Where I try to write a coherent start to my comprehensive examination

I am medical anthropologist, in case you haven't noticed.

The topic of health and it's sociocultural variables has lately permeated our understandings of how we come to view and understand the health systems around the world. Globalization and social online media, has inserted in the front page of our lives a variety of topics. A lot of these topics are related to health: read the aftermath of Chernobyl, new debates about how to prevent HIV and etc...As doctoral student, I am expected to master the literature to the point where I am able to make my own assertions and contributions in the discipline. Given the abundance of information, here on the interwebs, I am challenging myself to use this medium as a way to start writing my comprehensive exam, that is coming up at the end of this month.

The Internet is a bit overwhelming with this information, and seldom one finds information that has been curated to scientific standards; but as an anthropologist, this overwhelming feeling is actually what I need to measure the discoursal themes running around a globalized world (am I allowed to make such a statement?). Regardless, given the new cultural importance of the online medium, I think of it as an appropriate way where I can start the reconstruction of my topic in medical anthropology, so that I can be deemed (at least) knowledgeable in the discipline. I will start with my own definition of the discipline.

It is my understanding that medical anthropology is primarily a subdiscipline of anthropology, that can be studied either from a socio-cultural perspective or a bioanthropological one. I am a socio-cultural anthropologist, therefore my focus is on examining and studying biomedical and epidemiological variables that public health professionals seem to reduce to certain signifiers, devoid of their social and cultural meanings.

It is our job to give meaning and study them, where others see none.
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To be continued...