Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow Vania Smith-Oka has published a book with Rutgers University Press called Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals. Much of the research for the book was supported by the Institute through faculty grants.
Through rich ethnographic narrative, the book examines how a cohort of doctors-in-training in Puebla learn to become medical professionals. Smith-Oka draws from compelling fieldwork, ethnography, and interviews with interns, residents, and doctors that tell the story of how medical trainees learn to wield new tools, language, and technology and how their white coats, stethoscopes, and newfound skills lend them authority.
"Seeking to learn how obstetric violence is routinized in Mexico, Smith-Oka reveals how societal inequalities shape trainee physicians’ education, embodiment, and even souls," writes Emily Wentzell, associate professor in anthropology at the University of Iowa, in her review of the book. She characterizes Becoming Gods as "essential reading for understanding how professionalization reproduces inequality."