Define the Term
This term refers to the integration of biological and cultural perspectives in understanding human health and behavior
What is "biocultural"?
Biocultural anthropology examines the relationship between these two broad aspects of human life to understand health and disease.
What are biology and culture?
Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) introduced a framework describing three bodies central to medical anthropology. What are these three bodies?
What are the individual body, the social body, and the body politic?
Kleinman (1995) notes that biomedicine emphasizes this concept as the absence of disease.
What is health?
This foundational medical anthropology text introduces the fields of biomedicine and biocultural anthropology.
What is Medical Anthropology: An Introduction to the Fields by Brown et al.?
This term refers to how social and structural inequalities shape biological outcomes.
What is "embodiment"?
Explain how the distribution of the sickle cell gene in West Africa illustrates the interplay between culture, environment, and biology.
What is the relationship between agricultural practices, mosquito exposure, and genetic adaptation to malaria?
The body is considered both a biological entity and a reflection of this, according to medical anthropology.
What is society/culture?
Kleinman (1995) highlights the distinction between "disease" and "illness" in biomedicine. How does this distinction affect how health is understood in different cultural contexts?
What is "disease" refers to the biological condition, while "illness" encompasses the personal and cultural experience of that condition?
Scheper-Hughes and Lock's "The Mindful Body" introduces this type of framework for analyzing health and illness.
What is a three-body framework?
Medical anthropologists distinguish between these three terms: one refers to the biological dysfunction diagnosed by a clinician, another to the individual's subjective experience of suffering, and the last to the social recognition and response to the condition.
What are disease, illness, and sickness?
Wiley and Cullin (2016) describe biocultural approaches as holistic. How does this differ from the reductionism of biomedicine?
What is the focus on integrating social, cultural, and biological factors versus isolating purely biological mechanisms?
Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) describe the "body politic" as the regulation and control of bodies by institutions. Name one way this can manifest in modern societies.
What are healthcare policies, surveillance, or reproductive rights?
Bates (2000) critiques the notion of health in modern medicine for its exclusion of these alternative practices.
What are traditional or holistic practices?
5 basic approaches to medical anthropology
what is biological ecological ethnomedical critical and applied
Gravlee (2009) argues that this social construct shapes health disparities by becoming part of biological processes.
What is race?
Gravlee (2009) discusses how race becomes biology. Propose one way social inequality might directly alter biological processes over time.
What is chronic stress causing dysregulation of cortisol, leading to inflammation and disease?
Lock and Scheper-Hughes divide the body into three perspectives: the individual body, the social body, and this third category.
What is "the body politic"?
Bates (2000) critiques the dominance of modern medicine. Why does he argue that calling alternative medicine "alternative" reinforces a biased view of health?
What is because it marginalizes non-Western medical systems and assumes biomedicine is universally superior?
This theoretical framework argues that health disparities are shaped by the intersection of social structures and individual biology, focusing on how long-term exposure to inequality affects health outcomes.
What is the ecosocial theory or embodiment of inequality?
Bates (2000) critiques the dominance of this system of knowledge and its separation from "alternative" practices.
What is modern medicine?
This early biocultural study by Livingstone (1958) linked malaria prevalence to the distribution of this genetic trait.
What is the sickle cell gene?
This article argues that embodiment is essential for understanding how inequalities are biologically embedded over time.
What is "Gravlee’s 'How race becomes biology'"?
Kleinman (1995) suggests that biomedicine overlooks certain aspects of health in its focus on disease. Name one aspect of health or illness that biomedicine might fail to address.
What is the cultural or emotional meaning of illness, or the patient's lived experience?
Medical anthropology is a diverse field, unified by several core ideas. What key concept connects its various approaches?
what is 1)Illness and healing are universal experiences 2) Disease is influenced by cultural, environmental, and sociopolitical circumstances 3)The body is the product of cultural influences and interpretation 4) How cultures understand their own healing has significant influence on the acceptability, efficacy, and improvement through health care initiatives