Full Description
Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first look at the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by three unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are involved in the process of helping 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.
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Anthropology of Health
Introduction and Overview
Encountering Health Anthropology
Three Case Studies in Applied Health Anthropology
Practical and Theoretical Contributions of Health Anthropology
Defining Health Anthropology
History of Health Anthropology
Health Anthropology Theories
Chapter 2: What Health Anthropologists Do and How They Do It
Introduction and Overview
Three Settings, Three Case Studies, Three Health Anthropologists
A Case Study
What Health Anthropologists Study
Conducting Research: A Peculiarly Anthropological Approach
Research Methods: The Anthropological Approach to Knowledge Generation
Health Anthropology in Use
The Health Anthropology Crystal Ball
Chapter 3: Understanding Health, Illness, and Disease
Introduction and Overview
Conceptions of Health and Illness
Sufferer Experience
Illness Narratives
Embodied Health Experience
Healer versus Sufferer Conception of Disease
Chapter 4: Human Evolution and Health
Introduction and Overview
The Roots of Evolutionary Health
Linkages, Trade-Offs, and Thrifty Genes
Migration and the Genetics of Health
The Out-of-Africa Intrusion
Living in the Clouds
Epigenetics
Socioeconomic Factors
The Genetics of Sexuality
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Ethnomedicine: The Worlds of Treatment and Healing
Introduction and Overview
Approaching Ethnomedicine
Indigenous and Folk Medicine Systems
An Evolutionary Model of Disease Theories and Healing Systems
Case Study: Are the Therapeutic Aspects of Religion Something That Partially Address Refugee Health Problems?
Biomedicine as the Predominant Ethnomedicine in Modern Societies
Chapter 6: 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 Bolivia
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in an Urban Setting of a Developing Society: A View from Central Java
A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Developed Society: The Australian Dominative Medical System
Typologies of Plural Medical Systems
New Directions in the Study of Medical Pluralism
Chapter 7: 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
Biology of Poverty
Insuring Disease
Culturally Competent Care
Health and Social Disparities Cross-Culturally
Addressing Health Disparities
Pushing Back on Health Disparities
"Race" and Health Disparity
Chapter 8: 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
The Political Ecology of Cancer
The Impact of Private Motor Vehicles on Health
The Impact of Airplanes on Health
The Political Ecology of AIDS: Assessing a Contemporary Syndemic
Chapter 9: The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics
Introduction and Overview
Critical Health Anthropology and Biotechnology
Science, Nature, and Culture
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
Summary
Chapter 10: Strategies and Visions for a Healthier World
Introduction and Overview
Global Capitalism
Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway for a Healthier World
Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway to Planetary Health
How to Go from A to B
Health Anthropology as an Action-Oriented Endeavor
Source Material for Students
Glossary
References
Index
About the Authors
