Chapter 12

• Medical Anthropology


  An area of anthropological inquiry that focuses on issues of well-being, health, illness, and disease as they are situated in their wider cultural contexts
• Health


  A person's general social, psychological, and physical condition
• Well-being


  A state (or role) of general physical and mental comfort and good health; a lack of illness
• Disease


  Forms of biological impairment identified and explained within the discourse of biomedicine
• Illness


  A suffering person's own understanding of their own distress
• Folk illness


  A culture-bound illness; a set of symptoms that are grouped together under a single label only within a particular culture
• Biomedicine


  Traditionally western forms of medical knowledge and practice based on biological science
• Science and Tradition in health and wellness does not have to be an either/or situation
• These approaches (science and tradition) are not mutually exclusive as most people incorporate both
• Examining traditional and scientific knowledge together is more holistic
• Biomedical knowledge is a form of traditional knowledge developed in the west
• Folk medicine and scientific medicine overlap (e.g., chicken soup and cold medicine)
• Modernity is relative according to cultural values. It is ethnocentric to presume biomedicine is more 'modern'
• Medicine


  Often reserved for western treatment
• Healing


  Often used to describe Indigenous or non-western medical knowledge, but best used to describe culturally specific treatments for well-being rather than health
• Two types of interpretive systems (Foster)

  • Personalistic: illness is caused by supernatural forces (e.g., magical powers, an evil spirit, or a deity)
  • Naturalistic: the causes of illness are rooted in the physical world (e.g., dampness, cold, or an imbalance in bodily substances)
• Foster's Two Principal Interpretations of the Causes of Illness

  • Personalistic: Active (supernatural) agents
  • Naturalistic: Natural forces; equilibrium loss
• Personalistic


  • Causation: Multiple levels (e.g., a supernatural being and the magic this being uses)
  • Illness and misfortune: An illness is a special case of misfortune that can be named from a "typology" of misfortunes
  • Religion, magic: Ultimately tied to illness
  • Prevention: Positive action (e.g., perform rituals to keep supernatural beings content)
  • Responsibility: Beyond patient's control
• Naturalistic


  • Causation: Single level (e.g., a biological imbalance)
  • Illness and misfortune: Illnesses are unrelated to misfortune, although it is unfortunate that a person is ill
  • Religion, magic: Largely unrelated to illness
  • Prevention: Avoidance (i.e., avoid encountering forces that cause illnesses)
  • Responsibility: Resides with patient
• Medical Labels as Signifiers: Labelling of illness and disease - Indigenous people developed new categories during colonization (e.g., 'White Man's Sickness' versus 'Anishinaabe Sickness')
• Impacts of labelling: dependence, marginalization, stigma
• Mental health and illness are biosocial - our mental health impacts our physical bodies, and our physical and biological bodies impact our mental health
• Folk mental illnesses (E.g., Susto, evil eye, dhat)
• Three interacting environments


  • Biotic: biological, living
  • Abiotic: non-living, physical
  • "Cultural components:" ideology, social organization, technology
• Realized niche


  The portion of the habitable world that a group of people is forced to utilize and to which it becomes highly adapted
• Environmental Racism: E.g., Mercury poison in the Wabigoon River in Ontario and the impact on the Grassy Narrows (Asubpee-schoseewagong Netum Anishinabek) First Nation
• Bioaccumulation


  An accumulation of a toxic substance in a biological organism over time
• Biomagnification


  An increase in the concentration of a toxic substance from the bottom to the top of a food chain
• A healthy diet is full of nutrients and free of contaminants
• Access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food is an important human right
• Many communities lack access to food due to various factors of inequality
• The denial or blocking of access to food has also been used as a tool of oppression
• Anthropologists who study nutritional health often contribute to national and international policies on health and nutrition, food security, and world hunger

  • Promotion and safety of baby formulas (Van Esterik)
  • Lucky Iron Fish (Charles)
  • Malnutrition in Residential Schools (Mosby and Galloway)
• Structural violence


  Violence that results from the way that political and economic forces structure risk for various forms of suffering within a population
• Social trauma

  Individual and group experience of negative physical, mental, and emotional effects resulting from powerfully disturbing occurrences caused by forces and agents external to the person or group. Often this is transferred from generation to generation.
• Deep inequalities that obstruct people from accessing their basic needs are rooted in historical processes, such as colonialism and the enslavement of Africans, and are reinforced today through capitalism
• Poorest and least powerful members of society are subjected to highly intensified risks (E.g., COVID 19)
• Shift the focus from an individual and their suffering to include the broader social and political context
• 150,000 Indigenous children attended Residential Schools and many were physically, sexually, and psychologically abused (including deliberately malnourished)
• At least 6,000 children died at the Residential Schools