medical anthropology

is concerned with descriptions and analyzes of medical systems which emerge from human attempts to survive disease and surmount death, and are conceptualized as social responses to illness and the sick role within the variety of world culture.

descriptions and analyses of medical systems which emerge from human attempts to survive disease and surmount death, and are conceptualized as social responses to illness and the sick role within the variety of world cultures. . . a study of medical thought and problem solving, the acculturation process of the healer and physician in diverse cultural settings, and the social and cultural context of medicine. . . demonstrating how culture human belief, knowledge, and action structures the human experience of disease, affects the ways in which both physicians and patients perceive and define illness, and influences the matrices of decision making in the subcultures attempting to communicate about problems of health care. [p. ix]

is grounded in the assumption that health-related issues, including disease and treatment, are far more than narrow biological phenomena. Cultural and social factor have a lot to say about how we get sick, why we get sick, and what sickness means to us.

A starting premise of medical anthropology is that health-related issues, including disease and treatment, are far more than narrow biological phenomena. How we get sick, why we get sick, and what sickness means to us are all heavily determined by cultural and social factor as as well'

is not merely a critique of the bio-medical framework. It focuses also on the non-professional side of the health field and the meaning context of illness and health care.

. . . [Medical anthropology] must help widen and deepen the non-biomedical cultural perspective on health, sickness, and health care. . . . [Medical anthropologist] must frame their research investigations in terms of the ethnomedical mode's orientation to the meaning context of illness and health care. [B]y studying the everyday context of health and sickness in the popular sector, anthropological studies should do more than simply demonstrate the inadequacy of the epistemology underlying the biomedical framework. They should focus attention on the non-professional side of the health field and especially on its positive adaptive features, which deserve to be better understood. [p. 384-85]

is the cross-cultural study of medical systems and the bioecological and sociocultural factors that influence the incidence of health and disease now and throughout human history.

. . . the cross-cultural study of medical systems and . . . the bioecological and sociocultural factors that influence the incidence of health and disease now and throughout human history' (Foster and Anderson 1978:1)

is the study of the creation, representation, legitimization, and application of knowledge about the body in both health and illness.

. . . study of the creation, representation, legitimization, and application of knowledge about the body in both health and illness' (1993: x)

medical anthropology, n.All

medical anthropology