Readings
MEDICAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ANTHROPOLOGY
- Peter J. Brown: Understanding and applying medical anthropology 1998, Mayfield Publishing Company. - Donald Joralemon: Exploring Medical Anthropology 1999, Allyn and Bacon. - Tony McMichael: Human frontiers, environments and disease 2001, Cambridge University Press. - Ann McElroy & Patricia K. Townsend: Medical anthropology in ecological perspective 1996, Westview Press.
Lecture 6
- Horacio Fábrega, Jr.: Evolution of sickness and healing 1997, University of California Press
Dr. Árpád Csathó
Main Links
Definition of Medical Anthropology?
Medical Anthropology Web: http://www.medanth.org/ Medical Anthropology: http://www.sfu.ca/medanth/ AnthroNet: http://home1.gte.net/ericjw1/medical.html
Institute of Behavioral Sciences:
!!!
Integrative Science
It’s hard to give a clear-cut definition Is it a problem?
www.aok.pte.hu/magtud/english/Medical_Anthropology
1
The “Family tree” tree” of Anthropology
Family tree of Anthropology Physical
Medical
Anthropology
Anthropology
Linguistics
Philosophical Anthropology: It unifies the several empirical investigations of human nature in order to understand individuals as both creatures of their environment and their own value. philosophy
Culture
Biology
Cultural
Linguistics: A field which studies the evolution, distribution, and functions of human language in relation to human culture, society, cognition, and experience. Cultural Anthropology: It deals with the study of human culture in all its aspects.
Anthropology
Archaeology: It’s the scientific study of past human culture and behavior, from the origins of humans to the present.
Archeology
Physical Anthropology: This is the study of human physical character, in both the past and present.
Philosophical
Anthropology
Anthropology:
„The science of human being”
Family tree of Anthropology
The main theoretical approaches of medical anthropology
Philosophical approach
Medical Anthropology: Anthropology: It’ It’s a blend of social sciences, epidemiological, and biological perspectives on sickness and healing
„The essence of human”
Cultural constructions of sickness and healing Cultural Approach
Biological Approach
2
What is so cultural about disease and healing?
Our knowledge about sickness… sickness…
„The shaman’ shaman’s head is down, his gaze is fixed on the objects arrayed in front front of him. Two assistants sit on stools by his side. Nineteen adults and one one ten – year – old boy have entrusted him with their care; they expect him to learn the source of their suffering and put things right.” right.” … „The shaman will tell most of them that their pains and incapacities, their bad fortune and sorrows, result from actions of neighbors, jealous competitors, or the lovers of their mates. The label he will apply to their suffering is dano, a sickness category linked to the malicious
Two kinds of knowledge about sickness: sickness: scientific nonnon-scientific
We are much more familiar with the scientific knowledge: with the organic manifestations of diseases, with a biologically based scientific concept.
work of sorceres. The shaman task is to clean each person of the sorcerer’s poisons.”
This approach is usually free of any cultural concept. concept. Jozé Jozé Paz Chaponan and his assistances, assistances, Lambayeque, Lambayeque, Peru, 1980
The main theoretical approaches of medical anthropology
Philosophical Approach
Cultural constructions of sickness and healing Cultural Approach
The main theoretical approaches of medical anthropology
Philosophical Approach
„The essence of human”
Biological variability of sickness Cultural Approach Biological Approach
Biological Approach
Biocultural – Ecological approach
3
Biocultural and Ecological Approach
Biocultural and Ecological Approach
This analyses interactions between the sociocultural patterns and the biological and environmental parameters within which humans operate.
Adaptation (as the main theoretical frame)
What new patterns of disease accompanied the shift from hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture?
Cultural Adaptation
Biological Adaptation
What were the short term (physiological) and long term (genetical) consequences of this change in human behavior? Evolutionary theory
Effects of environmental factors – a working model
Environmental effect – Human response: Ecological dynamics Adaptive responses can alter environmental conditions and properties properties requiring further adjustment
ABIOTIC
Environment
Environmental System Materials
BIOTIC
Predators, pathogens
materials
Climate
Energy
CULTURE
Social organization
Environmental Components
Environmental Conditions
Response Properties
Space order Time order
stressors
Human population
Sensing and Appraisal
Response Modes
Response Level
Systematic Consequences
Randomity
ideology Abiotic
food
Properties of Conditions
Human response characteristics
Technology
strength modify intensity buffer
Biotic
reversibility
resources Cultural
Individual organism
avoid Environmental evaluation
Space-Time
conform
Randomity Space order
Response evaluation
duration distribute cost
Adaptive
individual genetic physiological group
Adaptive in short run but
maladaptive in long run
intergroup
Maladaptive
Time order Space-Time
ReRe-evaluation and change in response
Cells, Tissue Repeated maladaptiv responses may result in systemt’ systemt’s disintegration
The environment that affects human health is made up of physical, physical, biological and cultural components forming a total ecosystem
4
Urban ecology – adaptive challenges in the urban environment
Urban ecology – adaptive challenges in the urban environment
What is unique about cities as human environment? What makes them different from the types of environments in which we have lived for millennia? How will these differences affect us as a biological species? … so which are the adaptive challenges of urbanization? urbanization?
Moran és Odum (1971): city is an ecosystem. ecosystem Properties of cities: high biomassa, low species diversity, Massive imports of energy from the surrounding country-side. ----Cities have special social organization.
We have a representation about stressors and resources in the urban environment around us.
----Immigrants’ adaptation strategies.
1. Urban living has both positive and negative effects on human health and functioning. 2. Industrial cities have both higher fertility and lower mortality than their rural hinterlands. 3. In general, urban children are taller and heavier for their age than rural children. BUT., Urban populations show higher rates of obesity, hypertension, coronary coronary heart disease, cancer and mental illness. illness A map of perceived environmental stress in a section of north Philadelphia Philadelphia..
…Adaptive challenge in the tropical forest
…1968 10.000 people live along the BrazilBrazil-Venzuela border. border. 125 villages: villages: 4040-300 inhabitants / village Slash and burn cultivation They were in generally good health The major cause of death: death: violence, tribal war, bacterial dysentery
… Even earlier effects: effects: Pleistocene formed biology
They had never been exposed to measles. The disease spread to 15 villages in two months. Is it because a genetical susceptibility or cultural factors?? factors??
5
Effect of Pleistocene formed biology on present diseases
Pleistocene formed biology
Effect of human migration and changing environment
Our present Life-style
How the intensive several million years of human evolution left imprints on human Biology that affect the probabilities of health and disease today?
E.G..: -Short life-expectation (ap. 25 years). The lack of chronic diseases
Adaptive agens – primary stressors
Climate
Food
Disease
J.B.S. Haldane’s theory
6
