midterm 1 Flashcards
What are the basic subfields of anthropology?
Cultural: study of contemporary humans
Linguistic: study of communication (oral, written, code switching, symbols, patient/doctor i/a)
Biological/physical: study of primates/evolution, etc - used to explain human development
Archeology: excavation/analysis of human remains
How is anthropology a ‘handmaiden to colonialism’?
Anthropology and colonialism developed together - colonization paved the way to accessing new cultures and anthropologists studied them
What are the major components of culture?
Systems of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people
Nature vs. Nurture
- To what extent is our behavior a result of our biology?
- To what extent is our behavior a result of our culture?
- To what extent is our behavior a result of our individual socialization?
- To what extent do this factors influence one another?
- Cartesian Dualism (separation of mind and body & nature and nurture)
Bio-cultural approaches to humanity
Examines how social, ecological, and biological issues about health interact within and across populations - considers individual body as a starting point
What is Development Systems Theory?
- Idea that ‘nature’ (genes, hormones, brain cells) and ‘nurture’ (environment, socialization) are not two fundamentally different types of processes
- Recognizes developmental plasticity
- Breakdown of Cartesian Dualism
What are the basics of ethnographic fieldwork?
Involved long-term residence in a community, speaking the local language, and participating in daily life as a member of that community - intense interpersonal i/a over a long period of time
Ethnomedicine and its relation to biomedicine
A cultural system of health and healing - biomedicine is a form of ethnomedicine, they are not in opposition
What is Medical Pluralism and why is it important to human healthcare systems?
All societies use and combine different ethnomedicines
Process of medicalization & the biomedicalization of ethnomedicine
- Defining a condition as a disease or in need of medical intervention
- As certain approaches to health/health systems become more prevalent, biomedicine attempts to determine the efficacy of treatments
What is biological normalcy and how does it relate to biomedicine?
What’s typical, what the majority of people are doing (ex. In a society with 50% depression rates: being depression-free is normal (& ideal), but having depression is normative)
Sickness vs. disease vs. illness - how does this relate to treatment regimes?
- Sickness: an inclusive term that refers to ‘unwanted’ variations in physical, social, and psychological dimensions of health
- Disease: refers to a clinically identifiable cause of sickness
- Illness: refers to the individual experience of feeling sick
- This distinction influences the understanding of how to approach management of sickness
Nocebo and placebo effect - what do these tell us about the relationship between belief and physical experience?
Belief can and does influence physical experience
Efficacy vs. effectiveness - why should medical anthropologists know both?
Efficacy: quantitative measures, clinical studies - ‘evidence-based medicine’ - focuses on the absence or reduction of disease
Effectiveness: qualitative measures, based on a patient’s subjective experience - focuses on the absence or reduction of illness
Both are important to understand to properly treat sickness
What are anthropologists examining with the phrase “I am Illness”?
They are studying how language shapes our understanding of illness - is it something you are (identity) or something you have (condition)?
What are the major types of modes of production?
Foraging: hunting, gathering, fish scavenging - nomadic lifestyle
Pastoralism: animal husbandry/domestication - can range from mobile communities that tend to herds to industrialized meat production
Horticulture: small scale cultivation of plants, employs polycropping
Agriculture: intensive farming that permanently alters landscape, employs monocropping