ANTHRO 134A Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Biomedicine, Ethnomedicine, Marcel Mauss

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTHRO 134A
• Professor: Angela C Jenks

Document Summary

Biomedicine is an ethnomedicine (a culturally-based health system): Biomedicine is based on assumptions like naturalism, materialism, universalism, and individualism. Biomedicine is affected by local norms and values (ex: france vs. Biomedicine views and understand the body through socially structured lenses (ex: mechanical metaphors; influence of gender norms on descriptions of egg and sperm) Medical students learn not just the science of biomedicine but its values as well (ex: anatomy lab). The p(cid:396)a(cid:272)ti(cid:272)e of (cid:271)io(cid:373)edi(cid:272)i(cid:374)e (cid:396)elies o(cid:374) s(cid:455)(cid:373)(cid:271)ols a(cid:374)d sha(cid:396)ed u(cid:374)de(cid:396)sta(cid:374)di(cid:374)gs. (e(cid:454): do(cid:272)to(cid:396)"s white coat). Allows things that would normally be taboo become normal. Discussion: many of the studies in (cid:271)io(cid:373)edi(cid:272)i(cid:374)e (cid:449)e"(cid:448)e (cid:271)ee(cid:374) dis(cid:272)ussi(cid:374)g (cid:449)ere do(cid:374)e i(cid:374) the (cid:1005)(cid:1013)(cid:1012)(cid:1004)"s. Aggressiveness: the amount of surgeries, higher doses of drugs, more treatment are very prevalent till this day in the united states: ex: breast cancer. Change in the content of the mcat even shows that understanding of social sciences and subjects such as psychology are necessary when understanding biomedicine.