern Bodies, Material Difference, and Subjectivity. In J. Hendry and Heung Wah Wong eds., Dismanteling the East-West Dichotomy: Essays in Honour of Jan van Bremen. London and New York: Routledge pp. 38-48.
2006 Organ Transplantation in a Globalized World, with Megan Crowley-Matoka. Mortality 11:166-181.
2006 Guest Editor, Special Edition, Community Genetics entitled "Genomics, Genetics, and Society: Bridging the Disciplinary Divides."
2006 Social Political, and Epistemological Aspects of Genetics and Genomics, with S. Cox and Lori d'Agincourt-Canning, Community Genetics 9:137-141.
2006 When it Runs in the Family: Putting Susceptibility Genes in Perspective, with Julia Freeman, Rosemary Sharples and Stephanie Lloyd. Public Understanding of Science, 15:277-300.
2006 Genetic Susceptibility and Alzheimer's Disease: The Penetrance and Uptake of Genetic Knowledge, with Janalyn Prest and Stephanie Lloyd. In Thinking about Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility. A. Leibing and L. Cohen, eds., New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, pp.123-156 (first author).
2006 Global and Local Perspectives on Population Health, with Vinh-Kim Nguyen and Christina Zarowsky. In Healthier Societies: From Analysis to Action. J.Heyman et al eds., Oxford University Press, pp.58-82 (first author).
2006 Interactive Role of Genes and the Environment, with John Frank and Geoffrey Lomax, and Patricia Beard. In Healthier Societies: From Analysis to Action. J.Heyman et al eds., Oxford University Press, pp.11-34 (fourth author).
2006 La 'molecularization' d'esprit et la recherche sur la démence naissante. In Sciences Sociales et Santé 24: 21-54).
2005 Alzheimer's Disease: A Tangled Concept. In Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. Susan McKinnon and Sydel Silverman, eds., New York Routledge pp.104-138.
2005 Preserving Moral Order: Responses to Biomedical Technologies. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan. Blackwell Publishers, pp.483-499.
2005 Culture and Symptom Reporting at Menopause, with Melissa Melby and Patricia Kaufert. In Human Reproductive Update 11:495-512 (secod author).
2005 Inventing a New Death and Making it Believable. In Lying and Illness: Power and Performance. Els van Donge and Sylvie Feinzang, eds., Amsterdam: Her Spinhuis, pp. 12-35.
2005 Anthropologie médicale: pistes d'avenir. In Anthropologie médicale: ancrages locaux, defies globaux. Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 439-461.
2005 The Eclipse of the Gene and the Return of Divination. In Current Anthropology, 46:pp. S47-S70.
2005 Biomedical Technologies, Identity, and Nationalism in J. Robertson ed., A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan. Blackwell Publishers.
2005 Symptom Reporting at the End of Menstruation: Biological Variation and Cultural Difference. In Controversies in Science and Technologies: From Maize to Menopause. D.L. Kleinman, A.J. Kinchy and J. Handelsman, eds. Madison: University of Winsconsin Press, Pp. 236-253.
2005 Global and Local Perspectives on Population Health: Taking Contingency Seriously, with Vinh-Kim Nguyen and Christina Zarowsky. In Social Inequalities and Health. Clyde Hertzman et al., eds. Oxford University Press.
2005 Nature, Nurture and Geoffrey Rose Revisited: Thoughts on Gene-Environment IInteractions, with John Frank and Patricia Baird. In Social Inequalities and Health. Clyde Hertzman et al., eds. Oxford University Press.
2005 Savouring Complexity and Resisting Hype: Molecular Genetics and Alzheimer’s Disease. In Susan McKinnon and Sydel Silverman, eds., Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. New York: Routledge. Pp.196-222.
2005 Unbound Subjectivities and New Biomedical Technologies. In Conerly Casey and Robert Edgerton ed. A Companion to Psychological Anthropology, New York: Blackwell, pp. 298-314.
2005 Editorial: Cross-Cultural Vasomotor Symptom Reporting: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society 12: 1-3.
2005 A Mente Molecularizada e a Busca da Demência Incipiente. Physis: Revista de Saúde Coletiva 15(2): 205-236.
2004 Displacing Suffering: The Reconstruction of Death in North America and Japan. In Death, Mourning and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, A. Robben, ed. London: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 189-204.
2004 Yûsei gaku to Idenshi kogaku no Yûtopia (Utopias of Germline Engineering and Eugenics). In Gendai Shiso (Modern Thought) 32:190-210.
2004 Biomedical Technologies, Anthropological Approaches. In Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World’s Cultures. Kluwer Academic Plenum Publishers, pp. 86-95, 2004.
2004 Medicalization and the Naturalization of Social Control. In Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World’s Cultures. Kluwer Academic Plenum Publishers, pp. 116-125, 2004.
2004 Menopause. In Dictionnaire de la pensée médicale. Lecourt, D. Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 55-62.
2004 Genetics and the Environment in Human Health: A Balanced Approach. In Genomics, Health and Society: Emerging Issues for Public Policy. M. Knoppers, C. Scriver, Canadian Policy Research Initiative, pp. 41-66.
2004 Perfektionierte Gesellschaft: Reproduktive Technologien, Genetische Tests und Geplante Familien in Japan. In Reflexive Körper? Zur Modernisierung von Sexualitat und Reproduktion. I. Lenz, L. Mense and C. Ullrich. Leske + Budrich, Opladen, pp. 203 – 240.
2004 Molecular Genetics, Utopias of Health and Neo-Eugenics. In Eskalationen, Die Gewalt von Kultur, Recht und Politik. Klaus R. Scherpe und Thomas Weitin, eds., pp. 29-46.
2003 Globalization and the Cultures of Biomedicine: Japan and North America. In Medicine Across Cultures, Helaine Selin, ed. Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.155-173.
2003 On Making up the Good-as-Dead in a Utilitarian World. In Rethinking Life and Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences. Sarah Franklin and Margaret Lock eds., Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp.165-192.
2003 Animations and Cessations: The Transformation of Life and Death. Introduction. Sarah Franklin and Margaret Lock eds., Rethinking Life and Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp. 3-22.
2002 Inventing a New Death and Making it Believable. Anthropology and Medicine, 9:97-115.
2002 Susceptibility Genes, Alzheimer’s Disease and the Translation of Knowledge Across Domains. Poster presentation, 8th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease And Related Disorders. Stockholm, Sweden.
2002 Symptom Reporting at Menopause: A Review of Cross-Cultural Findings. Journal of the British Menopause Society, 8: 132-136.
2002 Human Body Parts as Therapeutic Tools: Contradictory Discourses and Transformed Subjectivities. Qualitative Health Research, 12(10): 1406-1418.
2002 The Alienation of Body Tissue and the Biopolitics of Immortalized Cell Lines. In Commodifying Bodies. N.Scheper-Hughes and L. Wacquant, eds., London: Sage Publications, pp. 63-92.
2002 Introduction: From Documenting Medical Pluralism to Critical Interpretations of Globalized Health Knowledge, Policies, and Practices. In New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie. Mark Nichter and Margaret Lock, eds. London: Routledge, pp.1-34.
2002 Utopias of Health, Eugenics, and Germline Engineering. In New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie. Mark Nichter and Margaret Lock, eds. London: Routledge, pp. 239-266.
2002 Medical Knowledge and Body Politics. In Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines. Jeremy MacClancy, ed. Chicago University Press, pp.190-208.
2002 Japanische Frauen in den Wechseljahren und die alternde Gesselschaft. In Regel-lose Frauen: Weschseljahre im Kulturvergleich. Herausgegeben von Godula Kosack and Ulrike Krasberg, eds. Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, pp. 118-130.
2002 Le corps objet: économie morale et techniques d’amélioration. Bulletin d’histoire politique - Corps et Politique, 10(2): 33-46.
2001 Medicalization: Cultural Concerns. In N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes, eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 9534-9539.
2001 Alienation of Body Tissue and the Biopolitics of Immortalized Cell Lines. Body and Society, 7(2-3): 63-91.
2001 The Tempering of Medical Anthropology: Troubling Natural Categories. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 15: 478-492.
2001 Eliminating Stigmatization: Application of the New Genetics in Japan. In Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health. Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 253-276.
2001 Guest Editor: Special Issue: Medical Innovation and Public Knowledge. Health, 5(3). London: Sage Publications.
2001 Introduction. Special Issue: Medical Innovation and Public Knowledge. Health, 5(3): 283-291.
2001 Menopause, Local Biologies and Cultures of Aging. Margaret Lock and Patricia Kaufert. American Journal of Human Biology, 13(4): 494-504.
2001 Situated Ethics, Culture, and the Brain Death “Problem” in Japan. In Bioethics in Social Context. Barry Hoffmaster, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp.39-68.
2000 Introduction. In Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies: Intersections of Inquiry. Margaret Lock, Allan Young and Alberto Cambrosio, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.1-16.
2000 On Dying Twice: Culture, Technology, and the Determination of Death. In Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies: Intersections of Inquiry. Margaret Lock, Allan Young and Alberto Cambrosio eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233-262.
2000 Taking Subjectivity Seriously. Orgyn, 11(3): 48-51.
2000 Accounting for Disease and Distress: Morals of the Normal and Abnormal. In Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine. Gary L. Albrecht, Ray Fitzpatrick and Susan C. Scrimshaw, eds. London: Sage Publications, pp. 259-276.
2000 The Quest for Human Organs and the Violence of Zeal. In Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery. Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 271-295.
1999 Cultural Aspects of Organ Donation and Transplantation. Transplantation Proceedings, 31: 1345-1346.
1999 Tödliche Debatten: Organspenden und die Kalkulation des Todes. Minikomi No. 3, pp.5-20.
1999 The Cultural Politics of Female Aging in Japan and North America. In Gender and Japanese History: Religions and Customs/The Body and Sexuality. Wakita Haruko, Anne Bouchy and Ueno Chizuko, eds. Osaka: Osaka University Press, pp. 371-395.
1999 Genetic Diversity and the Politics of Difference. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 75(1): 83-111.
1999 The Politics of Health, Identity, and Culture. In Self, Social Identity and Physical Health. Richard J. Contrada, and Richard D. Ashmore, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 43-68.
1999 The Problem of Brain Death: Japanese Disputes about Bodies and Modernity. In The Defining of Death: Contemporary Controversies. Stuart J. Youngner, Robert M. Arnold and Renie Schapiro, eds. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 239-256.