INTL 340 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Ethnography, Medical Anthropology, Knowledge
2 Jul 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 6 Class 2
Epidemiology/Anthropology
● For Social Epidemiology: distributions of morbidity and mortality matter; assessments of
health status of populations; demonstrate associations between risk factors and disease
● For medical anthropology: cultural meaning matters; understanding illness as lived
experience; associations between cultural change/distribution and sickness/illness
Anthropology and Global Health
● Questions of meaning, lived experience and an emic perspective are central to
anthropological concerns
● Considering other cultural ways of understanding sickness and of being ill as rational
responses to particular social histories and lived experiences
● Avoiding ethnocentric assumptions or value judgements about the health-related behaviors
or beliefs of cultural “others"
○ understand the community first
Anthropology and Health Inequalities
● Moving beyond considerations of “risk behaviors” at the individual level
● Considering risk as socially - and structurally - produced
● Situating individuals within broader political, economic, social contexts
Structural violence
● A concept articulated by Paul Farmer to describe the structural, political-economic, historical
underpinnings of disease and illness (AIDS to TB)
● Farmer: blaming culture, beliefs, or behaviors for disease is “victim-blaming” - not
recognizing larger social-structural barriers to health
● Health inequalities result from power inequalities
○ Haiti, Soviet Union, Boston
Disease/Illness
● Disease: biological pathology, observable, verifiable, “objective"
● Illness: lived experience of ill-health, more “subjective"
● Some element of “subjectivity” or “error” in all measurement; “positioned objectivity” or
“situated knowledge"
Belief and Difference
● Beliefs represent different types of knowledge systems
● What to make of “traditional” or “primitive” beliefs about health
● How to respond to the “other” esp
Assumptions of the “Medical Model"
● Disease is universally-recognized, biological pathology
● Disease produces visible signs and symptoms; empirical observation is key to diagnosis
● Medicine is thus a rational science
● Evidence based on that which is visible, observable, replicable
● Absent signs of visible pathology, patient is assumed to be “irrational” or “somaticizing"
● patients feelings about of perception of illness is not really important/valid here
Assumptions of Medical Anthropology
● medical systems are cultural systems (biomedicine included)
● approach other cultural systems and beliefs on their own terms, assume the “truth” in them
● not privileging one form of knowing (the body, illness, healing) over another
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
For social epidemiology: distributions of morbidity and mortality matter; assessments of health status of populations; demonstrate associations between risk factors and disease. For medical anthropology: cultural meaning matters; understanding illness as lived experience; associations between cultural change/distribution and sickness/illness. Questions of meaning, lived experience and an emic perspective are central to anthropological concerns. Considering other cultural ways of understanding sickness and of being ill as rational responses to particular social histories and lived experiences. Avoiding ethnocentric assumptions or value judgements about the health-related behaviors or beliefs of cultural others" Moving beyond considerations of risk behaviors at the individual level. Considering risk as socially - and structurally - produced. Situating individuals within broader political, economic, social contexts. A concept articulated by paul farmer to describe the structural, political-economic, historical underpinnings of disease and illness (aids to tb) Farmer: blaming culture, beliefs, or behaviors for disease is victim-blaming - not recognizing larger social-structural barriers to health.
