ANT 341 Medical Anthropology
Cross-culturally, people define, experience, treat, and recover from disease differently. Biomedical practitioners have realized that to most effectively treat the sick, these considerations should be taken into account. This course provides an introduction to medical anthropology, or the study of disease and health as biocultural and healing and medicine as situated within cultural, social, and political-economic contexts. We will examine disease, health, healing, and medicine in ways ranging from clinical interactions (e.g., placebo effect/meaning response), to “cultural” interpretations (e.g., medical pluralism), to power, inequity, and suffering (e.g., structural violence). Students will gain new insight into medical and healing systems and processes—including biomedicine—as cultural phenomena that operate within systems that grant some folks and not others the authority to make health determinations. In addition to understanding disease and healing as individually experienced and explained, the course will highlight macro-level considerations relevant to global public health conversations like global health disparities.