Medical Anthro - Exam 2

Critical Medical Anthropology

Analysis of the unequal access to and control over resources necessary for health shapes the distribution of disease, illness, and suffering. This approach emphasizes the unequal political and economic structures that create negative health outcomes.

Critical-Interpretive Medical Perspective

Interpretation of the cultural meanings that humans assign to disease, health, and illness in the context of unequal political and economic structures that affect human healt

Individual Body

lived experience of the body

Social Body

the body as a social symbol, as socially understood as a particular type of person

Body Politic

surveillance and control of bodies, decides who is to blame, and then controls them. Supports dominant ideologies in a culture.

Structural Violence

racism, sexism, political violence, poverty, and social inequalities rooted in historical and economic processes that shape the distribution and outcome of suffering. [structuring social inequality and patterns of suffering bodies]

Social Suffering

Embodied structural violence. Individuals experience distress from social conditions that create an unequal distribution of suffering. [lived experience]

Syndemic

adverse interactions between two or more diseases that interact with a population because of harmful social and structural factors that increase the total disease burden.

Emerging Diseases

Infectious diseases whose incidence in humans has increased in the past 2 decades or threatens to increase in the near future.

Plural Medical System

Societies that have many distinct healing roles/sectors that overlap.

Personal Health Care Sector: healing is undertaken by non-specialists on the basis of generally shared knowledge

Professional Health Care Sector: healing is undertaken by persons with specialized knowledge and professional status

Alternative Health Care Sector: healing is undertaken by non-professional, non-bureaucratic specialists

Social Authority

ability of a person or social group to influence the actions and/or decision making of others on the basis of social status and power

Cultural Authority

ability of a person or social group to influence the actions and/or decisions of others on the basis of cultural legitimacy of the knowledge about the body, illness, and healing.

Peruvian Curanderos vs Biomedical Healers,

Cholera Comparisons

HIV/AIDS and cultural models in Haiti

What is the purpose of theory in medical anthropology?

Seeks to account for a defined set of regularities or patterns evident in a given phenomenon

• Reduces complexity

• Identifies relevant characteristics to consider

• Seeks to explain the human experience of disease and healing

How does a critical-interpretive medical anthropology approach explain suffering related to cholera, HIV/AIDS, and TB?

explains suffering from cholera, HIV/AIDS, and TB as a product of structural violence and political-economic inequalities, rather than just biological pathogens

How do medical anthropologists examine structural violence and social suffering related to emerging diseases?

by analyzing how large-scale political, economic, and social systems shape disease distribution, vulnerability, and access to care.

How does the case of HIV/AIDS in Haiti show that local cultural understandings may coexists with biomedical views of a disease?

Sida may occur both "naturally" (God's illness) and "unnaturally" (sorcery).

Natural sida is caused by sexual contact with someone who "carries the germ." Unnatural sida is "sent" by someone who willfully inflicts death upon the afflicted

They may seek biomedical treatment while also seeking help from voodoo priests

How does TB relate to poverty?

If patients are unable to afford to continue the entire course of medication they may discontinue the use of antibiotics midway through treatment. This intermittent and inadequate treatment creates a hardier strain that begins to form drug resistant TB.

Lack of access to clean water and good food, lack of space to isolate further drives TB.