ANTH 227 Lecture Notes - Medical Anthropology, Medicalization, Ethnography
21 Nov 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Medical anthropology and anthropology of medicine are two distinct terms. The former refers to a community of individuals who jointly become ill and aspire to well-being. The latter came after, as a result of the progression of intellectual capacity, and refers to medicine as a discipline of anthropology, focusing upon the anthropologist"s study of the human in relation to medicine. Anthropology of medicine did not even arise until the 1970"s. Ethnographers, or those who focused on specific cultures and tried to understand them, before this epoch, considered european society to follow a type of linear progression or evolution due to its technological and scientific innovations. They deduced that since european society, unlike other contemporaneous and perhaps. Primitive societies, was evolving linearly, its method was the correct one. Europe was thus deemed a modern society, embracing the ideals of democracy, progress, and individualism. Other non-european societies had only magic or religion, as stated by.
