“Singer, Baer, Long, and Pavlotski converse with enduring and current concerns, themes, and even labels in the context of novel disciplinary paradigms in this richly detailed and nuanced updated edition, presented with case studies accessible to contemporary scholars and students.”

- Nicola Bulled, University of Connecticut,

“A foundational text for understanding how cultural dimensions of human suffering and healing relate to local and global social inequalities. The case studies foster critical reflection of plural medical systems, offering insight into how access to vital resources shape human responses to the world’s most pressing health conditions.”

- Michael C. Ennis-McMillan, Skidmore College,

“Merrill Singer and colleagues’ timely text is a thoughtful, detailed consideration of historical and current theoretical and methodological practices in health anthropology. The authors draw on their decades of experience to critically inspect the complexities of different medical systems, particularly from a health inequity, biopolitical, and political ecology lens.”

- Shir Ginzburg, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences,

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“A classic orientation to an applied field, this book puts the historical praxis of understanding society and health at the center.”

- Emily Mendenhall, Georgetown University,

Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first look at the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by three unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are involved in the process of helping to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of the issue of health inequality, this book underlines the need for an analysis that moves beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive biosocial approach. Such an approach integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in building unified theoretical understandings of the origin of ill health, while contributing to the building of effective and equitable national health-care systems.

Les mer
A biosocial approach to understanding health in all of its dimensions across societies and through time

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Anthropology of Health

Introduction and Overview

Encountering Health Anthropology

Three Case Studies in Applied Health Anthropology

Practical and Theoretical Contributions of Health Anthropology

Defining Health Anthropology

History of Health Anthropology

Health Anthropology Theories

Chapter 2: What Health Anthropologists Do and How They Do It

Introduction and Overview

Three Settings, Three Case Studies, Three Health Anthropologists

A Case Study

What Health Anthropologists Study

Conducting Research: A Peculiarly Anthropological Approach

Research Methods: The Anthropological Approach to Knowledge Generation

Health Anthropology in Use

The Health Anthropology Crystal Ball

Chapter 3: Understanding Health, Illness, and Disease

Introduction and Overview

Conceptions of Health and Illness

Sufferer Experience

Illness Narratives

Embodied Health Experience

Healer versus Sufferer Conception of Disease

Chapter 4: Human Evolution and Health

Introduction and Overview

The Roots of Evolutionary Health

Linkages, Trade-Offs, and Thrifty Genes

Migration and the Genetics of Health

The Out-of-Africa Intrusion

Living in the Clouds

Epigenetics

Socioeconomic Factors

The Genetics of Sexuality

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Ethnomedicine: The Worlds of Treatment and Healing

Introduction and Overview

Approaching Ethnomedicine

Indigenous and Folk Medicine Systems

An Evolutionary Model of Disease Theories and Healing Systems

Case Study: Are the Therapeutic Aspects of Religion Something That Partially Address Refugee Health Problems?

Biomedicine as the Predominant Ethnomedicine in Modern Societies

Chapter 6: Plural Medical Systems: Complexity, Complementarity, and Conflict

Introduction and Overview

A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Rural Area in a Developing Society: The Altiplano of Bolivia

A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in an Urban Setting of a Developing Society: A View from Central Java

A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Developed Society: The Australian Dominative Medical System

Typologies of Plural Medical Systems

New Directions in the Study of Medical Pluralism

Chapter 7: Health Disparity, Health Inequality

Introduction and Overview

What Is Health Disparity?

Health Disparity in the United States

Gasping for Breath

Causes of Health Disparity: Lifestyle versus Social Inequality

Biology of Poverty

Insuring Disease

Culturally Competent Care

Health and Social Disparities Cross-Culturally

Addressing Health Disparities

Pushing Back on Health Disparities

“Race” and Health Disparity

Chapter 8: Health and the Environment: Toward a Healthier World

Introduction and Overview

Medical Ecology and Critical Health Anthropology on the Environment

Health and the Environment in the Past

Health and the Environment Today

The Political Ecology of Cancer

The Impact of Private Motor Vehicles on Health

The Impact of Airplanes on Health

The Political Ecology of AIDS: Assessing a Contemporary Syndemic

Chapter 9: The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics

Introduction and Overview

Critical Health Anthropology and Biotechnology

Science, Nature, and Culture

Reproductive Technologies

Divisible Bodies

Bringing the Lab into the Field: Anthropology and the Neurosciences

Molecular Biotechnologies: Tiny Pieces, Giant Infrastructures

The Story of hGH—Growing up Growth Hormone

The Culture of PCR

Visualization Technologies

When Technologies Combine

Ancestry, Families, and Genetics: Biotechnology and Belonging

Summary

Chapter 10: Strategies and Visions for a Healthier World

Introduction and Overview

Global Capitalism

Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway for a Healthier World

Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway to Planetary Health

How to Go from A to B

Health Anthropology as an Action-Oriented Endeavor

Source Material for Students

Glossary

References

Index

About the Authors

Les mer
A biosocial approach to understanding health in all of its dimensions across societies and through time
<b>Introduces students to health-related issues</b> by analyzing them in a broader context through the integration of biological, social, and cultural factors of health and illness

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781538187289
Publisert
2025-03-26
Utgave
4. utgave
Utgiver
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Vekt
612 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
191 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
342

Biografisk notat

Merrill Singer is professor emeritus in the Departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Singer has published 290 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and has authored, co-authored or edited thirty-three books. His research and writing have addressed syndemics, HIV/AIDS and STDs in highly vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, illicit drug use and drinking behavior, infectious disease, community and structural violence, and the political ecology of health, including the health consequences of climate change. Dr. Singer has been awarded the Rudolph Virchow Professional Prize, the George Foster Memorial Award for Practicing Anthropology, both the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group’s Distinguished Service Award and its Clark Taylor Professional Paper Prize, the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, and the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.

Hans A. Baer is principal honorary research fellow in the School of Social Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Hans was a Fulbright Scholar in at Humboldt University in East Berlin in the German Democratic Republic in 1988-1989. He has taught at several US universities, including George Peabody College for Teachers, St. John’s University, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of California - Berkeley, Arizona State University, and at two Australian universities, namely the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Hans has published twenty-seven books and some 240 book chapters and articles on a diversity of research topics, including Mormonism, African American religion, sociopolitical life in East Germany, critical health anthropology, medical pluralism in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, the critical anthropology of climate change, Australian climate politics, and the political economy of higher education. His most recent books are Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Real Utopia (2018), Climate Change and Capitalism in Australia: An Eco-Socialist Vision for the Future (2022), The Corporatization and Environmental Sustainability of Australian Universities: A Critical Perspective, and Building the Critical Anthropology of Climate Change: Towards a Socio-Ecological Revolution (with Merrill Singer).

Debbi Long is an honorary senior lecturer in the Wollotuka Institute (Indigenous Studies) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a critical health anthropologist and a pioneer of hospital ethnography in Australia. She has undertaken health ethnography in Turkey, Eswatini, and in a variety of public hospital contexts in Australia, including maternity, spinal, intensive care and dialysis units. She has worked as a consultant in clinical organization and management on projects including quality improvement, patient safety, behaviour change, and in industrial relations contexts. Other research includes family violence education and workplace injury compensation analysis. She has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in anthropology departments, international development programs, medical, nursing and allied health programs and in Indigenous studies. including foundation and support programs. Debbi is a qualified Permaculture designer and educator, and recent projects involve a focus on food security, circular economies and sustainable building, heavily informed by traditional Indigenous knowledges.

Alex Pavlotski works as a health anthropologist at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne. He specializes in using visual methods in research, co-design methodologies, ethnography, and anthropological teaching. Alex has worked in teaching and research with LaTrobe University, the University of Auckland, the University of Melbourne, and Monash University.