[1] What is Medical Anthropology?

The anthropological study of human health and medicine, including their social determinants, cultural understandings, and representations...

Illness, defining / treating illness - defined by social / cultural factors

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[2] What do medical anthropologists do?

Academic medical anthropologists: research and teach in colleges and universities - unique prospective other than other fields in science & medicine

Applied medical anthropologists: apply ethnographic research directly to particular problems - eg policies

Corporate medical anthropologists - small group? Market research, BM design, characterize the needs & helping designer (social / cultural context)

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[3] Themes of the Medical Anthropology

Understand health, medicine, and the body in the context of culture and society

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a. Health

See human health as an outcome of social, political, economic, and environmental processes. These processes can determine health outcomes as well as shape the ways in which we understand what it means to be healthy.

Example: class position, occupation, health status (depends on different factors).

CDC reports - high risk occupation: Hispanic, low wage earners, foreign-born, education not beyond high school, male - social inequalities (ethnicity, employment status, immigration status, education, gender, gender division of labors)

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b. Medicine

See medicine as a set of social and cultural practices oriented toward health. This will include understanding different sorts of medical systems, and how these systems incorporate cultural norms and values in practices of healing.

Medicine is always existing in social and cultural context.

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c. Body

See the human body in the context of culture and society. This includes the ways in which the body is represented, constructed, and intervened upon, as well as how people experience their bodies.

We all not individual, self-sustained bodies. Human bodies existing in different contexts: family, city, etc.

Social connections, food, exercises, etc.