How Public Health Could Benefit From Anthropology

How Public health could benefit from anthropology?

DIS - 21. November 2011, Nikolaj Darre

DIS - 21. November 2011

Learning objectives

• Discuss what anthropology is about and how it can be useful when working at the arena of Public Health.


Overview

1. Can we catch a cold?2. Methodology3. Theory


Anthropology

• The study of humankind (Anthro[p] = human, ology = the study of)

• Social and cultural aspect of humankind• Medical anthropology = health, sickness and

treatment.


Catching a cold is your own faultby David Aldridge

• A example of how people from different contexts offering different diagnosis and different advice.

• Therefore decisions in health care practice are made according to different meanings and cultural contexts.


Different reasons for cold

• the dust from decorating the house (wife)• neglects (mother) Nothing to do with

bacterial.• Hayfever or stress. (work)


Different treatments:

• Consume alcohol• Go home and go to bed

The point: “…different explanations exist concurrently according to our own world views, and the ‘patient’ does not always

reflect the epistemological position of the observers” (p.129)


Agreed sickness

• Our experience of being ill needs to be validated by someone else – in that way it is ‘negotiable’, not fixed and open to change (p.131).

• The doctor can invalidate the patients• Shared meaning is important.


Methodology in Anthropology

Qualitative Vs. Quantitative


Fieldwork


Participate observation

Captures not just what you say – But

also what you do!


Interview


Implication using Qualitative methods

Validation and verificationrequires

Transparency, transparency and transparency


Theory in Anthropology

• Helps us understand real life• But, it is also a certain viewpoint in which we

look at things. • Theory is empirically imbedded


Tough athlete or cripple?


Relativism and

The social fabric of health


Medical traditions

• Chinese medicine, Indian Ayurvedic medicine, medical traditions of Africa, Western biomedicine etc.

• Medical pluralism


Views and ideas

• Balance between elements (Asia, Africa) • Body fluids (Humoral system, Greece)• Soul loss (Shamanism, America, Africa)• Dualism between body/soul (Biomedicine)


Ethnocentrism

• People are experts on their own life, therefore try to understand people in their own context – use a emic perspective.

• Be aware of contexts (physical, social, temporal)


Holism

• Try to see things in a bigger perspective

• Remember patients are much more than their sickness


Theory is Empirical founded


Interdisciplinary

• Not like monotheistic religions, but more like polytheistic

• Claude Levy-Strauss and Structuralism– Semiotics have form and substance– Signifier/Signified– Social praxis/underlying meaning


Summing up

• Health is everywhere culturally particular and varied (Janzen 2002:52)

• Se heath, sickness and treatment in a bigger perspective

• Include context• Don’t be ethnocentric • Use qualitative methods if your looking for a

deeper understanding.• Be reflexive


The end

Documents

How Public Health Could Benefit From Anthropology