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Medical Anthropology

Medical Anthropology. A multidimensional field . Extra Credit 1pt. What do you know about medical anthropology?. Medical Anthropology Defined .

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Medical Anthropology

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  1. Medical Anthropology A multidimensional field

  2. Extra Credit 1pt • What do you know about medical anthropology?

  3. Medical Anthropology Defined • 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.

  4. Making since of it • 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.

  5. Extra Credit • 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

  6. Variety of Disciplines • Draws upon cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being. • Cultural? • Linguistic? • Biological?

  7. Cultural Concept • What is Culture? • Ethnographic field work (participant-observation) • 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.

  8. Cultural Aspect of Medical Anthropology • 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

  9. Extra Credit 1pt • What are the advantages and disadvantages of ethnographic fieldwork as a method for studying human behavior?

  10. Biocultural Perspective on Health • 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.

  11. Bicultural… • 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 • Biomedical categories are used as a standard to explains cross population comparison of health and disease

  12. Biomedicine differs from a bicultural approach. • 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.

  13. Extra Credit 1 pt • What are the diverse kinds of information that the bicultural perspectives takes into account to explain human health and disease?

  14. Suffering • 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.

  15. Factors in variation • Cultural • Subsistence practices, social arrangement, hygiene, gender roles, access to medical institutions and healers • Ecological • Climate, altitude, flora and fauna • Biological • Genes, nutritional status, immunological competence, age, sex

  16. Understanding Health Distinctions • With a vast array of defining health Medical anthropologist fall to differentiating instead disease, illness, and sickness • Disease • Illness • Sickness

  17. Disease • Physiological alteration that impairs function in some way. • Injury • Infectious disease • Nutritional disease • Genetic disease • Chronic disease • Physiological or behavioral disorders

  18. Illness • 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

  19. Sickness • 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

  20. Medical anthropologists study various issues, including: • 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

  21. Examples • Goats • Zombies • Malaria • CC Animia, Fava bean and antioxidants, Pest Control.

  22. Extra Credit • 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

  23. Discussion on 1 if needed • 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?

  24. Extra Credit 4 pts • 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?

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