ANT208H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Eastern Canada, Social Darwinism, Biological Anthropology
Document Summary
Lecture 1: intro to medical anthropology (chapter 1) Health: how people are feeling about their wellbeing. Subjective and can be problematic - hard to apply concept to the past. Disease prevalence: specifically refers to frequency of disease in a population (differs from epidemiology) Variation in prevalence rates - comparative perspective (why one sector of a society is suffering from a certain disease than a population that is less affected) Risk factors of environment, family, genetics, etc. Rooted in 19th century colonialism due to interest in range in human behaviour and biology. Exposure to new populations and cultures (european explorers) -> euro-centric. Power differential between studier and those being studied. Period of population movement/migration (exploring/conquering populations -> saw range diversity of humans -> interest in understanding and describing such diversity) German pathologist (study disease, human remains - physical anthropology) Distribution of health and disease = influenced by factors/conditions of society (i. e. wealth and power)
