ANTHRO: Illness and Healing

Also known as applied medical anthropology - the application of anthropological knowledge to further the goals of health care providers 

Emphasizes social context as crucial to healing, open, everyone has access, all people come to watch (eg. all night healing dances)

Considers the way economic and political structures shape people's health status, their access to health care, and the prevailing healing systems - illness is a product of someone's defined position than "natural"

A collection of signs and symptoms that is restricted to a particular culture or a limited number of cultures (eg. anorexia in Western and industrialized cultures) 

Diseases that are caused or increased by economic development activities

A specialist uses techniques to gain supernatural insights - magical religious technique

Examines how aspects of the natural environment interact with culture to cause health problems and to influence their spread throughout populations

Explores the cultural knowledge of local plants, including the use of plants as medicines 

Cross-cultural health systems

Based on a philosophy of balance among certain natural elements within the body - different foods/drugs have "heating" or "cooling" effects

Refers to a situation in which more than one medical/health system exists in a given society

The labeling of a particular issue or problem as medical and requiring medical treatment when, in fact, it may be economic or political

A healing effect obtained through the positive power of believing that a particular method is efficacious

A healer who mediates between humans and the spirit world

Examines how different cultures experience illness and how they respond to it - symbols, placebo effect, etc.