Medical Anthropology; Race Flashcards
Race
In many ways the idea of race is used to explain human biological difference. Yet many anthropologists reject the concept of human races and prefer to use other defining factors. Race is not based on shared genetic material but rather “phenotypic” traits.
Racial classification
Based on the idea that it is possible to classfiy all humans based on the idea that it is possible to classify all humans based on a stable genetic category knwon as race. But not a biological given but rather a social concept.
Race as a social construct
Hypodescent: in the US, people are ascribed race at birth. You cannot chose or change race. The minority is absciribed to you: mudbloods and Obama. Japanese concept of “other”
Buck, “Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power”
white privilege and racism and race as structural and historical
Aspen Institute Roundtable
How is a nation legally committed to equal opportunity for all continually reporduces patterns of racial inequality
Medical system
how individuals in societies mvoe from states of illness to health and what social institutions are involved. A process and a thing. Can be ethnographically explored.
Medical anthropology
the field is concerened with the factors that contribute to disease or illness. Issues of health, illness and suffering. Virchaw was a huge proponent of the field. It is a subset of cultural anthropology.
Metzel “Against Health”
illness is biologically determined. Health is an individually determined psychological and physical balance. It is a concept that is structured by others in your society and there is no universal health. They are a series of lofty standards that inherently blocks some people towards always being unhealth. To get health there is a consumerist rhetoric (insurance, yoga pants) and gatekeepers (media, doctors). These anthropologists are against health as a way to marginalize and exploit others. They believe these lofty standards of health promotoe socieconomic inequality and profiteering off of the human condition through pharamaseuticals, doctors and corporations.
Lock “Body Politics”
Japanese and American cultural views on health. What is biomedicine and is it an answer for all? Biomedicine is a science that studies the body. In Japan there is a focus on health as a balance of the body. Biomedicine treats the final cause (headache) not the causes.
Scheper-Hughes “Organ Stealing”
Anthropology of the body. The black market of organ transplant, homeless kids killed for their organs. The imbalance of accesibility to organs.
