Download Medical Anthropology - Emporia State University Social Deviance

A multidimensional field
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What do you know about medical
anthropology?
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Medical Anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that draws
upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to
better understand those factors which influence health and well
being, the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention
and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social
relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance
and utilization of pluralistic medical systems.
Attentive to popular health culture as bioscientific
epidemiology and the social construction of knowledge.
Medical anthropologists examine how the health of individuals,
larger social formations, and the environment are affected by
interrelationships between humans and other species; cultural
norms and social institutions; micro and macro politics; and
forces of globalization as each of these affects local worlds.
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The study of health related issues from a
broad anthropological perspective.
Examines the ways in which culture and
society are organized around or influenced by
issues of health, health care and related
issues.
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Take a few minutes and write down 1
question you have about medical
anthropology based on the definition and/or
prior knowledge.
◦ What would you like to learn from this presentation
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Draws upon cultural, biological, and linguistic
anthropology to better understand those
factors which influence health and well being.
◦ Cultural?
◦ Linguistic?
◦ Biological?
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What is Culture?
Ethnographic field work (participantobservation)
◦ Pro-Unique duel perspective allowing for
understanding and describing while making cross
cultural analysis
◦ Con-It is hard to let go of ones bias and be truly
objective. A persons status ( ethic/age/gender…)
influences interactions.
 EXAMPLE use of western medicine.
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Participant-observation makes it possible
ascertain local disease patterns, likely causes
and the way people react to health threat.
The extent to which abiotic and biotic factors
impact health depends on population
environmental interactions.
Although ecological conditions play an
important role in disease they are never the
sole determining factor of disease in a
population
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What are the advantages and disadvantages
of ethnographic fieldwork as a method for
studying human behavior?
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Considers the social, ecological and biological
aspects of health issues and interaction with and
and across populations.
Broadly holistic in considering biology and
cultural important to health.( human bodies,
culture and history)
Individuals differ in their biochemical processes,
nutrient requirements, and internal anatomy.
Disease processes alter biological function in
more or less predictable and measurable ways.
Thus in biocultural analysis biomedicine is used.
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Biomedicine views disease as having a unique
biological cause within the body.
◦ Microorganism causing infection
◦ Growth of a malignant cell
◦ Organ failure due to repeated abuse
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Biomedical categories are used as a standard
to explains cross population comparison of
health and disease
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Clinical biomedical understandings of disease
tend to privilege the body as the only relevant
“environment” for understanding of disease
and causation and individuals are perceived
as uniquely responsible for their health.
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What are the diverse kinds of information that
the bicultural perspectives takes into account
to explain human health and disease?
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The experience of suffering is shared by all
individuals
Every cultures have methods to diagnose and
treat ill health
Medical Anthropologist work to understand
the diverse factors influencing variability and
universality in health and disease across
populations.
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Cultural
◦ Subsistence practices, social arrangement, hygiene,
gender roles, access to medical institutions and
healers
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Ecological
◦ Climate, altitude, flora and fauna
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Biological
◦ Genes, nutritional status, immunological
competence, age, sex
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With a vast array of defining health Medical
anthropologist fall to differentiating instead
disease, illness, and sickness
◦ Disease
◦ Illness
◦ Sickness
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Physiological alteration that impairs function
in some way.
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Injury
Infectious disease
Nutritional disease
Genetic disease
Chronic disease
Physiological or behavioral disorders
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Used to describe the subjective experience of
symptoms and suffering and its motivates
change in in behavior to alleviate such
discomfort.
◦ The complaints (illness) is what the patient brings
to the practitioner. The practitioner is the one who
assigns the disease
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Can be equated to both disease or illness but
also has a sociological meaning.
Sick roll in society. Social expectations for the
sick
◦ Stay at home
◦ Get workman's comp
◦ Must be legitimatized
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Health ramifications of ecological “adaptation
and maladaptation”
The political economy of health care provision.
Preventative health and harm reduction practices
The experience of illness and the social relations
of sickness
The range of factors driving health, nutrition and
health care transitions
Ethnomedicine, pluralistic healing modalities,
and healing processes
Disease distribution and health disparity
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Goats
Zombies
Malaria
◦ CC Animia, Fava bean and antioxidants, Pest
Control.
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What is medical Anthropology and what do
medical anthropologist study? 1 pt
WHAT IS NOT A MAJOR FACTOR CONTRIBUTE TO
VARIATION IN RESPONSES TO DISEASE? 1 pt
◦ A. Cultural
◦ B. Ecological
◦ C. Biological
◦ D. Political
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What are the advantages and disadvantages
of ethnographic fieldwork as a method for
studying human behavior?
What are the diverse kinds of information that
the bicultural perspectives takes into account
to explain human health and disease?
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In what way do you think your own health
status is a product of your biology and in
what ways is it a product of your culture? Is it
possible to make such a distinction?