MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: How Illness is Traditionally Perceived and Cured Around the World (original) (raw)
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What a Naturalist Theory of Illness Should Be
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, 2016
Christopher Boorse, the leading naturalist philosopher of medicine, used to interpret illness as a practical concept that involves normative or evaluative elements, which have to do with the undesirability of medical conditions. Later he changed his mind and has since regarded illness as a value-neutral concept, just like disease. An illness, according to his most recent point of view, is a "systemic disease, affecting the organism as a whole". Yet, his account of illness is still fairly undeveloped. In my contribution I want to scrutinize the notion of illness from a naturalist point of view. I will first draw on Boorse's theory and point out problems with it. I will then discuss the crucial question about the logical relation between the concepts of disease and illness, especially by discussing Bill Fulford's "reverse view". A naturalist account of illness holds that the extension of the concept of illness is restricted by the scope of the concept of disease, hence that a condition qualifies as a putative illness only if it is a disease. I do agree with normativists, though, in claiming that the concept of illness is evaluative; it refers to pathological conditions that are bad for the affected person. Finally, I hint at a way as to how a distinctively naturalist theory of illness can draw on a naturalist theory of disease. We seem to gain knowledge about the basic elements of a good human life in virtue of developing a theory of basic biological functions. Hence, there is an interplay between value-neutral and evaluative points of view.
In this course, students will be encouraged to develop a broad understanding of medical anthropology, one of the newest, largest, and fastest growing subfields of cultural anthropology. Drawing from theoretical and ethnographic material and from detailed case studies from the U.S., Haiti, Peru, and Guatemala, we will examine a number of topics in medical anthropology, including applied, interpretive, and critical medical anthropological approaches and practices. Through reading and evaluating a wide range of both classical and contemporary publications in medical anthropology, we will explore the different kinds of questions that medical anthropologists ask, the research methods they use to answer those questions, and the insights (theoretical, moral, and practical) that these insights provide. Throughout the course, our discussions will focus on how people from different societies and cultures understand health, illness, and healing, including studying different cultural healing practices and beliefs as well as the social origins and consequences of illness and disease. Questions we will investigate together include: How do cultures and societies interact with people’s physical environments to cause health problems and/or influence the spread of illness and disease? How do economic and political structures and inequalities help shape people’s health, their access to quality health care, and the distribution of illness and disease within and across different societies? How do people in different cultures and societies label, describe, and experience illness and offer meaningful responses to individual and communal distress?
Medical anthropology is the study of medical phenomena as social and cultural phenomena. "Medical" is an imperious adjective that seems to suggest that medical anthropology is interested in things, thoughts, and practices related to medical science or that it is a branch of anthropology in the service of medicine. It is not; rather, for many medical anthropologists, the opposite applies. "Medical" refers broadly to anything related to health, well-being, sickness, and the treatment of ill-health.
The interface between medical anthropology and medical ethnobiology
Journal of the Royal Anthropological …, 2006
Medical anthropology is concerned with both the causes and consequences of human sickness, and its various theoretical orientations can be grouped into four major approaches: medical ecology, critical medical anthropology, interpretative medical anthropology, and ethnomedicine. While medical anthropologists of all theoretical persuasions have examined why people get sick, the analysis and understanding of patterns of treatment has been largely confined to ethnomedicine. Historically, more emphasis has been placed on the personalistic or supernatural aspects of ethnomedical systems than on naturalistic or empirical components. While this focus has produced valuable insights into the role of ritual and belief in healing, it has led to the impression that traditional medicine is primarily symbolic. Moreover, it ignores the theoretical bases of traditional healing strategies and the practical means by which most of the world heals itself, namely plants. Recently there has been more interest in the empirical character of ethnomedical systems, and in this paper we consider the role that medical ethnobiology has played in this shift of focus. We begin with a brief history of medical anthropology to illuminate why naturalistic medicine was neglected for so long. We then review exemplary research in two areas of medical ethnobiology -ethnophysiology and medical ethnobotany -that address the study of naturalistic aspects of medical systems. We conclude with suggestions for future research at the interface between medical ethnobiology and medical anthropology that will contribute to both fields.
The Nepalese traditional concepts of illness and treatment
2011
The indigenous system of healing reaches back to time immemorial. It requires a long and complex apprenticeship. This indigenous system of diagnosis, treatment, and healing has evolved in a process of trial-and-error, empirical observation, and experimental procedures over the millennia, and is an on-going process, not dissimilar to modern medicine. Indigenous diagnosis and treatment use the natural resources at their disposal as well as the attitudes, values, beliefs, and ritual in their healing technology. The traditional Nepali concept of disease does not include the germ theory. The Nepalese see illness as external to the body, caused by malevolent powers that make an unwelcome entry into the body which disturbs the normal balance creating a host of sicknesses. The person suffering does not know for sure what the ailment is all about and how soon it could be done away with. Because the sickness has come from an external source, through external agents, the solution to problems m...