This study provides a short review of a new field emerging in Romanian anthropology research – medical anthropology. After presenting a short description of the influences in the history of this field during the past seven decades in the western academic field, the author describes the origins and the trajectory this field has taken in Romania in the period after 1989, when the political regime changed.

The paper shows that even if the concerns in medical anthropology are not entirely new, the emerging shape of the field--especially in terms of the interdisciplinary topics approached—demonstrates the continuing contemporary social implications of the work. The result has been a new and evolving discipline in Romanian social anthropology. In addition to describing the modern terrain of this new field, the author also mentions some of recent medical anthropology studies and the heterogeneity that lies at the core of their approaches.

Keywords: medical anthropology, anthropology, biomedicine, medical

pluralism, ethnomedicine