Anthropology Terms Environment and Medicine

Environmental Anthropology

The study of relations between humans and the environment

Anthropocene

The current geological era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways

Multispecies Ethnography

Ethnographic research that considers the interactions of all species living on the planet in order to provide a more-than-human perspective on the world.

Ecotourism

Tours of remote natural environments designed to support local communities and their conservation efforts

Settler Colonialism

Displacement and pacification of indigenous peoples and expropriation of their lands and resources

Overinnovation in development

To much change too quickly for it to align with people’s cultures. Includes people who were rapidly displaced such as dams in Haiti

Underdifferentiation in development

projects tended to assume that poor countries were alike and had common needs that an outsider could easily solve, ignored sociocultural diversity. Also ignoring previous cultural / power dynamics

Health

The absence of disease as well as the presence of physical, mental, and social wellbeing

Disease

A discrete natural entity that can be clinically identified and treated by a health professional

Illness

An individual patient’s experience of being unwell

Illness narratives

The personal stories people tell to explain their illness(es)

Ethnomedicine

Local systems of health and healing that are rooted in culturally specific norms and values

Ethnopharmacology

The documentation and description of the local use of natural substances in healing remedies and practices

Biomedicine

A practice associated with Western medicine that seeks to apply biology and the natural sciences to the practice of diagnosing diseases and promoting healing

Medical pluralism

The intersection of multiple cultural approaches to healing

Health Transition

The significant improvements made in human health over the course of the 20th century, they were not evenly distributed however

Critical Medical anthropology

An approach to the study of health and illness that analyzes the impact of inequality and stratifications within a system of power on individual and group health outcomes.