Health and Healing in Comparative Perspective

by Whitaker; Elizabeth D.

• ISBN13: 9780131273832
• ISBN10: 0131273833
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-09-21
• Publisher: ROUTLEDGE

Summary

This reader provides both fascinating comparative ethnographic detail and a theoretical framework for organizing and interpreting information about health. While there are many health-related fields represented in this book, its core discipline is medical anthropology and its main focus is the comparative approach. Cross-cultural comparison gives anthropological analysis breadth while the evolutionary time scale gives it depth. These two features have always been fundamental to anthropology and continue to distinguish it among the social sciences. A third feature is the in-depth knowledge of culture produced by anthropological methods such as participant-observation, involving long-term presence in and research among a study population.The first part of the book explores healing systems in different cultures; the second and third provide a strong grounding in evolutionary and culture-oriented analysis, making clear the connections between biology and culture as they affect health; the final part emphasizes case studies that apply the theoretical principles presented earlier to particular health topics.For medical anthropology, medical sociology, public health, nursing, and medical training professionals.

Table of Contents

Preface

Healers and Healing Traditions

Introduction

Backing into the Future

Menopause: Lessons from Anthropology Healing Traditions

Why not Call Modern Medicine ldquo;Alternativerdquo;?

Concepts of Arthritis in Indiarsquo;s Medical Traditions: Ayurvedic and Unani Perspectives

Cultural Studies of Biomedicine: an Agenda for Research

Good Homeopathic Medicine in the City of Oaxaca, Mexico: Patientsrsquo; Perspectives and Observations

The Epistemology of Traditional Healing Systems Patients and Healers

Perturbing the System: ldquo;Hard Science,rdquo; ldquo;Soft Science,rdquo; and Social Science, the Anxiety and Madness of Method

Clown Doctors: Shaman Healers of Western Medicine

Shamanism and its Discontents

Distal Nursing

Witnessing and the Medical Gaze: How Medical Students Learn to See at a Free Clinic for the Homeless

Biocultural Approaches Adaptation, Variation, Plasticity

Living at the Edge of Space

The Co-Evolution of People, Plants, and Parasites: Biological and Cultural Adaptations to Malaria

The Vital Role of the Skin in Human Natural History

Why Genes Donrsquo;t Count (for Racial Differences in Health) Evolutionary Medicine

Evolution and the Origins of Disease

Evolutionary Health Promotion

Evolutionary Health Promotion: a Consideration of Common Counterarguments Prehistory and History of Human Health

Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases: the Third Epidemiologic Transition

Health Conditions before Columbus: Paleopathology of Native North Americans

A Comparison of Health Complaints of Settled and Nomadic Turkana Men

The Resurgence of Disease: Social and Historical Perspectives on the ldquo;Newrdquo; Tuberculosis

Implications of Pandemic Influenza for Bioterrorism Response Ecology and Geography of Disease

Health Implications of Modern Agricultural Transformations: Malaria and Pellagra in Italy

Global Climate Change and Emerging Infectious Diseases

Ecology and Ethnomedicine: Exploring Links between Current Environmental Crisis and Indigenous Medical Practices

Culture-Oriented Approaches Concepts and Perspectives

Cultural Meaning, Explanations of Illness, and the Development of Comparative Frameworks

The Mindful Body: a Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology Mind-Body-Universe

Breast Cancer: Reading the Omens

Refugee Stress and Folk Belief: Hmong Sudden Deaths

Deconstructing the Placebo Effect and Finding the Meaning Response

Possible Efficacy of a Creek Folk Medicine through Skin Absorption: an Object Lesson in Ethnopharmacology Explanatory Models and Social and Politico-Economic Contexts

Cultural Contexts of Ebola in Northern Uganda

Health Beliefs and Folk Models of Diabetes in British Bangladeshis: a Qualitative Study

Social Scientists and the New Tuberculosis

Embodiment of Terror: Gendered Violence in Peacetime and Wartime in Croatia a

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

While teaching seminars in medical anthropology, I have noticed that discussions and written work turn frequently to comparisons and contrasts across places, peoples, and time periods. At the same time, my work with colleagues in public health, medicine, and health and fitness has shown me that practitioners in other fields share a lively interest in anthropological perspectives, methods, and data. This reader answers the need for a book that provides both fascinating comparative ethnographic detail and a theoretical framework for organizing and interpreting information about health.While there are many health-related fields represented in this book, its core discipline is medical anthropology and its main focus is the comparative approach. Cross-cultural comparison gives anthropological analysis breadth while the evolutionary time scale gives it depth. These two features have always been fundamental to anthropology and continue to distinguish it among the social sciences. A third feature is the in-depth knowledge of culture produced by anthropological methods such as participant-observation, involving long-term presence in and research among a study population.Medical anthropology is the part of anthropology that focuses upon the human experience of health and disease. Evolutionary and comparative approaches are particularly relevant given that the health of the mind/body is an inescapably biocultural phenomenon, standing at the intersection of history, biology, and culture. In addition, many health-related topics such as illness, healing, and death are human universals, but they by no means take a uniform shape everywhere. Accordingly, the readings that follow emphasize comparisons and contrasts, whether across healing traditions, population groups, or time periods. By weaving biological and cultural approaches throughout the text, the book builds a model of the relationship between humans and diseases over historical and evolutionary time scales. There are practical implications both for understanding disease processes and cultural coping mechanisms, and for making the most of historical lessons to manage current health concerns.Anthropological studies of health help to illustrate the point that the concept of culture is better understood as an adjective than a noun. That is, cultures are not coterminous with particular groups of people, nor static features that pertain to individuals and directly explain their actions, as is often assumed in health research and medical care. Rather, the concept of culture describes fluid, permeable, changeable sets of collective beliefs, values, and behaviors that inform, shape, and constrain the worldviews and personal choices of individuals, but not always in the same manner or to the same degree. The articles in this collection illuminate some of the subtle and yet not unknowable workings of culture across a variety of case examples.The selections range from small-scale, detailed analyses to large-scale comparisons across world regions. In this way, the book benefits from both the attention to context that is possible in localized analyses, and the explanatory power of broad-based, carefully executed comparisons across a larger number of units of analysis. Both the minutely reductionist and the majestically expansionist frames of vision have their place in the pursuit of knowledge. Likewise, both quantitative and qualitative approaches are appropriate tools of anthropological analysis and appear throughout the text. Some studies are highly data-driven; others depend upon close analysis of interview and other ethnographic material. The inclusion of studies using such a variety of approaches allows for the development of a global perspective on health and healing that is grounded in concrete, local contexts. Selection of articlesMedical anthropology and related disciplines concern themselves with a wide field of analysis, making it impossible