Theoretical orientations medical anthropology monday

Theoretical Orientations
Medical Anthropology
Monday, November 10, 2014 10:56 AM
ANT 102 Page 175

Biomedicine as a cultural system, scientific research as political, power ○
The Bribri's mode of livelihood has been changed because there is a large
plantation keeping the men from being home. This causes a lot of depression
because the men are gone for weeks at a time. By developing an ecotourism
program, the Bribri's bodies are healthier and their depression is lessening
□
Greg, Bribri 
Modes of production; Historical relationships to governing bodies; Colonialism;
Globalization
○
Political Economic approaches •
Greg, Bribri □
How social influences impact the physical body 
"Embodiment" ○
Theories of the body •
Greg, Bipolar Group 
The way cultures use symbolic meaning to describe and understand health and disease ○
Symbolic Approach •
"Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large
scale."

"Social injustice is killing on a grand scale." 
Typhus outbreak could not be solved by treating individual patients with drugs but only
through radical action to promote the advancement of an entire population
○
Rudolf Virchow, German pathologist (1849) •
Psychology, Vision, Kinship □
Torres Straits' Expedition 
Medicine as part of a cultural system 
Worked with soldiers who were 'shell shocked'

The method of curing 'shell shock' then was to dunk people in freezing
water, etc.

Instead of that, W.H.R. talked to them, implemented a psychoanalytic
approach

"Talking Cure" □
Word War I 
"Medicine, Magic and Religion" (1924) ○
William Halse Rivers (W.H.R.) Rivers •
Medicine an area of study in its own right 
Survey of beliefs about disease causation (1932) ○
Forrest Clements •
Medical practices follow logically from underlying beliefs ○
E.E. Evans Pritchard (1937) •
Margaret Mead 
Beginning in the mid-1930s ○
Culture and Personality Studies •
Roots in colonialism, Christian missionary activities 
Prior to the 1930s ○
Armed forces, public health 
1940s: WWII ○
World Health Organization 
1940s-1950s: International development agencies ○
Society for Medical Anthropology, founded in 1967-1968 ○
And critical perspectives of biomedicine 
1970s: Critical Medical Anthropology ○
International Public Health •
History of Medical Anthropology
Theories of Disease Causation
ANT 102 Page 176

Foster ○
Personalistic/Naturalistic •
Supernatural Causation ○
Impersonal forces 
Mystical ○
Supernatural agents 
Animistic ○
Sorcery or witchcraft □
Human agents 
Magical ○
Infection, stress, accident 
Natural Causation ○
Worldwide Classification of Disease Etiology (Murdock) •
Theories of Disease Causation
Biomedical science 
Physiological alteration that impairs function in some way ○
Disease •
Depression is mental, Neurostania is physical, pharmaceutical companies
claim they're the same things

Depression (the West) vs. Neurostania (China) □
Culturally specific and appropriate ways of being Ill 
Subjective experience of symptoms and suffering ○
(disease w/o illness) Being diagnosed with cancer w/o having experienced
symptoms.