Download or read book The Anthropology of Health and Healing written by Mari Womack and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2010 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropology of Health and Healing provides the first holistic approach to the study of medical anthropology. Over the past two decades, medical anthropology has been the most rapidly growing subfield in anthropology, and a number of medial anthropology texts have been published, focusing primarily on public policy and health care delivery systems. Yet while Anthropologists have researched topics related to medical anthropology for over 100 years, here Womack thoroughly surveys this richly diverse field and provides an integrated approach that links together the biological, psychological, social, communicative, epidemiological, philosophical, historical, and developmental factors that shape health and healing.
Download or read book Plants Health and Healing written by Elisabeth Hsu and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants have cultural histories, as their applications change over time and with place. Some plant species have affected human cultures in profound ways, such as the stimulants tea and coffee from the Old World, or coca and quinine from South America. Even though medicinal plants have always attracted considerable attention, there is surprisingly little research on the interface of ethnobotany and medical anthropology. This volume, which brings together (ethno-)botanists, medical anthropologists and a clinician, makes an important contribution towards filling this gap. It emphasises that plant knowledge arises situationally as an intrinsic part of social relationships, that herbs need to be enticed if not seduced by the healers who work with them, that herbal remedies are cultural artefacts, and that bioprospecting and medicinal plant discovery can be viewed as the epitome of a long history of borrowing, stealing and exchanging plants.
Download or read book Culture Disease and Healing written by David Landy and published by New York : Macmillan. This book was released on 1977 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: An historical perspective of disease and healing practices as related to culture is addressed in 57 papers for students and professionals in the medical and health fields. The papers are organized among 14 major themes, addressing: medical anthropology; paleopathology; disease ecology and epidemiology; medical systems and theories relative to disease and therapy; sociocultural influences and ethnic practices in disease diagnosis; sorcery and witchcraft; disease prevention via social controls; surgery practices and population control in the preindustrial era; cultural and environmental factors relative to stress, pain, and death; cultural influences on behavioral disorders; the special role of the inflicted in society; and current primitive healing practices and the impact of sociocultural change on such practices. (wz).
Download or read book Health Psychology written by Elizabeth D. Whitaker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 1237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader looks at both the biological and cultural aspects of health and healing within a comparative framework. Health and Healing in Comparative Perspective provides both fascinating comparative ethnographic detail and a theoretical framework for organizing and interpreting information about health. While there are many health-related fields represented in this book, its core discipline is medical anthropology and its main focus is the comparative approach. Cross-cultural comparison gives anthropological analysis breadth while the evolutionary time scale gives it depth. These two features have always been fundamental to anthropology and continue to distinguish it among the social sciences. A third feature is the in-depth knowledge of culture produced by anthropological methods such as participant-observation, involving long-term presence in and research among a study population. For medical anthropology, medical sociology, public health, nursing courses.
Download or read book Empathy and Healing written by Vieda Skultans and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three decades the author has been concerned with issues to do with emotion, suffering and healing. This volume presents ethnographic studies of South Wales, Maharashtra and post-Soviet Latvia connected by a theoretical interest in healing, emotion and subjectivity. Exploring the uses of narrative in the shaping of memory, autobiography and illness and its connections with the master narratives of history and culture, it focuses on the post-Soviet clinic as an arena in which the contradictions of a liberal economy are translated into a medical language.
Download or read book Anthropology and International Health written by Mark Nichter and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Curing and Healing written by Andrew Strathern and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a part of the Ethnographic Studies in Medical Anthropology series. Throughout history and throughout the world today, problems of health, sickness, and medical treatment have been intimately interwoven with social, cultural, and political life generally. Medical anthropology deals with these problems from a biocultural perspective, recognizing the deep connections between cultural patterns, historical change, and life processes. This book draws on a rich array of ethnographic cases from around the world to demonstrate the complexities of ideas and practices that surround the health of the human body, and how health is impacted by the beliefs and practices of the community. The authors make particular use of new materials from their field areas among the Hagen and Duna people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The book is intended as a textbook useable for both anthropology courses and courses for medical students. The topics covered include a survey of earlier works in medical anthropology, regimens of bodily treatment, sex and reproduction, medical pluralism, doctor-patient communication, epidemiology, ethnopsychiatry, illness and the emotions, and how diseases such as AIDS have altered the ways in which individuals see themselves and "traditional" practices alter to accommodate new diseases. Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart are a husband and wife anthropological team who work in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and the Lowlands of Scotland.
Download or read book The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa written by Steven Feierman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1992-09-22 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays are an account of disease, health and healing practices on the African continent. The contributors all emphasize the social conditions linked to ill health and the development of local healing traditions, from Morocco to South Africa and from the precolonial era to the present.
Download or read book A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa written by Roy Richard Grinker and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-02-06 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential collection of scholarly essays on the anthropology of Africa, offering a thorough introduction to the most important topics in this evolving and diverse field of study The study of the cultures of Africa has been central to the methodological and theoretical development of anthropology as a discipline since the late 19th-century. As the anthropology of Africa has emerged as a distinct field of study, anthropologists working in this tradition have strived to build a disciplinary conversation that recognizes the diversity and complexity of modern and ancient African cultures while acknowledging the effects of historical anthropology on the present and future of the field of study. A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa is a collection of insightful essays covering the key questions and subjects in the contemporary anthropology of Africa with a key focus on addressing the topics that define the contemporary discipline. Written and edited by a team of leading cultural anthropologists, it is an ideal introduction to the most important topics in the field, both those that have consistently been a part of the critical dialogue and those that have emerged as the central questions of the discipline’s future. Beginning with essays on the enduring topics in the study of African cultures, A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa provides a foundation in the contemporary critical approach to subjects of longstanding interest. With these subjects as a groundwork, later essays address decolonization, the postcolonial experience, and questions of modern identity and definition, providing representation of the diverse thinking and scholarship in the modern anthropology of Africa.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine written by Anamaria Iosif Ross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternative medicine is not a fashionable new trend but an established cultural strategy, as well as a dynamic feature of mainstream contemporary medicine, in which elements of folk traditions are often blended with western scientific approaches.The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine is a concise yet wide-ranging exploration of non-biomedical healing. The book addresses a broad range of practices including: substance, energy and information flows (e.g. helminthic therapy); spirit, consciousness and trance (e.g. shamanism); body, movement and the senses (e.g. reiki and aromatherapy); as well as classical medical traditions as complements or alternatives to Western biomedicine (e.g. Ayurveda). Exploring the cultural underpinnings of contemporary healing methods, while assessing current ideas, topics and resources for further study, this book will be invaluable to undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and health related professions such as nursing, physical and occupational therapy, and biomedicine.
Download or read book Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing written by Cheryl Mattingly and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A valuable collection. . . . The essays in the volume are all fresh, the result of recent work, and the opening chapter by Garro and Mattingly places the current trend in narrative analysis in historical context, explaining its diverse origins (and constructs) in a range of disciplines."—Shirley Lindenbaum, author of Kuru Sorcery "A good place to consult the narrative turn in medical anthropology. Thick with the richness and diversity and stubborn resistance to interpretations of human stories of illness. An anthropological antidote for too narrow a framing of the complex tangle of ways-of-being and ways-of-telling that make medicine a space of indelibly human experiences." —Arthur Kleinman, author of The Illness Narratives
Download or read book Chinese Medicine and Healing written by TJ Hinrichs and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In covering the subject of Chinese medicine, this book addresses topics such as oracle bones, the treatment of women, fertility and childbirth, nutrition, acupuncture, and Qi as well as examining Chinese medicine as practiced globally in places such as Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Korea, and the United States.
Download or read book Healing Traditions written by Bonnie Blair O'Connor and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popularity and practice of alternative medicine continues to expand at astonishing rates. In Healing Traditions, Bonnie Blair O'Connor considers the conflicts that arise between the values and assumptions of Western, scientific medicine and those of unconventional health systems. Providing in-depth examples of the importance and benefits of alternative health practices—including the extraordinarily extensive and sophisticated HIV/AIDS alternative therapies movement—O'Connor identifies ways to integrate alternative strategies with orthodox medical treatments in order to ensure the best possible care for patients. In spite of the long-standing prediction that, as science and medicine progressed—and education became more generally available—unconventional systems would die out, they have persisted with undiminished vitality. They have, in fact, experienced a reinvigoration and expansion during the last fifteen to twenty years. In the United States, this renewal is fueled by people representing a wide cross-section of American society, and most of them also use conventional medicine. This eclecticism can result in conflicts between the values and assumptions of Western, scientific medicine and those of unconventional health systems. O'Connor demonstrates the importance of understanding how various belief systems interact and how this interaction affects health care. She argues that through neutral observation and thorough description of health belief systems it is possible to gain an understanding of those systems, to identify likely points of conflict among systems—especially conflicts that may occur in conventional care settings—and to intervene in ways that ensure the best possible care for patients.
Download or read book Healing the Body Politic written by Sandra C. Smith-Nonini and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Healing the Body Politic" examines the contested place of health and development in El Salvador over the last two decades. It recounts the dramatic story of radical health activism from its origins in liberation theology and guerrilla medicine during the third-world country's twelve-year civil war, through development of a remarkable "popular health system," administered by lay providers in a former war zone controlled by leftist rebels. The ethnography contributes to the integration of medical and political anthropology by bringing the semiotics of health and the body to bear on cultural understandings of warfare, the state, and globalization.
Download or read book Physicians of Western Medicine written by Robert A. Hahn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1984-12-31 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After putting down this weighty (in all senses of the word) collection, the reader, be she or he physician or social scientist, will (or at least should) feel uncomfortable about her or his taken-for-granted commonsense (therefore cultural) understanding of medicine. The editors and their collaborators show the medical leviathan, warts and all, for what it is: changing, pluralistic, problematic, powerful, provocative. What medicine proclaims itself to be - unified, scientific, biological and not social, non-judgmental - it is shown not to resemble very much. Those matters about which medicine keeps fairly silent, it turns out, come closer to being central to its clinical practice - managing errors and learning to conduct a shared moral dis course about mistakes, handling issues of competence and competition among biomedical practitioners, practicing in value-laden contexts on problems for which social science is a more relevant knowledge base than biological science, integrating folk and scientific models of illness in clinical communication, among a large number of highly pertinent ethnographic insights that illuminate medicine in the chapters that follow.
Download or read book Bodies Politics and African Healing written by Stacey A. Langwick and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.
Download or read book Sickness and Healing written by Robert A. Hahn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologist and epidemiologist Robert A. Hahn examines how culture influences the definition, experience and treatment of sickness in Western and non-Western societies.
