We all come to the course with life experiences and future goals that impact how we engage with issues around culture, health, and illness. Additionally, “culture, health, and illness” encompasses a broad range of topics. (Just look at the table of contents of UAMA for a reminder of that range.) We cannot possibly address everything of interest to everyone over the course of the semester! The final paper provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate your progress toward meeting the overall student learning outcomes and to make the material relevant to your own life. In addition to explicitly and substantially drawing on at least one course material, you may use fieldwork (including participant observation, interviews, and surveys as desired), “MakingConnections” discussions, credible sources, and critical reflection to consider the interplay of health and culture. You have a choice of focus. You can:- 1.) Focus on the current pandemic to consider how culture has impacted the experience of COVID-19. Describe and analyze the interrelationships between human biological and cultural systems.
Frame your paper to address questions exploring the interconnections between culture and health, such as:- How has culture contributed to the pandemic?- How has culture exacerbated the pandemic?- How has culture helped us to survive a pandemic?- How has our experience of COVID-19 varied from those experiencing pandemics in other places or times?- What might a medical anthropologist do to help others and society in light of the pandemic? Given your emerging knowledge of medical anthropology, what would you want to study or do? What do you think is needed?- Who has been most vulnerable during the pandemic? Why? What does that say about culture? (What course materials speak to this topic?)
Use key terminology from the course to demonstrate an understanding of course themes and concepts:
Anthropology: The study of humans in all times and places
Applied Anthropology: the use of anthropological data, theories, and methods to solve real-world problems
Adaptive: Traits that increase the capacity of individuals to survive and reproduce.
Biocultural Anthropology – the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture
Biocultural evolution: An approach to medicine that is based on the application of insights from science, particularly biology and chemistry.
Biocultural: Products of interactions between biology and culture.
Culture: A system of beliefs and behaviors shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next via social learning rather than biology.
Communal healing: An approach to healing that directs the combined efforts of the community toward treating illness.
Culture-bound syndrome: An illness recognized only within a specific culture.
Ethno-etiology: Cultural explanations about the underlying causes of health problems.
Emic: An insider’s perspective, their views and thoughts/behavior by those in their own culture, is subjective and may not be applicable to generating scientific theories.
Etic: An outsider’s perspective that is meaningful to the scientific community based on observations. As they are relative to objectivity, used for generating comparative cross-cultural theories.
Four Ethno-Etiology’s: (George Foster 1976):
1. Personalistic: View diseases as a result of the “active, purposeful intervention of an agent, who may be human (a witch or sorcerer), non-human (a ghost), non-human (an ancestor, an evil spirit) or supernatural (a deity or other very powerful beings). Illness is viewed as the result of aggression or punishment directed purposefully toward an individual. There is no accident or random chance involved. Treatment of illness will require neutralizing or satisfying a person, or supernatural entity, and correctly identifying the being who is the root causes of the problem, is essential for achieving a cure. (eg: The Nuba People of Southern Sudan)
2. Naturalistic: Diseases that are thought to be the result of natural forces, such as “cold, heat, wind, dampness”. (causes) and above all: By an upset in the balance – eg: the ancient Greek idea that health results from a balance between the 4 humors. The concept of Yin and Yang, which represents opposite, but complementary energies, is a similar idea from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Achieving balance or harmony between these 2 forces is VIEWED AS ESSENTIAL to physical and emotional health. — Emotional difficulties can be viewed as a cause of illness. Do not separate mind from body as biomedicine does.
3. WHAT ARE THE OTHER TWO?
Ethnomedicine: The comparative study of cultural ideas about wellness, illness, and healing.
Ethnography: First-hand description of a culture that is a Fieldwork method with the anthropologist collecting the description of those they are studying.
Emotionalistic explanation: Suggests that illnesses are caused by strong emotions such as fright, anger, or grief; this is an example of a naturalistic ethno-etiology.
Epidemiological transition: The sharp drop in mortality rates, particularly among children, that occurs in society as a result of improved sanitation and access to healthcare.
Ethnology: Study of a particular topic or problem in more than one culture, using a comparative perspective.
4 Essential premises, nearly all Medical Anthropologists share: 1.) That illness and healing are best understood in the complex and varied interactions between human biology and culture; 2.) that disease is influenced by culture, economics, and politics; 3.) that the human body and symptoms are interpreted
through cultural filters; and 4.) that the insights of medical anthropology have important pragmatic consequences for the improvement of health and health care in human societies.
Geophagy: the craving for and consumption of earth
Hegemony: Designates a type of domination based primarily on dominated people’s and group’s consent rather than purely on a leader’s coercive and exerted force (the military or government for example).
Humoral healing: The comparative study of cultural ideas about wellness, illness and healing.
Medical anthropology: The study of human health and healing in a cultural context.
Maladaptive: Traits that decrease the capacity of individuals to survive and reproduce.
Nocebo: a substance without medical effects which causes perceived harm (basically the opposite of placebo).
Naturalistic ethno-etiology: Views disease as the result of natural forces such as cold, heat, winds, or an upset in the balance of the basic body elements.
Participant Observation: A type of research method in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which their informants are engaged.
Personalistic ethno-etiology: Views disease as the result of the actions of human or supernatural beings.
Placebo effect: A response to treatment that occurs because the person receiving the treatment believes it will work, not because the treatment itself is effective.
Shaman: A person who specializes in contacting the world of the spirits.
Somatic: Symptoms that are physical manifestations of emotional pain.
Zoonotic: Diseases that have origins in animals and are transmitted to humans
NOTE TO WRITER: above is our class dictionary, please use whatever you feel like works.
for reference, here is a short assignment i completed that relates to this. the question for this was: “Why were people of color getting and dying of COVID at a higher rate than white people in the United States? How are biology and culture intertwined when race is not a biologically meaningful category for humans?”
After reading this week’s chapters and listening to the Podcast “Racism in the Pandemic,” I gained a whole new perspective on how our social and cultural life affects our health. During the Pandemic, there was a noticeably higher rate of infection in persons of color, but that has nothing to do with race. People of color are not biologically or genetically predisposed, but they could be socially predisposed to COVID, as proposed by Jerome Adams, the Surgeon General at the time of the Podcast episode release. In the podcast, the three hosts talked about a statement that Adams had made in which he implied that drugs and alcohol are “a part of the lifestyle of people of color” (Bindon et al., 2020, 2:52) which contributes to their increased risk of infection. Getting into the facts, one of the real reasons why people of color were getting and dying of COVID at a higher rate than white people in the U.S. is weathering. Constantly enduring active stressors over time, like racism and discrimination, has a great effect on the immune system. And the weaker the immune function is, the higher the risk of disease and infection. In Chapter 5 of Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, Alan Goodman agrees and adds that constant exposure “to a life of increased stress, pollution, and poor healthcare” could lead to some “profound health consequences” (Goodman, 2016, pp. 54). It is crucial to consider the type of “lifestyle” that some people of color are actually exposed to. Poverty, subpar housing situations, public transportation, and a lack of health insurance are all things that the Podcast hosts touched on, and those factors have a major impact on human health and illness. It is a sort of slippery slope to go down, but one of the Podcast hosts mentions how millions and millions of people across the U.S. have lost their jobs during the Pandemic, which could have led to them not being able to afford rent and then getting evicted (Bindon et al., 2020, 12:17). Living on the streets, or in shelters, or even tightly packed with family significantly increases one’s chances of getting COVID. Indeed, people of color are not more biologically susceptible to diseases than white people, but social and cultural factors are important to consider as well.
References:
Bindon, J., Weaver, L.J., & Peterson, E.L. (Hosts). (2020). Racism in the Pandemic [Audio podcast episode]. In Speaking of Race, University of Alabama. https://soundcloud.com/user-88955638/racism-in-the-pandemic?in=user-88955638/sets/race-and-health
Goodman, A. (2016). Disease and Dying while Black: How Racism, Not Race, Gets under the Skin, in Peter J. Brown and Svea Closser (Eds), Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology (3rd ed.), (pp. 52–57).
THANK YOU!!!
