An Ethnography of Stress The Social Determinants of Health in Aboriginal Australia

by Burbank, Victoria Katherine

• ISBN13: 9780230110229
• ISBN10: 0230110223
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This compelling ethnography makes new inquiries into the "anthropology of stress." Focusing on the implications of premature morbidity and mortality in Numbulwar, a remote Australian Aboriginal community, this book examines the social determinants of health and how forms of self-conceptions can mediate, and perhaps exacerbate, stressful experiences. Engaging essential frameworks and topics in medical and psychological anthropology, Victoria Katherine Burbank draws important new conclusions about the social sources of suffering.

Author Biography

Victoria Katherine Burbank is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of Aboriginal Adolescence: Maidenhood in an Australian Community and Fighting Women: Anger and Aggression in Aboriginal Australia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Using Social Determinants of Health, Using Ethnography * At Numbulwar: Blackfellas and Whitefellas * Life History and Real Life: Fetal Origins of Disease, Ethnography, and History * Feeling Bad: Everyday Stress * Identity * Selves and Others * Conclusion: A Tentative Answer to a Fundamental Epidemiological Question