Key concepts and issues in the study of health and illness in a variety of populations across cultures and through time. The basis for this course is the epidemiologic approach of medical ecology, which is consistent with the applied approaches of public health practitioners in local and global contexts .A major aim of the course is to learn key concepts and begin to connect these concepts to competencies in medical anthropological research and practice.
McElroy, Ann and P. Townsend.
2004 Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective 4th ed. Boulder Colorado Westview Press inc
Recommended Small Group Assignment Texts (STUDENTS WILL CHOOSE three texts AMONG THESE):
1988 Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dressler, William W.
1991 Stress and Adaptation in the Context of Culture: Depression in a Southern Black Community. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
2001 Death Without Weeping andSaints, Scholars and Schizophrenics
California: University of California Press
Murphy, Robert,
1990 The Body Silent. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc
Paul Farmer.
2003 Pathologies of Power. California: University of California Press
Paul Farmer.
1999 Infections and Inequalities. California: University of California Press Benjamin Paul,
1995 Health, Culture and Community New York: Russell Sage Foundation
Kaysen, Susanna.
1999 Girl Interrupted. New York: Turtle Bay Books
Jordan Brigitte,
1986 Birth in Four Cultures. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
McCourt, Frank
1996 Angela’s Ashes. New York: Scribner
1984 Therapy, Ideology, and Social Change: Mental Healing in Urban Ghana. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2001 Stress and Resilience: The Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
1995 The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Journals: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Social Science and Medicine, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Medical Anthropology, Human Organization
INTRODUCTION: KEY CONCEPTS, COURSE ORGANIZATION, READINGS, WRITING, REQUIREMENTS and FIELD ASSIGNMENTS
Semester writing requirement (optional for undergraduates, required of grad students)
a. Using a segment of the life course (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, elderly) as a lens for analysis of the course materials, synthesize the weekly papers along the following themes:
The medical anthropology of childhood, adolescence, adulthood. End product: 10 page paper (20%).
b. Select two additional cases from Benjamin’s Paul’s edited volume, Health, Culture, and Community and write 10 pages analyzing the similarities and differences in four cases (including those already assigned).
c. Another project of your choice. See me for approval.
These are based on the assigned reading and are of 3-5 pages in length. Typed, double spaced. (50%). These will be presented/summarized in class by each student. Undergraduates may skip three of these.
Each graduate student will be required to write three book reviews and be part of three small groups presenting the book to the class. (20%). Undergraduates will do one of these reviews.
Read:
1.McElroy and Townsend (hereafter MandT)
Chapter I pp. 13-31
Chapter 8 pp. Culture Contact in the Arctic pp.319-332
· McElroy, Ann P.
1990 Biocultural Models in Studies of Human Health and Adaptation. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 4: 243-265.
Write: Using concepts from Ann McElroy’s Biocultural Models article, write a comparison of Arctic adaptations and health before and after contact. Pay attention to diet, overall states of health and, family relationships.
Recommended reading:
· Shephard, Roy J. and Andris Rode
1996 The Health Consequences of “Modernization” : Evidence from Circumpolar Peoples. New York: Cambridge University press. need
· Smith, Eric A.
1991 Inujjuamiut Foraging Strategies: Evolutionary Ecology of an Arctic Hunting Economy. , Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter.
READ:
1.Barnes, Linda L.
2003 The Acupuncture Wars: The Professionalizing of American Acupuncture—A View From Massachusetts. Medical Anthropology:22:261-301
2..Csordas, Thomas J.
3. Lewton, Elizabeth and Victoria Bydone
2000 Identity and Healing in Three Navajo Religious Traditions. MAQ 14 (4) 476-497
4.Begay, David H. and Nancy C. Maryboy
2000 The Whole Universe is My Cathedral: A Contemporary Navajo Spiritual Synthesis. MAQ 14 (4) 498-520.
5. Storck, Michael, Thomas J. Csordas and Milton Strauss
6. Lamphere, Louise
WRITE: Using the concept of Medical Pluralism as defined by M and T, compare Chinese healing (Barnes) to Navajo healing. Use the Navajo articles judiciously with examples.
1984 Therapy, Ideology, and Social Change: Mental Healing in Urban Ghana. Berkeley: University of California Press.
WEEK 4 Feb 7, 2006
Health, Culture and Community
Medical Anthropology at Work: Mand T pp. 64-70, 414-419
1.E. Wellin
1955 Water Boiling in a Peruvian Town. In B. Paul ed. Health, Culture and Community.
2.Oscar Lewis Medicine and Politics in a Mexican Village.(case in Health, Culture and Community)
plus 2 other cases from Health culture and community led by students
3. Lauren S. Blum, Gretel H. Pelto, and Pertti J. Pelto
2004 Coping with Nutrient Deficiency” Cultural Models of Vitamin A Deficiency in Northern Niger. Medical Anthropology: 23:195-227
WRITE (for Feb7) : What would have changed the public health outcomes in the cases above. Include a new design for a public health intervention.
1.M and T Chapter 7
2.Quesdada, J. 1998 Suffering Child: An Embodiment of War and Its Aftermath in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 12(1): 51-73.
3.Keith Bletzer and Mary P. Koss
2004 Narrative Constructions of Sexual Violence as Told by Female Rape Survivors in Three Populations in the Southwestern United States. Medical Anthropology. 23: 113-156.
WRITE: a narrative dealing with a current circumstance related to the topics above. Talk about how an anthropological perspective can benefit the situation.
Books for student led discussions.
Dressler, William W. Stress and Adaptation in the Context of Culture: Depression in a Southern Black Community. Albany: State University of New York Press.
2001 Stress and Resilience: The Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
1995 The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Life and death in industrial society: Race, health, and health disparities
J. Jones Bad Blood
WRITE: Do you think the “Tuskeegee experiment” could happen again? Why and why not?
Birth in Four Cultures (student led discussion and book review)
1988 Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Read everyone:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes Lifeboat ethics: Mother Love and Child Death In Brazil. Natural History 1989.
M and T Refugee health care pp340-348
1.Lenore Manderson and Pascale Allotey
2003 Storytelling, Marginality, and Community in Australia: How Immigrants Position Their Difference in Health Care Settings. Medial Anthropology. 22: 1-21.
2. Lenore Manderson and Slawomir Rapala
2005 Making Sense of Disruptions: Strategies of Re-grounding of Aliling Polish Immigrants in Melbourne, Australia. Human Organization. Vol 64 No. 4. pp 350- 350.
3. Ho, Ming Jung
2003 Migratory Journeys and Tuberculosis Risk. MAQ 17 (4) 442-458.
Compare the three examples of immigrant health. What are the patterns and similarities; what are the differences?
Student led discussion:
Frank McCourt. Angela’s Ashes and Tis
WEEK10 (MAR28) : AIDS READ:
1. M and T pp 348-354 and 408-414
2. Daniel Jordan Smith
2003 Imagining HIV/AIDS: Morality and Perceptions of Personal Risk in Nigeria. Medical Anthropology 22:343-372.
3.Nancy Romero-Daza, Margaret Weeks, and Merrill Singer
2003 “Nobody Gives a Damn if I Live or Die” : Violence, Drugs, AND Street-Level Prostitution in Inner-City Hartford, Connecticut. 22:233-259
4. Hansjorg Dilger
2003 Sexuality, AIDS, and the Lures of Modernity: Reflexivity and Morality among Young People in Rural Tanzania. Medical Anthropology 22:23-52
WRITE: A response dealing with the following issues surrounding AIDS: morality, modernity, violence, and risk.
Susan Sontag Illness as Metaphor / AIDS and Its Metaphors (Student Led Discussion)
WEEK 11 APRIL 4 PAUL FARMER AND GLOBAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ( Pathologies of Power student led discussion and book review)
Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities
WEEK 12 : APRIL 11 MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ON THE GROUND
READ:
1. Carolyn Sargent. Counseling Contraception for Malian Migrants in Paris: Global, State and Personal Politics. Human Organization. VOl 64 No. 2 2005 pp. 147-156
2. Health, Culture and Practicing Community. Chapter x in Practicing Community. .
3. Valerie Hill-Jackson. Culture Matters in High Risk, Lead Poisoned Communities. Practicing Anthropology Vol 27 No. 3. Summer 2005 pp.9-14
WRITE: What is the role of culture in understanding the health issues delineated in the above three articles. Be sure to define what you mean by culture.
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