midterm 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What are the basic subfields of anthropology?

A

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

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2
Q

How is anthropology a ‘handmaiden to colonialism’?

A

Anthropology and colonialism developed together - colonization paved the way to accessing new cultures and anthropologists studied them

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3
Q

What are the major components of culture?

A

Systems of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people

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4
Q

Nature vs. Nurture

A
  • 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)
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5
Q

Bio-cultural approaches to humanity

A

Examines how social, ecological, and biological issues about health interact within and across populations - considers individual body as a starting point

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6
Q

What is Development Systems Theory?

A
  • 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
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7
Q

What are the basics of ethnographic fieldwork?

A

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

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8
Q

Ethnomedicine and its relation to biomedicine

A

A cultural system of health and healing - biomedicine is a form of ethnomedicine, they are not in opposition

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9
Q

What is Medical Pluralism and why is it important to human healthcare systems?

A

All societies use and combine different ethnomedicines

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10
Q

Process of medicalization & the biomedicalization of ethnomedicine

A
  • 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
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11
Q

What is biological normalcy and how does it relate to biomedicine?

A

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)

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12
Q

Sickness vs. disease vs. illness - how does this relate to treatment regimes?

A
  • 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
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13
Q

Nocebo and placebo effect - what do these tell us about the relationship between belief and physical experience?

A

Belief can and does influence physical experience

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14
Q

Efficacy vs. effectiveness - why should medical anthropologists know both?

A

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

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15
Q

What are anthropologists examining with the phrase “I am Illness”?

A

They are studying how language shapes our understanding of illness - is it something you are (identity) or something you have (condition)?

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16
Q

What are the major types of modes of production?

A

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

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17
Q

How did the switch from foraging to agriculture affect human health?

A

There was on overall decline in human health - increase in infectious diseases, bone degeneration, poor nutrition, increases in cavities/tooth loss, and reduced jaw size

18
Q

What is the relationship between evolutionary adaptation and chronic illness?

A

Chronic illness is associated with the diets of economically healthy countries and eating diets we have not evolved for - cannot be selected our because we reproduce before these diseases affect us

19
Q

What is the ‘thrifty genotype/phenotype’ hypothesis?

A

Humans have evolved to store fat, proposed to help during times of famine

20
Q

How has training and funding influenced the discipline of nutrition science?

A

Nutrition science has recently been sidelined as a discipline, and it is influenced funding from agribusiness and lobbying groups

21
Q

What are the four types of malnutrition?

A
  • Undernutrition 1 (caloric): growth failure (failure to thrive, protein-energy malnutrition)
  • Undernutrition 2 (specific nutrient deficiencies): deficient in iron, zinc, and other various vitamins
  • Over nutrition 1 (caloric): obesity
  • Nutrient imbalance: refers to diseases affected by poor nutrition such Diabetes Mellitus, hypertension, atherosclerosis, etc
22
Q

What are some major impacts of globalization on diet?

A

Homogenized diets, increase in allergies, increase in chronic illness

23
Q

How do political-economics influence diet and health?

A
24
Q

What are the three major factors that influence fat storage?

A

Epigenetics, diet and activity, and cultural/political economy

25
Q

How has body size been medicalized? How was obesity come to be seen as a disease?

A

Human body became standardized with the Body Mass Index (BMI). Visual body size became a measure of health, some correlation (NOT causation) between body fat percentage and disease prevalence
(many w/ high BMI have normal biomarkers and many w/ low BMI have abnormal biomarkers)

26
Q

How are body size, health, and social value determined? What is the relationship among them?

A
27
Q

How do obesogenic environments operate differently depending on economic standing?

A

Shifts in a populations’ diet and nutritional status (‘Developing’ nations - Poor = thin | Rich = fat,
‘Developed’ nations -Poor = fat | Rich = thin)

28
Q

What is ‘syndemic obesity’?

A

Multifactorial approach to diet and health (epigenetics works to pass on social/economic inequities biologically across generations, reinforces and reproduces inequalities and stigmas)

29
Q

How do cultural values shape ideals about body size and understandings of health?

A

Cultural conceptions of ideal and normalized body types change over time and differs among cultures (body size is associated with cultural conceptions of health, confers value about a person)

30
Q

How is health and body size in Mauritania understood?

A

Obesity is preferred and is considered beautiful. Implies that a women is well-fed

31
Q

How has ‘modernization’ shaped global views of body size and ‘fat ideology’?

A

Euro-American model is considered the ‘best’ model, western hegemony. Increase is value of thinness, body size acts as a moral marker (Fat as wealth vs fat as lazy)

32
Q

What is fat stigma and how does it relate to body capital and health?

A

Assigning moral values to body size and fatness. Body capital is the privilege/differential treatment based on body size. Stigma leads to unhealthy eating in all body sizes

33
Q

How are concepts of ‘overweight/obese’ culturally constructed?

A
34
Q

What are the major biomedical nosologies and etiologies of mental health?

A

Focuses on the individual, mental health is seen as a state of ‘disorder’ that an individual experiences

35
Q

How has mental health been medicalized?

A

Began in the 1950s with the rise of psychology and psychiatry - there was success when ‘treating schizophrenia patients. This success came purely from lessening socially unacceptable behavior, so care for the mentally ill became a full-time profession

36
Q

What is the origin of biomedical mental health specializations? What were major biomedical approaches to treating mental health in the early to mid 1900s? How do these approaches intersect with notions of deviance?

A
37
Q

What is the DSM? How does it define mental illness in general (distress and disability)?

A

Medical Model for definitions, categorization, and diagnostics - defines illness by level of disability (ability to function in a ‘normative’ way - culturally objective) and level of distress experienced by individual (subjective)

38
Q

In what ways does the DSM as a model for mental illness encourage stigma? How is it ethnocentric as well? How does the DSM change over time and what influences this?

A

The DSM places the experience of distress on the individual and not society, which creates stigma.

39
Q

How does an exploration of treatment regimes illuminate cultural etiologies? ex) biomedical beliefs that depression is chemically (biologically) based and therefore treatable via medicine

A
40
Q

How does the emerging evidence on the cause of depression as non-chemical, yet chemical treatments being effective, demonstrate (1) the potential for highly complex etiologies and therefore the need to rethink nosologies/treatment approaches, and (2) the complex interplay between biology and culture?

A
41
Q

What is an ‘idiom of stress’?

A

Cultural - a particular illness narrative that only makes sense within a particular society

42
Q

How do culturally beliefs and social structures like race (racism), gender (sexism), and religion (discrimination) shape our understanding of the cause (etiology) of violence?

A