Chapter 5 Flashcards
What are the main subject matters in Medical Anthropology?
Understanding health and disease in relation to cultural patterns, dichotomies and differences, anthropological theories applied to health and healing.
What is the disease-illness dichotomy?
A disease is the biological objective definition of an ailment, illness is the cultural definition and labelling of an ailment.
What is sorcery?
Learned magical practice requiring words, objects and rituals.
What is an example of a culture that practices witchcraft or sorcery?
Kaguru of Tanszania believe in Uhai - supernatural power of witchcraft.
What is ethnomedicine?
Study of how different cultures conceptualize and treat illness.
What are the 5 areas of ethno-medicine?
Ethnographic description of healing practices, comparison of ethno medical systems, explanatory models of health and sickness, health seeking behaviours, efficacy of ethno medical system.
What is a Cultural Specific Syndrome?
Health problem associated with a particular culture.
What is somatization?
Process when the body absorbs stress and it manifests in physical suffering.
What are examples of culture specific syndromes?
Anorexia nervosa, retired husband syndrome.
What is an ethnoetiology?
Cross-culturally varied understanding of health problems and their causes.
What are culture bound syndromes?
Culturally-labelled disorders that may reinforce stereotypes of “wellness”
What is an example of an ethnoetiology in Thailand?
Village in northeastern thailand: wooden penis out side of house to protect men from ghost attack.
What is susto?
A culturally specific syndrome in Spain and Portugal.
What is structural suffering?
Health problem caused by structural forces such as poverty, war, famine, etc..
What is private healing?
Addresses individual body ailments in isolation.
What is community healing?
Considers the social context of healing.
What is a humoral healing system?
Healing based on concept of balance between elements in the body and environment.
What is ethno-botany?
Use of plants as medicine.
What are some examples of healing substances?
Pharmaceutical drugs, coca leaves in south america, bathing in the red sea
What are the 5 theoretical approaches in medical anthropology?
Biological approach, ecological/epidemiological approach, interpretive approach, critical medical approach, applied medical approach.
What are the main focuses of the biological approach?
- evolution of human diseases
- emerging infectious diseases
- diseases of transition from paleolithic to neolithic
- disease of civilization
- big three (heart disease, diabetes, cancer)
- genetic variation
- diseases bc of racial discrimination
What is the focus of the ecological approach? What are two examples of diseases of interest?
Examine ecological patterns and social contexts of diseases.
Hookworm in rural china from rice farming, tuberculosis in urban areas.
What is the interpretive approach?
Examining cultural variation in labelling, description and experience of health issues.
What is an example of the placebo effect?
Ayruvedic healing in India.
What is critical medical anthropology influenced by?
Marxism, post-modernism, and deconstructionism.
What is critical medical anthropology.
Approach that looks at the local and global economic inequalities and how that affects the distribution of disease.
What is applied anthropology approach?
Looks at way that that health systems can be improved in the sense of cultural sensitivity and relevancy (clinical settings and public health programs)
What is intercultural health?
An approach to reduce the gaps between local and western medicine.
What is the kuru disease in New Guinea?
Disease fore women were getting because they would eat the flesh of the deceased. This spread could’ve been mitigated earlier if the health systems had been more culturally aware.
What is disease of development? What is an example?
Health problem that emerges bc of new economic development. Schistosomiasis in Sub Saharan African countries, women and children vulnerable to arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh.
What is medical pluralism and an example?
Existence of multiple health systems in a single culture. Sherpa of Nepal.
