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      Operationalizing a Structural Vulnerability Profile for forensic anthropology: Skeletal and dental biomarkers of embodied inequity

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          Abstract

          Human societies create and maintain structures in which individuals and groups experience varying degrees of inequity and suffering that may be skeletally and dentally embodied. It is necessary to foreground these social and structural impacts for forensic anthropologists to eschew biologically deterministic interpretations of human variation and overly individualistic interpretations of health and disease. We thus propose a ‘Structural Vulnerability Profile’ (SVP), akin to the Structural Vulnerability Assessment Tool of medical anthropology [1], to be considered along with the traditional ‘biological’ profile estimated by forensic anthropologists. Assembling an SVP would involve examining and assessing skeletal/dental biomarkers indicative of embodied social inequity—the lived experiences of social marginalization that can get ‘under the skin’ to leave hard-tissue traces. Shifting our emphasis from presumably hereditary variation to focus on embodied social marginalization, the SVP will allow forensic anthropologists to sensitively reconstruct the lived experiences of the people we examine.

          Highlights

          • Traditionally, forensic anthropology emphasizes heredity and individual behavior in interpretations of biological variation.

          • A structural vulnerability perspective shifts the focus to the ‘upstream factors’ that structure human variation.

          • These influences include social, political, economic, and environmental determinants of health.

          • We propose a Structural Vulnerability Profile—SVP—akin to medical anthropology’s Structural Vulnerability Assessment Tool.

          • The SVP explicitly frames analyses of human skeletal and dental variation within the context of embodied experiences.

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          Most cited references66

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          Theories for social epidemiology in the 21st century: an ecosocial perspective.

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            The weathering hypothesis and the health of African-American women and infants: evidence and speculations.

            Observed variation between populations in fertility-timing distributions has been thought to contribute to infant mortality differentials. This hypothesis is based, in part, on the belief that the 20s through early 30s constitute "prime" childbearing ages that are low-risk relative to younger or older ages. However, when stratified by racial identification over the predominant first child-bearing ages, maternal age patterns of neonatal mortality vary between groups. Unlike non-Hispanic white infants, African-American infants with teen mothers experience a survival advantage relative to infants whose mothers are older. The black-white infant mortality differential is larger at older maternal ages than at younger ages. While African Americans and non-Hispanic whites differ on which maternal ages are associated with the lowest risk of neonatal mortality, within each population, first births are most frequent at its lowest-risk maternal ages. As a possible explanation for racial variation in maternal age patterns of births and birth outcomes, the "weathering hypothesis" is proposed: namely, that the health of African-American women may begin to deteriorate in early adulthood as a physical consequence of cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage.
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              Structural vulnerability and health: Latino migrant laborers in the United States.

              Latino immigrants in the United States constitute a paradigmatic case of a population group subject to structural violence. Their subordinated location in the global economy and their culturally depreciated status in the United States are exacerbated by legal persecution. Medical Anthropology, Volume 30, Numbers 4 and 5, include a series of ethnographic analyses of the processes that render undocumented Latino immigrants structurally vulnerable to ill health. We hope to extend the social science concept of "structural vulnerability" to make it a useful concept for health care. Defined as a positionality that imposes physical/emotional suffering on specific population groups and individuals in patterned ways, structural vulnerability is a product of class-based economic exploitation and cultural, gender/sexual, and racialized discrimination, as well as complementary processes of depreciated subjectivity formation. A good-enough medicalized recognition of the condition of structural vulnerability offers a tool for developing practical therapeutic resources. It also facilitates political alternatives to the punitive neoliberal policies and discourses of individual unworthiness that have become increasingly dominant in the United States since the 1980s. Copyright © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Forensic Sci Int Synerg
                Forensic Sci Int Synerg
                Forensic Science International: Synergy
                Elsevier
                2589-871X
                28 October 2022
                2022
                28 October 2022
                : 5
                : 100289
                Affiliations
                [1]The University of West Florida Department of Anthropology, USA
                Author notes
                []Corresponding author. apwinburn@ 123456gmail.com
                Article
                S2589-871X(22)00074-2 100289
                10.1016/j.fsisyn.2022.100289
                9641186
                4a284d0a-c3ea-4c93-be1e-9533115279c4
                © 2022 The Authors

                This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

                History
                : 30 August 2022
                : 12 October 2022
                : 27 October 2022
                Categories
                Special issue on Structural Vulnerability Framework

                social inequity,marginalization,embodiment,social and structural determinants of health

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