Introducing Medical Anthropology
A Discipline in Action
3rd Edition
Published on 20. March 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-5381-0646-4 (ISBN)
Description
The third edition of Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are very involved in the process of helping, to varying degrees, to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of the issue of health inequality, this book underlines the need for an analysis that moves beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive biosocial approach. Such an approach integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in building unified theoretical understandings of the origin of ill health, while contributing to the building of effective and equitable national health-care systems.
NEW TO THIS EDITION
All chapters have been updated or expanded.NEW: Chapter 8, "The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics."*Revised text style for crisper language and livelier phrasing.Added a brief signposting of chapter content at the beginning of each chapter and reviewquestions about the key issues and concepts at the end of each chapter.Expanded discussion of Zika, Ebola, gender and health, PTSD and psychological anthropol-ogy, geriatric health, the contemporary vaccine controversy, the internet and health, and thehealth impacts of fracking and nuclear energy development.Concluding chapter examines anthropologically informed strategies and visions for a health-ier world.
NEW TO THIS EDITION
All chapters have been updated or expanded.NEW: Chapter 8, "The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics."*Revised text style for crisper language and livelier phrasing.Added a brief signposting of chapter content at the beginning of each chapter and reviewquestions about the key issues and concepts at the end of each chapter.Expanded discussion of Zika, Ebola, gender and health, PTSD and psychological anthropol-ogy, geriatric health, the contemporary vaccine controversy, the internet and health, and thehealth impacts of fracking and nuclear energy development.Concluding chapter examines anthropologically informed strategies and visions for a health-ier world.
More details
Edition
3rd edition
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
US School Grade: From College Junior to College Senior
Illustrations
19 b/w photos; 7 tables; 5 charts; 9 textboxes
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 166 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
381 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5381-0646-4 (9781538106464)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Merrill Singer is a professor of anthropology and senior research scientist at the Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention at the University of Connecticut.
Hans A. Baer is Principal Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Debbi Long is a Senior Lecturer in Global Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Alex Pavlotski is a Teaching Fellow at Aukland University, New Zeland, and an honorary research fellow at Latrobe University in Australia
Hans A. Baer is Principal Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Debbi Long is a Senior Lecturer in Global Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Alex Pavlotski is a Teaching Fellow at Aukland University, New Zeland, and an honorary research fellow at Latrobe University in Australia
Content
Preface
About the Authors
1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HEALTH
Introduction and Overview
Encountering Health Anthropology
Three Case Studies in Applied Health Anthropology
Coping with Cystic Fibrosis
The Bone Crusher
Pesticide Poisoning
Practical and Theoretical Contributions of Health Anthropology
Clarifying the Culture of Health and Illness
Health Inequality
Defining Health Anthropology
Culture and Biology
History of Health Anthropology
The Straits Expedition
W. H. R. Rivers and Beyond
Rudolf Virchow
Erwin Ackerknecht and William Caudill
The Postwar Period
Health Anthropology and National Development
The Discipline Is Born
The Relationship of Health Anthropology to Anthropology and to Other Health-Related Disciplines
Health Research and the Subfields of Anthropology
Health Anthropology and Epidemiology
Illness and Help-Seeking Behavior
Health Anthropology and Public Health
Health Anthropology and Bioethics
Health Anthropology Theories
Medical Ecology
Meaning-Centered Health Anthropology
Critical Health Anthropology
2 WHAT HEALTH ANTHROPOLOGISTS DO
Introduction and Overview
Three Settings, Three Case Studies, Three Health Anthropologists
Life and Death in Tanala
Studying Surgeons
Folk Illness in Haiti
A Case Study
Having Impact
What Health Anthropologists Study
A Diverse Discipline
Studying the Life Course
Conducting Research: A Peculiarly Anthropological Approach
Holistic, Field-Based Understanding
Ethnography
Complex Sociocultural Tapestries
Research Methods
Multimethod Research
Examining Lives
Focus Group Interviews
Considering Consensus
Doing Diaries
Quantitative Methods
Broader Collaboration
Health Anthropology in Use
Mobilizing Research Findings
The Health Anthropology Crystal Ball
3 UNDERSTANDING HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND DISEASE
Introduction and Overview
Conceptions of Health and Illness
Defining Terms
Differentiating Disease and Illness
Reconceptualizing Disease and Illness
Understanding Cure
Folk Understandings
Understandings of Disease Causation
Humanizing Biomedicine
Sufferer Experience
Experience and Cultural Symbols
Cultural Emotions
Social Suffering
Beyond Social Suffering
Disability and Chronic Illness
The Patient in the Body
The Cultural Construction of Disability
Stigmatization
Human Rights and Health
Illness Narratives
The Social Uses of Narration
Analyzing Narrative
Embodied Health Experience
Why Bodies?
Body Theory
Bodies in the Age of Immunology
Cyborg Bodies
Mindful Bodies
Engendered Bodies
Understanding Medicalization
Healer versus Sufferer Conception of Disease
The Two Sides of Compliance
Insider and Outsider Assessments of Health Status
One Word, Two Meanings
Diseased but Not Ill
Mismessaging
Analyzing Health Discourse
4 HEALTH DISPARITY, HEALTH INEQUALITY
Introduction and Overview
What Is Health Disparity?
Health Disparity in the United States
Gasping for Breath
Causes of Health Disparity: Lifestyle versus Social Inequality
Living Right
Structural Explanation
Biology of Poverty
Insuring Disease
Culturally Competent Care
Health and Social Disparities Cross-Culturally
Child and Maternal Health Disparities
Addressing Health Disparities
Addressing Health Disparities in the Community
Upstream Analyses of Health Disparities
Gender and Global Health
Focusing on Disparity in Diseases
Multidisciplinary Approaches
Studying Local Mediation of Global Health
Pushing Back on Health Disparities
"Race" and Health Disparity
Race and Racism
5 HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT: TOWARD A HEALTHIER WORLD
Introduction and Overview
Medical Ecology and Critical Health Anthropology on the Environment
Health and the Environment in the Past
Health and the Environment Today
Depletion of Natural Resources and Environmental Degradation
Capitalism and Climate Change
Infectious Diseases in a Globalizing World
The Impact of Climate Change on Health
Other Environmental Impacts on Health
Water and Globalization
The Political Ecology of Cancer
Cancer in the Community
Cancer and Industry
China's Cancer Villages
Anthropological Examinations of Cancer Treatment
Nuclear Reactors and Health
Unconventional Natural Gas Extraction and Health
The Impact of Private Motor Vehicles on Health
The Political Ecology of AIDS: Assessing a Contemporary Syndemic
6 ETHNOMEDICINE: THE WORLDS OF TREATMENT AND HEALING
Introduction and Overview
Approaching Ethnomedicine
Indigenous and Folk Medicine Systems
Ways of Healing
Typologies of Healing Systems
An Evolutionary Model of Disease Theories and Healing Systems
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Family-Level Foraging Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Village-Level Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Pastoralist Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Chiefdom Societies
Folk Healers in Modern Societies
Case Study: Are the Therapeutic Aspects of Religion Something That Partially Address Refugee Health Problems?
Biomedicine as the Predominant Ethnomedicine in Modern Societies
Hospitals
Health Anthropology and the Pharmaceutical Industry
7 PLURAL MEDICAL SYSTEMS: COMPLEXITY, COMPLEMENTARITY, AND CONFLICT
Introduction and Overview
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Rural Area in a Developing Society: The Altiplano of Bolivia183
Themes
Medical Subsystems
Status of Health Care in Bolivia in the Pre-Revolutionary Era
Social and Health Conditions in Bolivia after the Election of Indigenous President Evo Morales
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in an Urban Setting of a Developing Society: A View from Central Java
Medical Subsystems
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Developed Society: The Australian Dominative Medical System
Medical Subsystems
Typologies of Plural Medical Systems
Healing and History
Patients of CAM
CAM and Class
New Directions in the Study of Medical Pluralism
Medical Syncretism
Medical Diversity
Medicoscapes
The Globalization of Traditional Medicine and CAM
8 THE BIOPOLITICS OF LIFE: BIOTECHNOLOGY, BIOCAPITAL, AND BIOETHICS
Introduction and Overview
Critical Health Anthropology and Biotechnology
Science, Nature, and Culture
Biocapital: Bodies of Profit
Reproductive Technologies
Divisible Bodies
Bringing the Lab into the Field: Anthropology and the Neurosciences
Molecular Biotechnologies: Tiny Pieces, Giant Infrastructures
The Story of hGH-Growing up Growth Hormone
The Culture of PCR
Visualization Technologies
When Technologies Combine
Ancestry, Families, and Genetics: Biotechnology and Belonging
9 STRATEGIES AND VISIONS FOR A HEALTHIER WORLD
Introduction and Overview
Global Capitalism
Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway for a Healthier World
Health Anthropology as an Action-Oriented Endeavor
Source Material for Students
Glossary
References
Index
About the Authors
1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HEALTH
Introduction and Overview
Encountering Health Anthropology
Three Case Studies in Applied Health Anthropology
Coping with Cystic Fibrosis
The Bone Crusher
Pesticide Poisoning
Practical and Theoretical Contributions of Health Anthropology
Clarifying the Culture of Health and Illness
Health Inequality
Defining Health Anthropology
Culture and Biology
History of Health Anthropology
The Straits Expedition
W. H. R. Rivers and Beyond
Rudolf Virchow
Erwin Ackerknecht and William Caudill
The Postwar Period
Health Anthropology and National Development
The Discipline Is Born
The Relationship of Health Anthropology to Anthropology and to Other Health-Related Disciplines
Health Research and the Subfields of Anthropology
Health Anthropology and Epidemiology
Illness and Help-Seeking Behavior
Health Anthropology and Public Health
Health Anthropology and Bioethics
Health Anthropology Theories
Medical Ecology
Meaning-Centered Health Anthropology
Critical Health Anthropology
2 WHAT HEALTH ANTHROPOLOGISTS DO
Introduction and Overview
Three Settings, Three Case Studies, Three Health Anthropologists
Life and Death in Tanala
Studying Surgeons
Folk Illness in Haiti
A Case Study
Having Impact
What Health Anthropologists Study
A Diverse Discipline
Studying the Life Course
Conducting Research: A Peculiarly Anthropological Approach
Holistic, Field-Based Understanding
Ethnography
Complex Sociocultural Tapestries
Research Methods
Multimethod Research
Examining Lives
Focus Group Interviews
Considering Consensus
Doing Diaries
Quantitative Methods
Broader Collaboration
Health Anthropology in Use
Mobilizing Research Findings
The Health Anthropology Crystal Ball
3 UNDERSTANDING HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND DISEASE
Introduction and Overview
Conceptions of Health and Illness
Defining Terms
Differentiating Disease and Illness
Reconceptualizing Disease and Illness
Understanding Cure
Folk Understandings
Understandings of Disease Causation
Humanizing Biomedicine
Sufferer Experience
Experience and Cultural Symbols
Cultural Emotions
Social Suffering
Beyond Social Suffering
Disability and Chronic Illness
The Patient in the Body
The Cultural Construction of Disability
Stigmatization
Human Rights and Health
Illness Narratives
The Social Uses of Narration
Analyzing Narrative
Embodied Health Experience
Why Bodies?
Body Theory
Bodies in the Age of Immunology
Cyborg Bodies
Mindful Bodies
Engendered Bodies
Understanding Medicalization
Healer versus Sufferer Conception of Disease
The Two Sides of Compliance
Insider and Outsider Assessments of Health Status
One Word, Two Meanings
Diseased but Not Ill
Mismessaging
Analyzing Health Discourse
4 HEALTH DISPARITY, HEALTH INEQUALITY
Introduction and Overview
What Is Health Disparity?
Health Disparity in the United States
Gasping for Breath
Causes of Health Disparity: Lifestyle versus Social Inequality
Living Right
Structural Explanation
Biology of Poverty
Insuring Disease
Culturally Competent Care
Health and Social Disparities Cross-Culturally
Child and Maternal Health Disparities
Addressing Health Disparities
Addressing Health Disparities in the Community
Upstream Analyses of Health Disparities
Gender and Global Health
Focusing on Disparity in Diseases
Multidisciplinary Approaches
Studying Local Mediation of Global Health
Pushing Back on Health Disparities
"Race" and Health Disparity
Race and Racism
5 HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT: TOWARD A HEALTHIER WORLD
Introduction and Overview
Medical Ecology and Critical Health Anthropology on the Environment
Health and the Environment in the Past
Health and the Environment Today
Depletion of Natural Resources and Environmental Degradation
Capitalism and Climate Change
Infectious Diseases in a Globalizing World
The Impact of Climate Change on Health
Other Environmental Impacts on Health
Water and Globalization
The Political Ecology of Cancer
Cancer in the Community
Cancer and Industry
China's Cancer Villages
Anthropological Examinations of Cancer Treatment
Nuclear Reactors and Health
Unconventional Natural Gas Extraction and Health
The Impact of Private Motor Vehicles on Health
The Political Ecology of AIDS: Assessing a Contemporary Syndemic
6 ETHNOMEDICINE: THE WORLDS OF TREATMENT AND HEALING
Introduction and Overview
Approaching Ethnomedicine
Indigenous and Folk Medicine Systems
Ways of Healing
Typologies of Healing Systems
An Evolutionary Model of Disease Theories and Healing Systems
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Family-Level Foraging Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Village-Level Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Pastoralist Societies
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Chiefdom Societies
Folk Healers in Modern Societies
Case Study: Are the Therapeutic Aspects of Religion Something That Partially Address Refugee Health Problems?
Biomedicine as the Predominant Ethnomedicine in Modern Societies
Hospitals
Health Anthropology and the Pharmaceutical Industry
7 PLURAL MEDICAL SYSTEMS: COMPLEXITY, COMPLEMENTARITY, AND CONFLICT
Introduction and Overview
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Rural Area in a Developing Society: The Altiplano of Bolivia183
Themes
Medical Subsystems
Status of Health Care in Bolivia in the Pre-Revolutionary Era
Social and Health Conditions in Bolivia after the Election of Indigenous President Evo Morales
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in an Urban Setting of a Developing Society: A View from Central Java
Medical Subsystems
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Developed Society: The Australian Dominative Medical System
Medical Subsystems
Typologies of Plural Medical Systems
Healing and History
Patients of CAM
CAM and Class
New Directions in the Study of Medical Pluralism
Medical Syncretism
Medical Diversity
Medicoscapes
The Globalization of Traditional Medicine and CAM
8 THE BIOPOLITICS OF LIFE: BIOTECHNOLOGY, BIOCAPITAL, AND BIOETHICS
Introduction and Overview
Critical Health Anthropology and Biotechnology
Science, Nature, and Culture
Biocapital: Bodies of Profit
Reproductive Technologies
Divisible Bodies
Bringing the Lab into the Field: Anthropology and the Neurosciences
Molecular Biotechnologies: Tiny Pieces, Giant Infrastructures
The Story of hGH-Growing up Growth Hormone
The Culture of PCR
Visualization Technologies
When Technologies Combine
Ancestry, Families, and Genetics: Biotechnology and Belonging
9 STRATEGIES AND VISIONS FOR A HEALTHIER WORLD
Introduction and Overview
Global Capitalism
Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway for a Healthier World
Health Anthropology as an Action-Oriented Endeavor
Source Material for Students
Glossary
References
Index