Teaching
Cultural Anthropology
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Unit 5
Medical Anthropology
Medical anthropology considers culture’s presence and role in medicine and ways of thinking about the body, well-being, illness, and healing. Medical anthropological approaches center biology and the sociocultural mechanisms that help different groups make sense of illness, health, bodily functions, and well-being. Students will learn how medical anthropology can help make sense of cultural perspectives of medical issues, and why the field is so well-positioned to bring about meaningful improvements in health care systems and communities.
Sapiens articles
How Natural Birth Became Inaccessible to the Poor
While Mexico’s middle and upper classes are discovering the wonders of natural birth, traditional Indigenous midwives are actively being discouraged from providing the same services to the lower classes.
Can Medical Anthropology Solve the Diabetes Dilemma?
As the number of sufferers continues to rise, some researchers are moving in new directions to figure out how culture and lifestyle shape disease outcomes.
Keywords
View All in Health
![A gray-haired woman sits on an exam table in a light-filled doctor’s office and looks out a window.]()
![A stream of clear water pours into an orange bucket. Behind it, two slightly out-of-focus women and a child look on.]()
![A close-up view features an art exhibit composed of multiple photographs arranged side by side. The photos show people riding a horse, receiving medical care, and speaking at a women’s event.]()
![A silhouetted woman sits in a chair in the center of a dark room looking directly at the camera. Close-up images of another woman are projected onto screens on the three walls surrounding her.]()
![A large group of people—some seated and others standing behind them—gather under a stone roof and look at a black laptop sitting on a small maroon footstool placed on a wooden table.]()
![A person’s hand leans on a car’s steering wheel while holding a black-and-white aerial photograph of a section of town with particular sites such as Patapsco River, Dundalk, and Arundel Corp. Shipyard labeled.]()
Doctors Are Taught to Lie About Race
Decades ago, anthropologists dispelled the myth of biological race. Lagging behind in scientific understandings of human diversity, the medical profession is failing its oath to “do no harm.”
How Water Insecurity Impacts Women’s Health
Anthropologists and local activists in Indonesia and Peru uncover links between water scarcity and gendered violence, and work together to lessen the harms of gender inequality.
Fighting for Reproductive Rights in Retirement
An anthropologist conducts research in an Arizona retirement community, where older women share hard-won insights about how limitations on sexual and reproductive freedom impacted their lives.
Spotlighting Black Women’s Mental Health Struggles
An anthropologist discusses her film that honors and grieves the loss of Kime, a friend who passed away after experiencing physical and state violence.
The Trauma Mantras
An anthropologist’s memoir in prose poems offers insights into her experiences working with refugees and on humanitarian projects in many parts of the globe over the last 20 years.
Baltimore’s Toxic Legacies Have Reached a Breaking Point
In a new book, an anthropologist reveals the heavy tolls industries have placed on residents in this eastern U.S. city. Here, she explains how these burdens have only worsened since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
View All in Medicine
![A gray-haired woman sits on an exam table in a light-filled doctor’s office and looks out a window.]()
![Three people stand on a grassy field holding signs with pictures of young people’s faces pasted on them. Also on the signs, in colorful text, are two phrases: “Invest in Us” and “End the War on Drugs” with the word “Drugs” crossed out and the word “Blacks” added before it.]()
![Two people hug in a bathroom, with one seated on a closed toilet and the other kneeling on a tan-and-brown tiled floor. Two standing onlookers flank the image’s foreground.]()
![Surrounded by gray cobblestones, two black kettles sprinkled with ash sit over blackened logs and open orange flames. Two pairs of sneakers on people’s feet are visible just behind the fire close to another kettle.]()
![Public wall art depicts a woman with facial wrinkles and gray hair smoking a cigarette while surrounded by green leafy plants as well as red, blue, and yellow mushrooms.]()
![Several people wearing puffy hooded coats, beanies, windbreakers, and backpacks watch lava and smoke pour out of a volcano on the horizon.]()
Doctors Are Taught to Lie About Race
Decades ago, anthropologists dispelled the myth of biological race. Lagging behind in scientific understandings of human diversity, the medical profession is failing its oath to “do no harm.”
How Racism Shapes the U.S. Opioid Epidemic
Public health officials say opioid use and related deaths have reached a crisis point in the U.S. An interview with anthropologist and psychiatrist Helena Hansen unpacks the racial disparities in how drug addiction is interpreted, portrayed, and treated.
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
The Heaviness
A multidisciplinary poet-scholar and suicide attempt and multi-suicide loss survivor unveils complex anthropological threads that shape suicidal ideation.
The Psychedelics Industry Is Booming—but Who’s Being Left Out?
Three researchers discuss the possibilities and problems arising as psychedelic plant medicines, held sacred by many Indigenous communities, move into the global mental health and tourism industries.
Slow Death by Volcano
A biocultural anthropologist shares new research on the surprising long-term hazards of volcanoes in Iceland—and how to address them.
Professor Talking Points
- Medical anthropology considers sociocultural factors in health, behaviors around health, and medical systems.
- Medical anthropology is cognizant of the structures that allow or constrain access to health care and determine how it will be distributed.
- This field investigates how people think about “functional” bodies, “less functional” or “ill” bodies, and ways to make them “well.”
- Medical anthropologists continue to make fascinating inroads into how best to address health issues within the populations they work with—precisely because of their holistic understanding of what the issues in question mean to the group.
Academic Articles
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Farmer, Paul. 2004. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology 45 (3): 305–325.
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Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2000. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology 41 (2): 191–224.
Student Discussion Questions
- Why is culture important in matters of health and medicine?
- What are examples of ethnomedicine (i.e., the health system of a group)? Have you experienced a form of ethnomedicine?
- Is medicine shaped by culture, or is culture shaped by medicine?
- What structures, such as international law and national medical organizations, do the readings point to and how do the authors complicate the issues of maternity, diabetes, organ trafficking, and others mentioned in the texts?
- What critiques do medical anthropologists make of medical systems and structural imbalances? Use specific examples from the readings.
Activities
- Have students watch media coverage of major social health concerns (e.g., the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Ebola virus epidemic, the opioid crisis) and consider how the coverage reflects cultural assumptions about illnesses, where they come from, how they are transmitted, and what might be needed to cure them.
Additional Resources
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Article: SAPIENS: The Dark Side of Skin Lightening
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Article Series: SAPIENS’ Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Coverage
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Video: Bloomberg Big Decision’s “ Paul Farmer”
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Website: Society for Medical Anthropology’s What Is Medical Anthropology?
Unit By
Eshe Lewis (2020)
Teaching
Cultural Anthropology
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Unit 6
Symbolism
