Health, Healing and Culture An Introductory, Anthropological Perspective Anthropology 140

Health, Healing and Culture

An Introductory, Anthropological

Perspective

Anthropology 140

Anthropology and Healing

• Cross-cultural understanding

• Cross-historical understanding

• With an understanding of “culture” from an anthropological perspective

• With a view toward “cultural relativism”

• Looking “critically” at Western Medicine in the process

Culture: From an Anthropological Perspective

• Culture as “webs of meaning”

• Patterns of and for behavior

• Culture as “integrated” and interwoven

• Culture as “holistic”

• Culture filters, proscribes and prescribes

• Culture gives meaning and creates order

“Healing” and Anthropology: Key Approaches

• Anthropology studies “historically”

• …comparatively

• …holistically

• …to understand cultures in context, in and for themselves

Exploring Medical Anthropology (text 1) Donald Joralemon

• What is “cultural” About Disease?– Culture in medicine– Disease in other cultures and times

• Development of Medical Anthropology

• Medical Anthropology Today


• Anthropological Questions ….– Ecological/evolutionary– Interpretive– Critical– Applied

• …And Methods– Fieldwork– Participant observation


• Recognizing Connections ….– Biological (including environmental)– Social– Cultural

• Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives...– Applied to the study of cholera


• Critical and Interpretive Views...

• Critical…..– Political and economic dimensions shaping

health and healing (globally)

• Interpretive…..– A “meaning centered” approach to

understanding disease, health and healing


• Healers and healing professions….– Roles– Relationships– Authority (cultural and otherwise)– Including an understanding of these in relation

to “biomedicine”


• Applying Medical Anthropology– contexts– types– issues– history

• “Critical” view of Applied approach– medicine, power and politics

Other Key Questions

• Ethnocentrism

• Cultural Relativism

• Western Medical Model

• “Body-Mind” Dualism

• Understanding “world practices”…– (your projects)

Health and the Rise of Civilization Mark Cohen

• Which approach does this book take?

• What is he saying about “health and the rise of civilization”?


• Takes what Joraleman calls an “ecological” approach– looking at the relationship of health, to

environment…– and the role of human patterns of behavior

(culture) in shaping both


• Cohen cautions… – not to over-idealize or romanticize “early

humans”– not present “modern health” as totally “bad”

• Instead, what we call “civilization” has been a mixed picture… as was what preceded it


• Cohen spells out some of the settlement patterns and practices that have led to “new” diseases– patterns that put humans in contact with

previously non-threatening “vectors” of disease

• …And new patterns of food-getting (and processing) that have done the same...


• Cohen also spells out some of the “advances” in human health-technology that have improved well-being, at the same time….

• Likewise, he points out indicators that present a picture of longer human survival, better treatment of illness etc.


• Cohen’s cautions are echoed in Kent Redford’s article:– “The Ecologically Noble Savage.” Survival

Quarterly, Vol15, No.1, pp. 46-48.

Woman as Healer Jeanne Achterberg

• What is J. Achterberg’s approach in her book Woman as Healer?

• What is the key point of her book?

• And how is she making her argument(s)?– What types of evidence and arguments is she

using to get her point(s) across?

Documents

Health, Healing and Culture An Introductory, Anthropological Perspective Anthropology 140