What is so Anthropological about Health, Illness and Healing?

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What is so Anthropological about Health, Illness
and Healing?

• Medical Anthropology

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What is Anthropology

• Anthropos means human and logia is study so that
  anthropology is the study of humans
• The study of human differences, cultural and
  biological, in the context of human nature.
  Anthropologists identify and compare behavior of
  a particular group against the full range of
  human behavior. These comparisons should uncover
  principles that apply to all human communities

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What is Anthropology

• Anthropologists studied the way of life, remains,
  language, and physical characteristics of people
  -- social facts
• Customs, values, and social patterns of different
  cultures were described and sometimes compared.
  How are different people in different places
  similar and different, both biologically and
  behaviorally? Spotting cultural patterns requires
  "fresh, neutral eyes."

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What is Culture?

• How do you define it? How do you know when
  youve encountered it?
• Culture . . .
• There is a strong interest in how culture changes
  over time and in cross-cultural comparison that
  may lead to universal generalizations. Sometimes,
  this is called ethnology

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What is Culture?

• Culture is that database of knowledge, values,
  and traditional ways of viewing the world that
  determines much of our behavior. Social structure
  (personal relationships and status in groups),
  especially kinship and marriage networks, but
  also family structures and property rights are
  integral parts of "culture.
• Culture is a system of shared values, ideas,
  concepts, meanings and rules that underlie and
  are expressed in the ways that human beings live.

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Its about a group of people

• It is the participants in a culture who give
  meaning to people, objects, and events. . . . It
  is by our use of things and what we say, think,
  and feel about them that we give them meaning.
  (Stuart Hall 1997)

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Definitions of Culture- a note to keep in mind

• In 1952, anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde
  Kluckhohn attempted to define culture.
• 160 definitions later, they stopped . . .
• . . . suggested that they were still not finished.

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Definitions of Culturethe bottom line

• Kroeber Kluckhohn (1952) realized that all of
  their definitions came down to three common areas
• Meanings, social practices, and material products
• What people think, what people do, and what
  people make
• Cultures most essential feature is that it is
  learned.

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Anthropological Definitions

• Historical social heritage or tradition passed
  on to succeeding generations
• Behavioral shared, learned human behavior a way
  of life
• Normative ideals, values, rules for living
• Functional methods of problem-solving and
  adapting to specific environment
• Structural patterns of interrelated ideas,
  symbols, and behaviors
• Symbolic arbitrarily assigned meanings agreed
  upon by a society

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Finding Decoding Cultural Components of Health,
Illness, Healing

• Primary purpose is to uncover the historical,
  normative, and symbolic elements of culture
• Historical where does the culture of medicine
  come from? How did it develop and how is it
  passed on?
• Normative what ideals, values, and rules are
  inherent to the culture of medicine?
• Symbolic what are the agreed-upon meanings of
  the body, of health/wellness, of disease/illness,
  of life/death?

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Why study culture in medical contexts?

• From an anthropological perspective, culture is
  the single most significant evolutionary
  adaptation in the success of modern humans.
• The particular way that a community of
  individuals organizes itself and marshals its
  skills, knowledge, and energies to combat disease
  is a central part of culture.

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Why study culture in medical contexts?

• Improving health care in Third World contexts
  (whether home or abroad) requires culturally
  appropriate methods.
• What power relationship is implicit here?
• All countries of the world are increasingly
  divided into healthy upper classes and continuing
  unhealthy underclasses (WHO 1999).
• What meanings social practices contribute to
  this power structure?

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What is so cultural about physiology and anatomy?

• Culture, Body and Technology

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The SOCIAL Body

• The human body has a social as well as a physical
  reality
• The shape, size and adornments of the body are a
  way of communicating information about the
  individual

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The Body Self and Health

• The social body or social self is socially
  constructed
• The body image is a representation of him/herself

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The Body Self and Health

• The health risk of such body image may damage the
  physiological and anatomical construction of a
  body
• Such mutilation of the body is a
  self-identification and yet prone to health risk

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The Symbolic Body and Health

• The concept of body self can is a representation
  of body aesthetics to the detriment of health and
  illness
• Body self is culturally constructed

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The Function of the Body

• Beliefs about the body structure can have
  clinical importance, those about how it functions
  are probably more significant in how they affect
  peoples behaviors

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The function of body and health

• Medical Dualism

• Medical Pluralism

• Hot-Cold
• Evil-Good Omen
• Dirty-Clean
• Ugly-Beautiful
• Balance-Imbalance
• Yin-Yang
• Kulam-Barang

• Western Medicine
• Traditional Medicine
• Ayurvedic Medicine
• Chinese Medicine
• Trans Medicine

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Cultural Language in Health(Symbolic Anatomies)

• Plumbing the body
• Heart of life
• Medical Technology
• These some terms are mystical metaphors that
  bear no relation to physical reality, but it is
  because of these metaphors that individuals
  expresses themselves in terms of how they explain
  illness and health

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Medical Anthropology 21st Century