Through rich ethnographic narrative, Becoming Gods examines how a cohort of doctors-in-training in the Mexican city of Puebla learn to become doctors. 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 coat, stethoscope, and newfound technical, linguistic, and sensory skills lend them an authority that they cultivate with each practice, transforming their sense of self. Becoming Gods illustrates the messy, complex, and nuanced nature of medical training, where trainees not only have to acquire a monumental number of skills but do so against a backdrop of strict hospital hierarchy and a crumbling national medical system that deeply shape who they are.

VANIA SMITH-OKA is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

— Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

— Emily Wentzell, author of Maturing Masculinities: Aging, Chronic Illness, and Viagra in Mexico

— Carole Browner, co-editor of Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectiv

— New Books Network - New Books in Anthropology