Medical Anthropology Overview

Medical Anthropology

• Clinically Applied Medical Anthropology: Promotes biomedicine's tolerance within the clinic, often through cultural sensitivity training.
• Critical Medical Anthropology: Critiques biomedicine's limitations and examines existing issues within medical practices, focusing on political and economic health disparities.

Knowledge and Belief in Medical Anthropology

• Belief: Explanations for phenomena lacking clear physiological grounds, often seen as mistaken or false.
• Knowledge: Confirms the truth and validity of specific knowledge systems, particularly those aligned with objective scientific reality.
• Empiricist Theory of Medical Language/Knowledge: Emphasizes observational and practical learning, focusing on sensory experiences rather than theoretical deductions.

Modernization Theory in Medical Anthropology

• Modernization Theory: Favors modern, scientific approaches, potentially undermining traditional medical practices.
• Social Evolution: Suggests societies progress through advancements in science and technology, often viewing traditional healing as less evolved.

Cultural Perspectives on Normal and Abnormal

• Normal: What's considered normal varies across cultures, depending on norms, biological adaptability, and societal views on mental health.
• Abnormal: Behavior or conditions deviating from cultural norms or biological adaptability.

Ethnographic Examples in Medical Anthropology

• Azande Belief in Witchcraft: Belief that certain individuals possess witchcraft, highlighting cultural interpretations of misfortune.
• Zande Knowledge of Diseases: Zande identify diseases through their primary symptoms, demonstrating empirical knowledge alongside cultural beliefs.
• Lia Lee's Case (Fadiman): Lia, a Hmong child, was taken away from her family due to the perceived superiority of modern medicine over traditional Hmong healing practices, demonstrating clashing medical paradigms.

Iatrogenesis and Medicalization

• Medicalization: Defining human conditions as medical issues, often leading to medical intervention and treatment.
• Iatrogenesis: Harm resulting from medical interventions or treatments.
  • Clinical Iatrogenesis: Harm caused directly by medical procedures or treatments.
  • Social Iatrogenesis: Harm resulting from institutional changes in health norms.
  • Cultural Iatrogenesis: Loss of acceptance and understanding of common human experiences due to medical interventions.

Right of Recovery and Volumetric Conceptions of Disease

• Right of Recovery: Access to holistic support for recovery, especially after disasters or crises.
• Volumetric Conceptions of Disease: Focus on identifying disease risks rather than promoting potentially therapeutic measures, highlighting the role of prevention in medical practice.

Important Distinctions in Medical Anthropology

• Illness vs. Disease: Distinction between the subjective experience of illness and the medically defined disease.
• Biomedicine: A medical approach emphasizing biological factors and scientific approaches.

Examples and Cases

• Schizophrenia: A mental illness often viewed as abnormal in Western cultures, highlighting cultural variations in mental health perceptions.
• Autoimmune Disease: A medical condition where the body attacks its own cells.
• Hmong Family Case: Illustrates a cultural clash where Hmong practices were undermined by Western medical views, highlighting the need for cultural sensitivity in healthcare.

Key Individuals in Medical Anthropology

• Scheper-Hughes: Advocated for cultural sensitivity training in clinical practice and critiqued biomedicine's limitations.
• Ruth Benedict: Argued that trance states and ecstatic religious experiences are normal in certain Pacific Island cultures, highlighting the cultural relativity of normalcy.
• Georges Canguilhem: Suggested that a mild fever is a normal, healthy response to infection, demonstrating that "normal" can be contextual.
• Nev Jones: Argued that occasionally hearing non-threatening voices may not be a cause for concern, highlighting the importance of individual experience and interpretation.
• Adriana Petryna: Examined the "Right of Recovery" after disasters and crises, advocating for comprehensive support.
• Ivan Illich: Critic of medicalization and its impact on society, emphasizing the need to consider the broader social context of health and well-being.