Chapter 5 Ethnomedicine

Question 1

What is medical anthropology

Answer 1

The application of anthropological theories and methods to question health, illness, medicine, and healing

Question 2

What components influence the understanding on health and disease in relation to cultural patterns

Answer 2

Infrastructure, structure, and super structure; power, market, institutional processes of health care

Question 3

What’s the difference between disease and illness?

Answer 3

Disease is the biological health problem

Illness is understanding of biological health problem

Question 4

How is health perceived from a cultural stand point?

Answer 4

Perceptions of well being is constructed by cultures, morality, class and ethnicity

Question 5

What does a health system compromise?

Answer 5

• perceptions and classification of health problem
• prevention measures
• diagnosis patterns
• healing system (magical, religious, scientific, and healing substances)
• healers

Question 6

What is ethno-medicine

Answer 6

• any form of medicine is a cultural system
• cross cultural understanding of health systems
• how do people label, categorize and classify health problems

Question 7

What are the five areas that ethno-medicine focus on

Answer 7

• ethnographic description of healing practices
• comparison of ethno medical systems
• Explanatory models of health and sickness
• health seeking behaviours
• efficacy of ethno medical system

Question 8

What is cultural specific syndrome

Answer 8

A health problem associated to particular culture

Question 9

What is somatization

Answer 9

The process through which the body absorbs social stress and manifests symptoms of suffering (ex: anorexia, retired husband syndrome)

Question 10

What is etiology

Answer 10

Understanding of health problems and there causes

Question 11

What is ethno etiology

Answer 11

Cross cultural variations in casual expiations of health problems and suffering

Question 12

What is a structural suffering?

Answer 12

Health problems caused by powerful structural forces

Ex: poverty, forced migration

Question 13

What are some ways of healing

Answer 13

Community
Humoral ( based on a balance among certain elements within the body/persons environment)
Healers and healing substances

Question 14

What is a diagnosis?

Answer 14

Culture shapes symptoms and understandings of the causes of illness

Question 15

What are the theoretical parochial to anthropology

Answer 15

• Biological approach
• ecological/epidemiological approach
• interpretive approach
• critical medical anthropology
• applied medical anthropology

Question 16

What do medical anthropologists try to understand disease in relation to?

Answer 16

Environment, cultural specific behaviour, socio-political circumstances

Question 17

What does the biological approach focus on?

Answer 17

• evolution processes and human disease
• the evolution of human disease
• human genetic variation

Question 18

What is the interpretative approach

Answer 18

-examines how different cultures label, describe, and experience illness

Question 19

What does critical medical anthropology focus on?

Answer 19

• power and how it effect disease
• inequalities
• poverty
• healthcare systems

Question 20

What is critical medical anthropology influenced by

Answer 20

Marxism, post-modernism and deconstructionism

Question 21

What is historical trauma?

Answer 21

The intergenerational transfer of the emotional and psychological effect of colonialism from parents to children

Question 22

How does colonialism effect diseases

Answer 22

Can spread way faster because people are closer together

Question 23

What are the two general domains of applied approaches

Answer 23

• clinical setting
• medical anthropologists can support public health programs and also by looking at health programs which are culturally sensitive

Question 24

Describe globalization and change from a medical anthropologist point of view

Answer 24

• started within context of colonialism
• critically look at new infectious diseases
• current expansion of western biomedical system
• medicalization of health problems

Question 25

What is disease of development

Answer 25

A new health problem emerging as a result of new economic development activities (especially in underdeveloped nations)

Question 26

What is medical pluralism

Answer 26

Existence of multiple health systems in a single culture