Medical Anthropology
Anthro 12

Brief Course Description
This course examines the interaction of cultural, biological, and environmental factors with respect to cross-cultural conceptualizations of health and disease. Emphasis is placed upon the ecosystem approach to understanding human cultures, while both evolutionary and comparative perspectives constitute the principal theoretical orientations of the course. A number of specific diseases are surveyed in the context of the class to provide the student with an understanding of the extent, severity, and possibilities for prevention or eradication of the most serious human disease and nutritional pathologies.

Cultural Ecology, as the central orientation of the course, is examined in some detail to assess the strengths and limitations of this anthropological perspective. Additionally, a class project provides a practical experience in medical anthropological research.

Upon successful completion of this course, students are familiar with the range of cultural concepts of health and healing throughout both time and place. A sensitivity is developed with respect to these different realities and we begin to see the value of incorporating ethnically-specific views of health and disease into the profession of health care.

As examples of the goals of this course, students who successfully complete the class, will be able to:

1. trace the evolution of health, healing, and illness from the prehistoric past to the present,
2. demonstrate a sensitivity to the diversity of cultural beliefs regarding the
etiology of disease and relate disease patterns to ecological adaptations,
where applicable,
3. discuss major ethnographic cases involving landmark developments in
the understanding of the cultural context of health and disease,
4. show the place and importance of traditional healers (i.e. shamans, medicine
men and women, curanderos(as), brujos(as), "witch" doctors, and others)
in native cultures,
5. discuss and demonstrate, with examples, the world-wide consequences of
"Modernization" and "Westernization",
6. demonstrate an awareness of the positive and negative results of the
"industrial" model for modern health care (HMOs),
7. convincingly present historic facts related to the medieval displacement
of women with men in health care; the displacement of pagan with
Christian philosophical and spiritual medical beliefs,
8. review the recent adoption of "holistic" medical practices and discuss the
consequences of this development on the health care industry,
9. demonstrate an awareness of the health consequences of lifestyle (nutrition, physical activity, sleep patterns, stress levels, etc.), and
10. discuss the "diseases of civilization" and review alternative future health
scenarios with respect to contemporary beliefs and practices.