ANTH 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Nacirema, Agoraphobia, Anorexia Nervosa
Document Summary
Messy cake of culture: top layer a. Ideas, beliefs, symbols: middle layer (we"re here, living in groups, social and political organization, bottom layer (done that, making a living, making people. Ethnomedicine: a study of health systems around the world- including western biomedicine. Community"s ideas about health: focus on the body 1. Categories of affliction (not just sicknesses ) and diagnosis 2. Ideas about causes of health problems (ethno-etiologies). Culture-specific syndromes are found in groups afflictions come from. Perception of what a body actually is. Is it its own object, but others may see it connected to each other or nature. Example: in japan, there"s gotai which means the body should stay intact your whole life. That"s why samurais focused on decapitation because it meant that they"d be very dead in the afterlife. All cultures label health problems- but they vary in terms of what they focus on and how detailed the categories are.
