Introducing Medical Anthropology

The third edition of Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are very involved in the process of helping, to varying degrees, to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of the issue of health inequality, this book underlines the need for an analysis that moves beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive biosocial approach. Such an approach integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in building unified theoretical understandings of the origin of ill health, while contributing to the building of effective and equitable national health-care systems. NEW TO THIS EDITION All chapter have been updated or expanded. New Organization oThe former chapter 6, Health Disparity, Health Inequality, is now chapter 4 oThe former chapter 7, Health and the Environment: Toward a Healthier World, is now chapter 5 oThe former chapter 4, Ethnomedicine: The Worlds of Treatment and Healing, is now chapter 6 oThe former chapter 5, Plural Medical Systems: Complexity, Complementarity, and Conflict, is now chapter 7 oNEW: Chapter 8, The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics