9/19/2013Maintaining Health and Coping with Illness (Chapter 5)1. Medical Systema. beliefs, practices, and knowledge for diagnosing and treating sickness2. Medical Anthropologya. studies the social, cultural, and biological aspects of health and sickness from a cross-cultural perspectiveb. Critical Medical Anthropology: analyze how structural factors (political economy, media, inequality) affect the health system, pointing to medicalizationi. medicalization -- labeling an issue as medical when its cause is structural (pillsfor poverty3. Ethnomedicine vs Biomedicinea. Ethnomedicine: the study of cross-cultural health systems (non-western)i. use community healingb. Biomedicine: healing approach (modern Western)i. use private healingii. humoral healing -- philosophy of the balance of elements within the body and within the person’s environment1. food and drugs have effects on body as “heating or cooling”c. Illness vs Diseasei. Illness: refers to culturally specific perceptions and experiences of a health problemii. Disease: refers to a biological health problem that’s objective and universal (bacterial or viral infection)d. Culture-specific Syndrome: health problem with a set of symptoms associated witha particular culture (many health problems referred to as this)i. caused by stress, fear, shock, etc through somatization1. symptoms from somatization -- lack of motivation and appetite, breathing issues, nightmares...2. e.g “suffering from water”4. Ethnomedicine, Biomedicine --- And Inequalitya. culture is important --- but not only culture (not a “culturalist”) approachb. importance in the broader contexts of inequality that lead to poor health (focus of critical medical anthropology)c. Ethno-Etiology: cross-culturally specific casual explanation for health problems and sufferingi. from natural causes -- exposure to the environment, contagion9/19/2013ii. psychological causes -- emotions (anger)iii. supernatural causes -- spirits and magicd. Bio-etiologies: exclude structural issues and social inequality as casual factors of illnessi. structural suffering -- by poverty, war, famine, and forced migration5. Case Study: HIV/AIDS in Haitia.b. local understanding of illness:i. illness sent by “God”ii. illness sent by “Satan”c. What to do when struck by illness “from satan”?6. Diseases of Developmenta. health problem caused/increased by economic development projectsi. e.g increased rates of schistosmiasis,
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